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Friday, May 25, 2018

Cultural hitchhiking and competition between patrilineal kin groups may have led to the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck (Zeng et al. 2018)


A very interesting paper has just appeared at Nature Communications that potentially offers an explanation for the well documented explosions of certain Y-chromosome lineages in the Old World after the Neolithic, such as those that led to most European males today belonging to Y-haplogroups R1a and R1b (LINK). I might have more to say about this paper in the comments below after I've read it a couple of times. Emphasis is mine:

In human populations, changes in genetic variation are driven not only by genetic processes, but can also arise from cultural or social changes. An abrupt population bottleneck specific to human males has been inferred across several Old World (Africa, Europe, Asia) populations 5000–7000 BP. Here, bringing together anthropological theory, recent population genomic studies and mathematical models, we propose a sociocultural hypothesis, involving the formation of patrilineal kin groups and intergroup competition among these groups. Our analysis shows that this sociocultural hypothesis can explain the inference of a population bottleneck. We also show that our hypothesis is consistent with current findings from the archaeogenetics of Old World Eurasia, and is important for conceptions of cultural and social evolution in prehistory.

...

If the primary unit of sociopolitical competition is the patrilineal corporate kin group, deaths from intergroup competition, whether in feuds or open warfare, are not randomly distributed, but tend to cluster on the genealogical tree of males. In other words, cultural factors cause biases in the usually random process of transmission of Y-chromosomes, increasing the rate of loss of Y-chromosomal lineages and accelerating genetic drift. Extinction of whole patrilineal groups with common descent would translate to the loss of clades of Y-chromosomes. Furthermore, as success in intergroup competition is associated with group size, borne out empirically in wars [43] as ‘increasing returns at all scales’ [44], and as larger group size may even be associated with increased conflict initiation, borne out in data on feuds45, there may have been positive returns to lineage size. This would accelerate the loss of minor lineages and promote the spread of major ones, further increasing the speed of genetic drift.

In addition, the assimilation of women from groups that are disrupted or extirpated through intergroup competition into remaining groups is a common result of warfare in small-scale societies [46]. This, together with female exogamy, would tend to limit the impact of intergroup competition to Y-chromosomes.

...

Figure 6 shows a striking pattern of differences in shallowness of coalescence in samples from hunter-gatherer, farmer and pastoralist cultures. While hunter-gatherer Y-chromosomes from the same culture, and often the same sites, commonly divide into haplotypes that coalesce in multiple millennia, Y-chromosomes of samples from farmer and pastoralist cultures are more homogeneous and have more recent coalescences. The Bell Beaker culture has a high proportion of sampled males (81%) from a large geographical area (Iberia to Hungary) who belong to an identical Y-chromosomal haplogroup (R1b-S116), implying common descent from a kin group that existed quite recently. Some groups of males share even more recent descent, on the order of ten generations or fewer [64]. Such recent common descent may even be retained in cultural memory via oral genealogies, such as among descent groups in Northern and Western Africa, whose members can trace descent relationships up to three to four centuries before the generation currently living [40]. Likewise, from Germany to Estonia, the Y-chromosomes of all Corded Ware individuals sampled, except one, belong to a single clade within haplogroup R1a (R1a-M417) and appear to coalesce shortly before sample deposition.


Thus, groups of males in European post-Neolithic agropastoralist cultures appear to descend patrilineally from a comparatively smaller number of progenitors when compared to hunter gatherers, and this pattern is especially pronounced among pastoralists. Our hypothesis would predict that post-Neolithic societies, despite their larger population size, have difficulty retaining ancestral diversity of Y-chromosomes due to mechanisms that accelerate their genetic drift, which is certainly in accord with the data. The tendency of pastoralist cultures to show the lowest Y-chromosomal diversity and the shallowest coalescence would also be explained, as they may have experienced the social conditions that characterized cultures of the Central Asian steppes [42]. Indeed, the Corded Ware pastoralists may have been organized into segmentary lineages [65], an extremely common tribal system among pastoralist cultures, including those of historical Central Asia [66].
Citation...

Zeng et al., Cultural hitchhiking and competition between patrilineal kin groups explain the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck, Nature Communicationsvolume 9, Article number: 2077 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41467-018-04375-6

Update 30/05/2018: For those clued in, here's an awesome quote from the relevant press release.

The outlines of that idea came to Tian Chen Zeng, a Stanford undergraduate in sociology, after spending hours reading blog posts that speculated - unconvincingly, Zeng thought - on the origins of the "Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck," as the event is known.

See also...

Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...

126 comments:

Davidski said...

A former commentator at this blog is one of the authors of this paper.

Samuel Andrews said...

Feminists won't like this. Legacies of Patriarchy & macho men is in our Y DNA.

Santosh said...

@samuel andrews

i think you are nuts.

Davidski said...

@All

I updated the (rather messy) qpGraph tree in my last post. I got rid of the unnecessary ghost populations and most of the zero drift edges. The new version is, I think, much cleaner and sensible, and also has a little better worst Z score.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

What's Maykop (or Iran) got to do with it?

However, keep in mind that this isn't the final version. I'm still looking to improve the worst Z score, so if anyone has ideas how to do that please don't be shy.

Rob said...

Nice paper.

Samuel Andrews said...

Still reading the paper. Btw, in Europe, this isn't an exclusively IE thing although it was especially frequent in early IEs.

Such founder effects also happened in pre-IE, Neolithic Europe. We can't tell looking at modern Y DNA but can looking at ancient Y DNA. All Neolithic British males belonged to only two lineages. All Globular Amphora male samples so far belong to one lineage.

Samuel Andrews said...

"In fact, most mitochondrial lineages in modern Europeans derive from first farmers, and have a Neolithic time-depth"

I talked about this on my mtDNA blog (which I shut down). Main expansions date to about 8ky, which could be Mesolithic or Neolithic. Age estimates are just guesses.

Rob said...

“Such founder effects also happened in pre-IE, Neolithic Europe. We can't tell looking at modern Y DNA but can looking at ancient Y DNA. All Neolithic British males belonged to only two lineages. All Globular Amphora male samples so far belong to one lineage.”

Good point . I remember attempting to explain this to one of the authors :) Another aspect (maybe not so much for L51) is more recent expansions amplifying older ones
Unless one is privileged with foresight it’s hard to guess with data combing alone, and to their credit the paper understands what really belies the patterns

MaxT said...

@Samual Andrews

"Feminists won't like this. Legacies of Patriarchy & macho men is in our Y DNA."

It's the opposite, feminists in Europe have been pointing out that bronze age Indo-Europeans brought patriarchy since the 1960s/1980s. If anything, it's Gimbutas victory.

Samuel Andrews said...

So, basically, they're saying these founder effects are created by competition between patrilineal kin groups within the same society. The men in each society were broken up into multiple patrilineal groups who fought for supremacy. The Y DNA of the clan that defeated the others went on to dominate the Y DNA of future generations.

This makes sense. Each, early IE society (and some Neolithic societies) seems to be defined by their Y chromosome which could correspond to a patrilineal kin group.

Several of us have observed, that these founder effects did not just replace farmer Y DNA they also replaced 99.9% of Steppe Y DNA. Maybe, it isn't so much the result of sex bias admixture with farmers as a society broken up in patrilineal groups all of which with a Steppe Y chromsome.

But, in a society like that how could you bring in new men? It would be easy to bring in women from other tribes. Ethnic identity wasn't very much defined by maternal decent, patrilineal clans would marry foriegn women almost as easily as women from their tribe. It would be difficult to bring in new men because they wouldn't be able to become a member of any of the already established patrilinal groups.

Does Y DNA I1 originate from farmers who created their own patrilineal clan in an IE society?

MaxT said...

Old danish comic strip on Neolithic farmers vs Bronze age "invaders".

http://www.dandebat.dk/dk-images/401p.jpg

"The women's movement's perception of the Single Grave Culture was that they were some cruel invaders that suppressed the peacefull matriarchal original culture - Drawing by Claus Deluran in "Danmarkshistorie for Folket" 2. del. The text goes: "Ha! it was just what you needed weekling" and the women replies: "Does this means that you are not doing the dishes today?"

"Johannes V. Jensen, picked up the ball and described how the cold and fierce patriarchal Indo-Europeans arrived in Denmark from the south and destroyed the original Danish Stone Age farmers natural and harmonious matriarchal community. Her vision was extensively used by the 70's women's movement."

Davidski said...

Alright, enough about feminists, please get back on topic.

Rob said...

I see people are still making assumptions & haven’t learned from the data - there’s nothing necessarily IE about extreme patrilinearity. It dominates Turkic and other central Asian societies and it was a feature of presumably nonIE middle neolithics of Northern Europe
In fact, from historic IE data we do have (Swat, Hittites, balkans), the extreme founder effect of R1 isn’t a feature

Davidski said...

@Rob

There’s nothing necessarily IE about extreme patrilinearity.

No one ever said that here, you just assumed that someone did.

In fact, from historic IE data we do have (Swat, Hittites, balkans), the extreme founder effect of R1 isn’t a feature.

But it became a feature in those regions, in large part for the reasons explained in the paper.

Rob said...

@ dave
Well one commentator likes to echo cliches about the patrilocality of IEs based on something “linguistic palaeontology”
But I’m sure we can agree that when R1 turns up in historic Indo Europeans rather than speculative ones
Also its interesting that segmentery, non state societies persisted longest of all in the Atlantic fringe, Vasco-cantabria etc. As late as the roman period even

Davidski said...

@Rob

But I’m sure we can agree that when R1 turns up in historic Indo Europeans rather than speculative ones.

Pretty sure that those R1b Iron Age English and Halstatt samples were Celts, ergo Indo-Europeans.

It's also not exactly controversial to claim that Scythians and Sarmatians were Indo-Europeans. And their remains belong to R1a and R1b.

zardos said...

Finally a paper picking up the obvious. But yes, it is a common feature of human societies and related to the level of organisation and expansion.
If a people grow rapidly, need an effective military organisation in absence of a state, patrilinear clan structures are just the best thing you can come up. The agnatic family structure like IE had it was helpful in assimilating foreign women one way or another: You just ignore the different mothers and concentrate on the commmon mythical ancestor-hero who founded your paternal lineage.
Also paternal lineages seem to have been the base for human groups in general and other forms of organisation were the exception from the rule.

We see in pre-IE Western and Central Europe the rise of HG patrilineages and more brutalised warfare too, with the British Neolithics being an offshot of one of this overtakes. G2a lineages were on the run and being constantly replaced over wide areas of their former rule long before IE.

Pastoralists don't need as much work force, but have limited resources with their herds, therefore even slaves would be in a lot of situations more of a burden than a help. When this changed in later times, in settled agricultural societies and states in particular, even the defeated could survive, usually on a lower status level.

Matt said...

Very bold and thought provoking hypothesis, and that's how ideas advance, by authors like these ones being willing to put forth these ideas, and willing to try and say that we can say something about ancient society through dna, and to propose testable models. My other comments:

Comment 1: One thing I'd want to note, which the authors are well aware of in their paper, but might be worth emphasizing here, is that competition between patrilineal kin groups is pretty distinct from inter male violence rates overall.

The record seems pretty clear that inter male violence is at fairly high rates among HG groups. Rates of inter male violence may even be *higher* among HG than later societies at the pastoralist or agricultural stage. But at that level of low population size, and a relatively static level of technology, it's doesn't seem really possible for male combatants to organize into linage groups who have sustainable advantage.

In the low population HG setting, men oppose each other as individuals or as bands of patrilineally unrelated males, and the fittest males (for that environment) reproduce more, but there's no systematic social advantage to a particular lineage.

Then as we move into very large population sizes, we find that

i) the wargroup is a smaller percentage of the population (http://www.pnas.org/content/114/52/E11101 - Rahul Oka 2017)

ii) I would guess recruitment into the wargroup tends to become either much more meritocratic and skills based, as a matter of competition* and as a matter of marginally drawing on more manpower to outcome opponents. This is the age where we are beginning to have more organized and disciplined armies.

Both of which blunt patrilineal intergroup war competition as a force.

(Indeed, the authors are well aware of this as they discuss that "This hypothesis has an added benefit in that it could explain the temporal placement of the bottleneck if competition between patrilineal kin groups was the main form of intergroup competition for a limited episode of time after the Neolithic transition. Anthropologists have repeatedly noted that the political salience of unilineal descent groups is greatest in societies of ‘intermediate social scale’ (Korotayev and its citations on p. 2), which tend to be post-Neolithic small-scale societies that are acephalous, i.e. without hierarchical institutions"

Note that perhaps contra above comments here the authors are almost absolutely attributing this to cultural evolution and group size, and *not* a quality of Indo-European culture that stands apart from these pressures. Nor are they linking it to mode of subsistence tightly, so it's not pastoralism either.).

* as the illustrative extreme example, note how the Qin state of Warring States China, the baddest and toughest state in a theatre of competing multipower Chinese states all out to be hegemon, abolished the patrilineal aristocracy and replaced it with meritocratic promotion. Early Rome's recruitment practices for recruiting the toughest soldiers also may offer a parallel.

Matt said...

Comment 2: Re; examples of Bell Beakers and Corded Ware, I think they're good examples, but there's some unusual dynamics as well to them beyond an increase in patrilineal oriented competition.

Firstly, they were recent descendants of people who had undergoing a population increase due to either a new mode of subsistence (pastoralism) or pioneering that mode of persistence in new environments.

The paper doesn't think this alone is too much on an explanation for bottlenecks, and their reasoning is mostly good. But will say that, if you have two populations A and B, and A has high diversity and B low diversity, then A increases population size by 50% first, and after that B then undergoes a large increase in population size, then B's increase in population size will *look* like a decrease in diversity.

At least some of the reduction in diversity still seems to me purely likely from an augment of these lower y diversity groups growing to a relatively larger size.

Authors state "(T)his hypothesis should cause us to expect maximal bottleneck intensity just before the founding population of Neolithic males began to expand—in other words, just before the initial Neolithic. However, the bottleneck inferred from the data peaks 1 to 2 millennia after the initial Neolithic in every region of the Old World.".

But is there really some unitary early Neolithic increase in populations on the autosome? Seems like if were were to look at the inferred demographic history on the autosome for steppe groups, the size increase would not be dated to the initial Neolithic. You really need to look at when autosomal population size increases *for that group* rather than West Eurasia as a whole..

Secondly, they look to have been part of a "males first" territorial expansion, where they probably had a technological advantage over earlier cultures of NW Europe and SW Europe in particular**. As an augment to a change in organization.

I'll have to re-read this a few times to check if they've already thought about any anticipated all my comments.



**compare different dynamics of interaction between cultures in NW-Central Europe and the Balkans.

In NW-Central Europe competition is between two types of very small scale societies, both at relatively comparable size (indeed incoming Beakers may have been at larger population size compared to British farmers), with a male expansion edge, and the invaders may have a technological edge (e.g. Stonehenge is cool, but not a real edge in warfare or subsistence). So there's no real need or advantage for incoming IE groups to incorporate males outside their patriline, so R1b wipeout.

In the Balkans, it seems very different, and that small numbers of incomers coming straight from the MLBA steppe or Central Europe may have needed to incorporate local males into their groups at fairly high rates, in order to be competitive. Hence so far most steppe admixed samples we see tend not to have any kind of R1 ancestry. Patrilineality must have had to be frequently compromised in order to be any kind of competitive with larger, more sophisticated groups.

(Hungarian Scythians are also an interesting possible example of what may be disjointedness between ancestry and material culture, and hence "recruitment" of local East-Central Europeans by steppe groups, though hard to say much about their y at the moment).

Rob said...

The push into NW / Atlantic Europe and Baltic is one of similar segmentery, patriarchal oriented societies, oriented to war and destined to conflict.
The difference is B.B. - CWC were Chalcolithic whilst others were still using stone axes and slash-n-burn agriculture, hence the former had the edge.
An interesting aspect is that the R1s were in turn partially displaced from the core of mitteleuropa by an axis of I’s stretching from Hungary to Sweden. Subsequently, the R1s had to assimilate into the new Bronze Age societies which led to further competitiveness between and local displacements
So I agree with Matt, the only difference is i don’t a priori assume that IE expanded from the steppe

zardos said...

The resurgence of I1, I2a1 and E-V13 is quite an interesting phenomenon and happened in all likelihood from within IE societies and was associated with assimilated, surviving local lineages. I'm really curious about the date of the respective resurgences and the true origins. Any guess for the mentioned three main non-R1 lineages of later IE?

Matt said...

Rob: So I agree with Matt, the only difference is i don’t a priori assume that IE expanded from the steppe

lol, I left mentions of IE out for a reason, and still this with you every damn time.

Rob said...

@ Matt
But the implication is there -“that small numbers of incomers coming straight from the MLBA steppe or Central Europe may have needed to incorporate local males into their groups at fairly high rates, in order to be competitive. “

Steppe groups were assimilating / recruiting Balkan groups. Do you have any evidence for this ?

jv said...

This is very informative! Thank you! I just upgraded my Father’s yDNA test to further refine his matches. I noticed several things these British Isles Surnames had in common. Maurice de Prendergast, a Norman Knight from Wales(died 1205) His descendants claimed 2/3 of Ireland and had 39 castles in approximately 1280 AD. However, these matches may predate the 1100’s. All of his Surname matches at y-67 have another thing in common. They are towns/villages in Wales.

jv said...

Sorry to go off topic. My comment was not about R1a in the Neolithic or Bronze Age but in more recent times.

Matt said...

Incorporate (implying direction of cultural/linguistic change), be incorporated by (implying reverse direction), merge with. Whatever. That's not the level of analysis I'm interested in with that statement... and now on to more fruitful and less mindlessly belligerent discussants.

Synome said...

Absolutely fascinating paper. And it supports much of what Davidski has said about the diversity of uniparentals on the steppe.

With regards to the non R1 Y-hg situation in Europe--

Matt's explanation of steppe clans meeting more complex societies in SE Europe definitely makes sense, though I wonder how we can apply this reasoning in all instances of "Neolithic Y survival/rebound".

For example, it would seem that Corded Ware immigrants to Scandinavia would not have encountered a much more complex society there than they would have found in neighboring parts of northeastern Europe where R1 predominates, yet we have I1 at high frequency there today.

I think climate and geography may have played more of a role in this region and maybe some others in blunting the effect of patrilineal steppe clans outcompeting the native male lineages. The Balkans might also have some of this environmental effect with the mountainous terrain providing a refuge for pre-steppe male kin groups. I2a peaks around the Dinaric Alps, despite that not being a specific center of societal complexity in the Bronze age or Chalcolithic.

Dmytro said...

" I2a peaks around the Dinaric Alps etc. " I think the fate of I2a1, I2a1b /with further big distinctions within/, and I2a2 seem very interestingly different. I1 was very successful in the Germanic world, and I2a1b (2) in the Slavic world (and a bit beyond to a smaller extent). Did prior integration with farmer communities have a significant impact (positive or negative) on "success rates"? I'm less than an expert and have no idea. Amy comments more than welcome.

Grey said...

Matt

"the authors are almost absolutely attributing this to cultural evolution and group size..."

i think there's a lot of truth in this, in military history there's a recurring theme of tight-knit patrilineal clan type groups being very effective at small scale warfare but very bad at co-operating effectively at larger scales.

Grey said...

Synome

yes - if the IE had a mounted warfare advantage then terrain unsuitable for mounted warfare would have dulled that edge so we might expect to see a higher rate of pre-IE survival in mountains / swamps etc.

Rob said...

One possible reason why R1 made little initial headway in the Balkans is because other groups we’re expanding there (some “native” others exotic) , limiting Yamnaya systems to the steppe like areas.
And contrary to above suggestions, Hg I2a1 in the Balkans isn’t due to its “survival in swamps and mountains”, but due later expansions.
There was whole chain of other expansive systems before and after B.B. / CWC / R1 of a different character; but need to be understood for those interested in the larger picture & specifics (although it’s clear some aren’t).

Jijnasu said...

They didn't have mounted warfare advantage. Fighting from Horseback wasn't possible until millenia later

Anshuman said...

I should add to what Jijnasu said by pointing to what happened TO Alexander's Macedonians,also Horse Mounted warfare took a long long time to come of age and was certainly not a geography defying world beating innovation even till Alexander's time.

Davidski said...

Horse mounted warfare isn't brought up as a relevant factor in the Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age expansions from the steppe in any academic works on the topic that I know of.

Ric Hern said...

Maybe I2a were good craftsmen with very little interest to be rulers ? R1a people maybe were more concerned with Trade and ruling rather than producing the tradable products...

Samuel Andrews said...

Off topic. I just realized Otzei Iceman's only mtDNA match is an Iron gate HG. I5244 (9115-8555 BC)and Otzei are the only members of a basal K1 lineage called K1f.

zardos said...

My personal idea for the main three non-R1 IE haplogroups of later times is highly speculative, but I see a pattern insofar, as:
All of them seem to have come from the fringes: Especially Balkan mountains and Scandinavia
I would suspect that I1 might have been assimilated in the climatic border zone of Scandinavai, where the pastoralists were at their limits. It is no coincindence that they were pushed back by Finns under similar conditions too. From this border zone Northern Germanic tribes expanded over more Central European like (Germanic?) people and this was the expansion of I1 probably.
Similarly, in the Balkan mountains I2a1 and E-V13 might have been able "to hitchhike" and overtake small tribal units which later expanded within the IE world.
I would assume more specialised to smaller livestock, goats and sheep in particular. The pattern corresponds somewhat with Illyrian, Thracian and Greek expansions. This should be tangible when more samples from those people and their respective archaeological cultures come in. But probably I'm on the wrong track, yet they survived for the same reasons the later Germanic and Slavic expansions pretty intact.

Grey said...

Jijnasu said...
"They didn't have mounted warfare advantage. Fighting from Horseback wasn't possible until millenia later"

1) numidians

2) if not mounted warfare then the same basic idea but related to food production i.e. their form of pastoralism at the time not being as well suited to some terrain types as others e.g cattle + swamps = bad

Ric Hern said...

Did you ever wondered why most 90 metres javelin throwers are taller than 6 feet ? Maybe Steppe people had a Height advantage or Reach advantage when it came to specific warfare tactics ?

Synome said...

I didn't mean to imply that the expanding IEs necessarily had an advantage in direct combat with horses. I don't think we know enough yet to say exactly how they fought.

I think most would agree that the greatest, perhaps decisive, advantage IE people seem to have had was their use of domesticated horses.

I would expect their dominance to wane anywhere that horses are not able to easily live or travel. That includes mountains and any climate zone unsuitable for horses e.g. cold forest/tundra, hot tropical forests, hot desert.

I think there's a good reason why Uralic languages and N1c survived cheek and jowl with their southern IE neighbors, and likewise with the Caucasian languages and J to the south. Both areas where these languages are spoken are not suited to horse pastoralism or travel like the steppe is.

As an aside, I think it's also important to note another implication of this study. If more complex, state level societies can effect cultural change without replacement of the male patrilines, this actually provides a neat explanation for how more complex southern European and West Asian cultures adopted IE languages without the large scale demographic replacement we see in northeast and northwest Europe. To gain dominant cultural position, they only needed to replace the central native political elites, not the chief of every village. Maybe this is what happened with Greek and Armenian?

vAsiSTha said...

@ric been
Mesolithic gangetic plain men had avg height of 6 feet (9 samples). Women averaged just over 5'11(4 samples)

Ric Hern said...

@ Synome

Yes it certainly happened with Gutians taking over from Sumerian Rulers.

I think there is a fine line to be treaded between keeping the Mob happy and keeping the Royalty happy.

Maybe Indo-European waited for Power Vacuums to form or political unrest before they stepped in.

Tone said...

I think it's much more simple than mounted warfare, or arm length, or pastoral economy, or whatever.... I think it all boils down to how many male relatives one could call to one's side when trouble came.

For example If I'm an IE pastoralist/farmer trying to make a living in Western Poland during the bronze age, the main threat to my life and property is gangs of other males. There are no police. No militaries, No laws. My only protection is my brothers, uncles, and cousins that I can rally to my aide. The more of them I have, the more chance I have of a stable life. Also, when I die, my eldest son will inherit my property, but my other sons will have to form their own gangs and find their own property. The more male relatives they have in their network, the more chance they have of success.

Multiply this over time and Y lineages become very homogenous.

Grey said...

Tone
"My only protection is my brothers, uncles, and cousins that I can rally to my aide. The more of them I have, the more chance I have of a stable life."

this is where a tight-knit patrilineal clan might have a tactical advantage in small-scale conflict

it's like being called out for a fight after school and you show up with a brother and two cousins and they show up with three brothers and twelve cousins

(organized crime generally works the same way imo)

Ric Hern said...

How many Old Europeans were left in Central and Eastern after the 5.9 Kiloyear Event and Pneumonic Plague ?

Bernd said...

I think people seriously underestimate how much of an advantage a higher animal protein pastoral diet would have been for melee warfare. People raised on pastoral vs low protein agricultural diets have significant advantages in height, bone density, and muscle mass.

Bernd said...

I suspect this is part of why I1 from Scandinavia survived as well— with a mixed hunger-gatherer diet with some agriculture and a lot of fish they would have been similarly robust as the newcomers.

AWood said...

@Rob

Who said R1 men never made headway into the Balkans? There isn't enough data to really make a case either way. Obviously the population there today is not the same one as the bronze, neolithic, and clearly not the mesolithic. We have data to back up the latter two, but only a tiny sample from the Bronze Age.

Rob said...

@ AWood
No one said they never were there
The question is one of proving all your theories of elite conquest
At the moment is all sounds like empty speculation
Btw we do have double digit y haplogroup numbers from the Balkans (south of Hungary)

Samuel Andrews said...

Btw, the source population for I1 may have not been exceptionally WHG-rich. Lots of Middle Neolithic farmers belonged Y DNA I. The I1 expansion dates to the Late Neolithic. It may have first exploded in IE people but we'll have to wait and see.

The single LNBA I1 sample in G25 is WHG-rich, north of any MN farmer-Steppe cline. Modern Scandinavians have excess WHG, beyond what Funnel Beaker can explain. It is possible I1 source is WHG-rich.

mzp1 said...

In case anyone wants to watch a video, I've put my hypothesis on youtube.

https://youtu.be/966dAKcpoT8

Davidski said...

@mzp1

In case anyone wants to watch a video, I've put my hypothesis on youtube.

Thanks for the comic relief.

Ric Hern said...

I think Steppe people were not One Track minded and they could see opportunity as it arose and used whatever was needed to gain the advantage.They knew the advantages of Compromise. In short they were good Adoptors and Adaptors.

Samuel Andrews said...

This 2016 paper appears to have sequenced ancient DNA from "Early Neolithic" West Siberia (Russia).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1755-0998.12595

themis said...

It is pretty scary how accurate mythology can be. This bottleneck is what you expect to find if the sons of Heracles slaughtered the sons of Poseidon where ever they were (mostly Europe). A few years ago it was the postglacial freshwater sea filling the middle Danube basin.

Rob said...

Seems like a pretty interesting conference on CWC

http://www.iaw.unibe.ch/unibe/portal/fak_historisch/dga/iaw/content/e39448/e39449/e39450/e667224/WS_CWC_Draft_ger.pdf

Davidski said...

@Algan mardi

I've looked at the Minoan/Myceanean paper and data very closely. You don't know the data better than I do.

Your claims are pure BS and you're misrepresenting the findings in the paper. Posts deleted.

Ric Hern said...

@ Algan mardi

At the end of the day Indo-European is a Linguistic issue. I have not seen one Linguist who postulate that Hittite was the Ancestor of other Indo-European Languages outside Anatolia.

So even if the Hittites were found to have no EHG there is no trace of a Closely Related Indo-European Language to Hittite anywhere in the Balkans....So if Indo-European were spread by CHG people you should expect Minoan to be closer to Hittite....etc.

Hittite is described as an Early Offshoot or Sister Branch of Indo-European.

Wastrel said...

Ric: I'm sure you know this, but to clarify/strengthen your comment for passers-by: it is absolutely, 100% certain that Hittite was NOT the ancestor of any known language outside of Anatolia. Nor are any non-Anatolian known languages candidates for that. There are a bunch of barely-attested old IE languages from Portugal through to Bulgaria, but they are all firmly non-Anatolian.

Regarding the last point: yes, although there's an issue of terminology here. Traditionally, Indo-European is divided into Anatolian and non-Anatolian. Alternatively, "Indo-Hittite" can be divided into Anatolian and Indo-European. I prefer the latter, but AIUI the former is still more common, unfortunately. So "PIE" and "Indo-European" are potentially ambiguous.

Ric Hern said...

@ Wastrel

Thanks for clarifying that.

postneo said...

@mzp
saw a bit of the video.. will cover more. You comment that Albanian may have had voiced aspirate dh. Is this a voiced aspirate or a voiced fricative like in modern English?

Your English sounds a bit British with touch of jamaican/West Indies? Am I close or way off?

jv said...

I’m studying my Father’s R-L664 S3479 yDNA from the British Isles. He may be a descendant of the Mayo, Ireland Prendergast lineage or from a related Flemish Norman Family.
Why is R1a1a much more rare than R1b in the British Isles?? Was R1b there first? Did they have more prestigious Families? Did R-L644 in the British Isles enter with the Anglo-Saxon Migrations or more recent Viking & Norman Migrations?
Anyway, I’m joining the R1a Project. One of the R1a L664 Administrator’s said my Father needs a SNP test to see if my Father’s matches one of the 2 known Prendergast lineages.

Ric Hern said...

@jv

R1b arrived there with the Bell Beaker Culture

mzp1 said...

@postneo,

Regarding Albanian, I was just going by the data, so not too sure what it represents.

I was a bit nervous making the video so the accent came out a little. I suppose it can be considered 'Multicultural London English' lol. Not my best performance perhaps...

jv said...

Thank you

Ric Hern said...

@ jv

It looks like R-L664 S3479 formed about 4000 years ago. And it can be most probably be linked to the Angles, Saxons or Jutes.

Samuel Andrews said...

Also, R1a L664 has been found in German Corded Ware.

FrankN said...

@Rob; Seems like a pretty interesting conference on CWC

http://www.iaw.unibe.ch/unibe/portal/fak_historisch/dga/iaw/content/e39448/e39449/e39450/e667224/WS_CWC_Draft_ger.pdf


Indeed. Especially worth looking forward to seems

"Anja Furtwängler, University of Tübingen, Germany
Genetic transition in the Swiss Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age"

It could fill a major gap - AFAIK we don't have any Swiss aDNA so far. This concerns not only the question of how "steppic" Swiss CWC was (and whether we may eventually see the first R1b-U 152 [Italo-Celtic branch] there), but may also shed some light on the origin of the Swiss/ SW German pile-dwelling tradition, and Neolithisation of the W. Alps ("Southern", "North-Western [Michelsberg] or "Danubian").

Let's hope she comes up with more than just mtDNA (but Tübingen University isn't really at the Forefront of aDNA research, they are best reknowned for isotopic analyses).

rozenblatt said...

@FrankN: "AFAIK we don't have any Swiss aDNA so far."

Bichon, Late Paleolithic hunter-gatherer, is from Switzerland: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9912

FrankN said...

@rozenfaq: Right, forgot about Bichon. So, we "just" miss holocene aDNA from Switzerland so far.

@ Ric Hern, Watrel:
"it is absolutely, 100% certain that Hittite was NOT the ancestor of any known language outside of Anatolia."

Not so fast! A well known phenomenon is Anatolian, Tocharian, Italic and Celtic sharing the "middle -r-", and especially the 3rd pers. media passive on *-tVr (Hitt. -ta(ri), Toch. A/B -tär, OIr -thir, Lat. -tur, c,f. the well known "mortanturi te salutant" "those to be dying greet you" exclamated by Gladiators upon entering a Roman arena), that is absent from all other IE languages.

This isogloss has been extemsively discussed by Gamkrelidze/ Ivanov and forms key evidence for their proposed Anatolian-Central Asian homeland. The following paper re-asesses the case from a "steppist" perspective, confirming its character as an early innovation proprietary to Anatolian, Tocharian and Italo-Celtic, while at the same time elaborating why an early split into Anatoli-Tocharo-Italo-Celtic and Germano-Slavic-Graeco-Arian would not necessarily be at odds with a Steppe homeland.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00437956.1993.11435910

Cf. the brief discussion of the "middle -r-" isogloss as "valid argument" on p.4 below:
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/28589/Derivational%20Morphology%20-%20New%20Perspectives%20on%20the%20Italo-Celtic%20Hypothesis.pdf?sequence=1

Furthermore, several authors have identified numerous lexical isglosses private to Anatolian and Western PIE, and especially private to Anatolian and Italic. See, e.g.

http://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/Melchert/melchertcopenhagen.pdf
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40267192?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

t.b.c.

Dmytro said...

http://www.iaw.unibe.ch/unibe/portal/fak_historisch/dga/iaw/content/e39448/e39449/e39450/e667224/WS_CWC_Draft_ger.pdf

Unfortunately no one here from Ukraine. But two excellent Polish scholars (Szmyt and Wlodarczak) may to some extent fill this gap.

Davidski said...

Here's what the press release for the Zeng paper says.

The outlines of that idea came to Tian Chen Zeng, a Stanford undergraduate in sociology, after spending hours reading blog posts that speculated - unconvincingly, Zeng thought - on the origins of the "Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck," as the event is known.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/su-wac052918.php

postneo said...

@mzp
teer means arrow in all North Indian languages. I think this is sanskrit based and not a recent loan from farsi.

FrankN said...

Continuing my previous post on Italic-Anatolian connections:

The development of Italic has still not been explained satisfactorily. One might, of course, assume that Italic entered the peninsula via the E. Alps as part of the Urnfield Expansion, ca. 1200 BC. In that case, the Urnfield language would have been Pre-Proto Italic, and Unetice, as Pre-Pre-Proto Italic, would mark the point where Italic and Celtic split (all relevant studies, including Ringe/ Warnow, date that split to 2,200 BC at latest).

In fact, there is evidence of non/pre-Latin presence of Italic NE of the Alps, but it rather points to Venetic, than to Pre-Proto-Italic. E.g. the Venetic "Bh"->"V" sound shift is reflected in toponyms such as Woergl/Tirol, possibly also Warszawa, and Slavic *vь̃rxъ "summit, mountain, hill". The a/m are obviously related to PIE *bʰerǵʰ- "high; hill, mountain [hilltop settlement]" (c.f. German Berg/ Burg, Celt. briga, Anat. Perg[-amon] etc.), but cannot be consolidated with that root inside sound laws underlying Celtic, Germanic and/or Slavic. Archeological evidence for a North Italic expansion is provided by the House Urn Culture (N. Harz) and the Pomeranian aka Face Urn Culture, ca. 600 BC. So, a Proto-Italic homeland NE of the Alps cannot be proven (but also not disproven), as “Italianisms” there may as well relate to Hallstatt.

The Urnfield – Proto-Villanova scenario is fraught with two more problems: Firstly, Proto-Villanova blends rather seamlessly into Villanova proper, that, however, centers around Etruscan-speaking Tuscany. So, Villanova (and, by extension, possibly also Proto-Villanova) may at best display a multicultural, Etruscan plus Proto-Italic, assemblage (we have various sources attesting that Rome was under Etruscan role during Villanova proper).
Secondly, when earliest attested, in the 6th cBC, Italic languages appear already too differentiated to have originated from a proto-language that entered 600 or less years ago. This concerns especially Old Latin vs. Osco-Umbrian. Etruscan and Greek ad-/ superstrate should have affected Latin and Osco-Umbrian alike and can therefore not explain the divergence.

So, while Proto-Villanova may represent a transalpine expansion of IE, there must have been an older IE layer present in Italy. Gimbutas and Anthony thought of “Kurganised Balkans”->”Baden”->”Remedello/ Rinaldino”, but we now have ample aDNA evidence to falsify that theory. BB, anyway a rather short-lived and fringe phenomenon on the peninsula, does aDNA-wise also not really qualify as source of “steppization”. Illyrian? Obscure in character (e.g. centum or satem), early dating, and genesis (Albania is another of those places we could do well with some more aDNA from). More importantly, while Messapian is frequently linked to Illyrian, I haven’t seen any paper yet claiming intimate linguistic relation between Illyrian and Italic (mid-20th century hypotheses on Illyro-Venetic have been thoroughly debunked).

FrankN said...

What is left, then, is Anatolian. Archeologically, connections are certainly there. Pithos [Amphorae] burials, e.g. were widespread among Hittites, Minoans, Mycenaeans, and seem to go back to pre-/non-IE customs, e.g. Urartians. See also
https://www.persee.fr/doc/anata_1018-1946_2006_num_14_1_1061
on (putatively) pre-Hittite pithos burials in what was to become the Hittite heartland.
Such burials spread during the MBA into the Western Mediterranean, notably the Andalusian El Argar Culture. Southern Italy acted as a bridge, evidenced e.g., by MBA pithos burials found on Lipari. However, MBA pithos burials are also reported from W. Slovenia. They prevailed among Etruscans, but that is another story.
Genetically, CHG/ Iran_N influence on Italian (and W.Med. as a whole) aDNA is well evidenced. Linguistic traces have been documented above.

In short – the idea of Italic (Italo-Celtic) deriving from Anatolian, or at least displaying substantial Anatolian substrate, IMO is worth further exploration, also as concerns the “when?” and “why?”. Maybe, the mythical descent of Romans from exiled Trojans eventually turns out to hold some truth…

Ric Hern said...

@ FrankN

Don't you think there should be a closer connection between Hittite, Mycenaean and Minoan Languages then ? Is there any evidence of this ?

Why then are Italic, Celtic and Tocharian that were thousands of miles from Hittite closer to Hittite than Mycenaean is to Hittite ? After all there are the pithos connection right on the Hittite doorstep as you mentioned....

Rob said...

@Frank
Don’t forget the trans-Adriatic connection between west balkans & Italy- a distinct “Adriatic tumulus” province encompassing Dalmatia, Epirus , West Macedonia , Apulia, etc
This is where the Yamnaya systems suffused with the Aegean - Anatolian Bronze Age societies. Future aDNA from Greece and west balkans will help clarify details about acculturation

FrankN said...

@Ric: Good questions! I can't answer them yet.

Essentially, I never believed in the Anatolian homeland theory. There are many apparanent (P)IE borrowings from Semitic when it comes to agricultural terminology, and obviously Neolithisation of N. Africa is connected to the spread of Afro-Asiatic, so I am quite certain that at least the maritime (Cardial Pottery) stream of EEF, which apparently originated in the Levante, spoke some kind of (Para-)Semitic.
C.f. on those PIE borrowings from Semitic
http://loanwords.prehistoricmap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Bj%C3%B8rn-2017-Foreign-elements-in-the-Proto-Indo-European-vocabulary.pdf

On the Anatolian-Danubian stream, the final verdict is still out, and some kind of Para-Caucasian (Pre-Proto-Hurro- Urartian), as, e.g., proposed by Witzl based on Basque-Caucasian-Burusho isoglosses, deserves consideration. However Björn 2017 (linked above) quite convincingly argues for Balkan EEF also speaking Para-Semitic.

OIT is out of question to me (spare me the details), and Gamkrelidze/ Iwanov's detour through Central Asia is also unconvincing. So, in principle, everything is set for the Steppe theory - except
- Gimbutas' and Anthony's 1st wave of Indo-Europeanisation of Central/ Western Europe, namely "Kurganised Balkans"->"Baden", doesn't hold up to the reality (i.e. aDNA) test;
- the same applies to their 2nd wave, namely GAC;
- which leaves us with just CWC, that may explain Germanic and Balto-Slavic, but not Illyrian, Italic and Celtic;
- the aDNA we have so far looks like "too little, too late" when it comes to Anatolian, Greek, and Indic (Yeah - I know, "Kulturkugel", "further sampling will clarify things" etc., but that sounds more and more desparate);
- Tocharian remains a complete mystery: Sintashta is out (already satemised), and Parpola (2007), citing Anthony (in press), also spoke out against Afanasievo for lacking evidence of crop agriculture, while Tocharian shares (borrowed) PIE agricultural terminology. He instead proposed Sarazm as source, but the Steppe element in Sarazm is homeopathic at best.
- Finally, there is the issue of PIE loans into Sumerian - not just a fringe theory, but already adressed by Pokorny, and also, e.g., analysed (and confirmed) here
https://slidex.tips/download/sumero-indo-european-language-contacts
IMO, the compiled evidence is highly convincing (I may get into details in a separate post, if there is interest), but unexplainable from the Steppe theory.

So, I think it is time to start thinking out of the box and come up with a completely new theory. Now, I am neither a professional linguist, nor feel in any other way qualified to solve the riddle of the PIE homeland by myself in a couple of weeks. Therefore, I haven't yet thought of, and can't answer your questions.

FrankN said...

Let me sketch out the lines along which I am currently thinking:

1.) (Pre-)PIE homeland in NW Iran (Haji Firuz) [actually mis-labelled as Chalc. in the recent paper, archeologically and per their Supp. Mat. it is Late Neolithic (dated to the 1st quarter of the 6th m BC, i.e. earlier than Barcin and all EEF aDNA available). Major innovations, aside from copper metallurgy developed during the 5th mBC, include wool sheep, and light-sensitive barley (better adapted to continental/ norhern climate than the non-light sensitive barley domesticated in Anatolia and the Levante).

2.) Spread into Anatolia by either of (a) Chaff-faced ware (from ca. 4,200 BC, Leyla-Tepe, Urmia Basin, impact on Sioni and Maykop, from 3,700 BC on present in the Amuq plain around Antakhia) or (b) Kura-Araxes (similar starting point, but expanding only from ca. 3.700 BC onwards). Both cultures cohabitate in Nahkichevan and S. Armenia, the cohabitation phase is reflected by Arm_Chalk. Apparently a multicultural/ multilingual setting. One of the a/m cultures should represent NCauc(->Hurro-Urartian, Hattic), the other one PIE(->Anatolian). Alternatively, one could assume that both expansions were multilingual.
2a) The KA expansion into the Central Zagros leads to direct contact with Sumerian, thus explaining PIE influence on Sumerian.

3) Eastward spread into CA (Namazga, BMAC), and from there further (a) via Sarazm towards the Tarim Basin (Tocharian), and (b) towards the IVC, creating a layer of IE (adstrate), still centum, which the later IA (Sintashta) wave can build upon.

4) BA expansion of Anatolian through the Mediterranean (details yet to be worked out), contributing to development of Italic and Celtic.

5) Entrance into the Steppe via Maykop. Mechanisms of language transfer towards Yamnaya etc. still need to be worked out.
[One option that I am entertaining is Mesolithic contact across the Caspian Sea and the Lower Volga (which, at higher Caspian Sea levels during the Early Holocene, would actually have been a wide inlet, with the Volga mouth located near Samara). Assuming that Pre-Pre-PIE originated in the South Caspian LGM refugium, and PPPIE speakers participated in the post-glacial-colonization of North Caspian shores, Khvalynsk etc. might already have been speaking some kind of Para-PIE, which would of course have facilited Maykop-triggered IE-sation of the Steppe. In order to assess this hypothesis, a closer look at South Caspian HG (SCHG) aDNA, i.e. Hotu and Bell Cave, might be worthwhile. Unfortunately, both seem to be absent from Dave’s G25 data.].

6) From here on, things essentially follow the standard Steppe theory, i.e., (a) Balto-Slavic developing in situ from Steppe cultures;
(b) spread towards Central Europe (CWC) via the Baltics; and Proto-Celtic developing in CE by interaction between CWC-IE and local MN languages;
(c) Germanic as a mixed language of CWC-IE and TRB language, with Single Grave as homeland/ home culture (implying NW/ British BB, apparently originating from Single Grave, speaking Pre-PGerm.);
(d) the Central Asian round, via Sintashta etc., carrying satemized IA into Iran and India:

That would still leave things to be sorted out for SE Europe (Greek, Illyrian, Thracian etc.), as well as several issues related to the development of Celtic, but overall these ideas seem to be reasonably well aligned to the current linguistic, archeological and genetic information available. However, it is a rough sketch, open to criticism and review in line with new data coming in.

epoch said...

@FrankN

There are Bell Beaker samples from Sion, Valais added to the BB paper at the last moment. I5755, I5757, I5759.

https://media.nature.com/original/nature-assets/nature/journal/v555/n7695/extref/nature25738-s2.pdf

epoch said...

@FrankN

With regard to this:

"- Tocharian remains a complete mystery: Sintashta is out (already satemised), and Parpola (2007), citing Anthony (in press), also spoke out against Afanasievo for lacking evidence of crop agriculture, while Tocharian shares (borrowed) PIE agricultural terminology. He instead proposed Sarazm as source, but the Steppe element in Sarazm is homeopathic at best."

We now know that there was a late uptick of EEF/WHG in Andronovo, considered a west to east influx of CWC or something else. That could be related.

With regard to step 5 (Entrance into the Steppe via Maykop): If anything, the recent Caucasus paper showed the opposite. There seems to be no male mediated geneflow into the steppe.

Santosh said...

@FrankN

"3) Eastward spread into CA (Namazga, BMAC), and from there further (a) via Sarazm towards the Tarim Basin (Tocharian), and (b) towards the IVC, creating a layer of IE (adstrate), still centum, which the later IA (Sintashta) wave can build upon."

Hello FrankN, I'm also not a professional linguist but interested in historical linguistics. The above is highly interesting. I wonder if the centum layer of Bangani of Uttarakhand is an indication of such a thing in India. Linguist Hans Hock writing here (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pehook/bangani.hock.html) says that the centum layer of Bangani does not seem to look clearly like any known centum IE language so far. Also, if you have any in your thoughts currently, could you give more details about the nature and social position and status (elite vs. non-elite, pastoral vs. agricultural, widespread and singly present vs. coexisting with any other Indus languages, etc.) of this hypothetical old centum IE on the Indus? And if also possible, what exactly you mean by "which the later IA (Sintashta) wave can build upon."? That is, would't we expect the two languages (hypothetical Indus centum IE and satem IA) to be quite diverged from each other by the time of arrival of IA resulting in loss of mutual intelligibility? What are some ways in which this "building upon" can happen?

Thank you very much! It is fascinating to think that even relatively successful languages like the Indo-European ones may have had completely lost branches, so having ideas like Para-Munda, Para-Dravidian, etc. may not also be too bad though many of them are never proposed anywhere so far.

mzp1 said...

@FrankN,

You seem to have some knowledge on linguistics so just wanted to pick your brain.

I have theory that groups the languages like this..

Indo-Aryan->Iranian->Balto-Slavic and Germanic (Steppe)

Indo-Aryan-> Greek, Latin, Celtic, Hittite, Tocharian etc (Caucuses)

Do you see any major issues with that?

I place CWC as Celtic with a migration through the Caucuses, and Tocharian as offshoot that ended up East.

CWC is too early to be Germanic as Germanic has huge religious influence post Zoroastrianism. For instance, we have the Anglo-Saxon word 'devil' which is clearly cognate with Latin 'divine' but with the opposite meaning, due to Zoroastrian influence on pre-Germanic Iranians. There are also many many other similarities between Germanic and Iranian that I discuss in the video (link in previous post).

postneo said...

@mzp
On moratiming: it is correlated with not just
1) short and long vowel differentiation

but also

2) gemination
3) compound consonants
4) sandhi (word amalgamation) in sanskrit, it probably provides an additional auditory clue for listeners to parse words in long sentences.

IA, dravidian, semitic and and oromo from ethiopia seem to be mora-timed as well

I feel most linguists are not fully sensitive to this aspect since they lack the feature in their native languages and may be inadequately trained.

Also speech timing correlates with complexity in percussion and folk rhythms even more intimately than poetry.

mzp1 said...

@Postneo,

Thanks, I agree but kept it simple and to-the-point in the presentation.

Unknown said...


>The record seems pretty clear that inter male violence is at fairly high rates among HG groups. Rates of inter male violence may even be *higher* among HG than later societies at the pastoralist or agricultural stage. But at that level of low population size, and a relatively static level of technology, it's doesn't seem really possible for male combatants to organize into linage groups who have sustainable advantage.
In the low population HG setting, men oppose each other as individuals or as bands of patrilineally unrelated males, and the fittest males (for that environment) reproduce more, but there's no systematic social advantage to a particular lineage.


I Y-haplogroups replaced C, CT, F, Bt and K Y-DNA of Upper Paleolithic Europeans so certain Y-DNA haplogroups can gain dominanace in hunter gather societies. Basal I already existed in upper paleolithic Europe but at much lower frequencies than I2 in WHG proper. Given that Vestonice cluster is around 50% WHG-like with the rest being diverse eurasian components so the replacement of patrilineages could have caused the formation of the complete WHG autosomal profile.

Onur Dincer said...

@Unknown

I Y-haplogroups replaced C, CT, F, Bt and K Y-DNA of Upper Paleolithic Europeans so certain Y-DNA haplogroups can gain dominanace in hunter gather societies. Basal I already existed in upper paleolithic Europe but at much lower frequencies than I2 in WHG proper. Given that Vestonice cluster is around 50% WHG-like with the rest being diverse eurasian components so the replacement of patrilineages could have caused the formation of the complete WHG autosomal profile.

The late UP bottleneck that ended up with the dominance of Y-DNA I2 and mtDNA U5 in most of Europe was mainly caused by the LGM. Low population sizes and violence played their roles too, but the main culprit is the LGM, thus climatic. On the other hand, the Y-DNA bottleneck during 5000–7000 BP is largely a consequence of cultural/economic factors.

Onur Dincer said...

@mzp1

For instance, we have the Anglo-Saxon word 'devil' which is clearly cognate with Latin 'divine' but with the opposite meaning, due to Zoroastrian influence on pre-Germanic Iranians.

Absolutely false. The word "devil" comes from Greek "diabolos" and has nothing to do with Latin "divine" or any of its cognates.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/devil

mzp1 said...

@Onur,


"From Middle English devil, devel, deovel, from Old English dēofol, dēoful, from earlier dīobul (“devil”), ultimately from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos, “accuser, slanderer”), also as "Satan" (in Jewish/Christian usage, translating Biblical Hebrew שטן‎, satán), from διαβάλλω (diabállō, “to slander”), literally “to throw across”, from διά (diá, “through, across”) + βάλλω (bállō, “throw”). The Old English word was probably, adopted under influence of Latin diabolus (itself from the Greek). Other Germanic languages adopted the word independently : compare Saterland Frisian Düüwel (“devil”), West Frisian duvel (“devil”), Dutch duivel, duvel (“devil”), Low German Düvel (“devil”), German Teufel (“devil”), Danish djævel (“devil”), Swedish djävul (“devil”) (older: djefvul, Old Swedish diævul, Old Norse djǫfull)."

It is just poor linguistic research.

Devil, Duuwel, duvel, duivel, teufel, djavel are all closer in form and meaning to Iranian 'Deva' than to 'Diabolos'.

Also, it doesnt make sense that a borrowing from Greek would find it's way into so many Germanic languages independantly. Diabolical is borrowed from Greek/Latin into English, but I dont think exists in German or Dutch, google translate returns forms of 'devil'.

Synome said...

@mzp1

Let me help you.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/diabolus

FrankN said...

@Epoch; "We now know that there was a late uptick of EEF/WHG in Andronovo, considered a west to east influx of CWC or something else."
Hold on! Are you proposing something like a two-layered migration eastward through the West Asian Steppe, with the first layer originating from Ukraine, speaking Satemm dialects, and ending up in SCA/SA, while the second layer originated further west (e.g. Bohemia), spoke a Centum dialect, and ended up in the Tarim Basin (and beyond)? Interesting idea, and worthwhile further investigation (e.g. nMonte analyses of selected Sintashta/ Andronovo individuals, instead of just looking at averages.) Looking over OG's clusters (great work, btw!), I have noted that Sintashta individuals fall into several different groups. I might have to take a closer look at these groups against the background of the above idea.

@mzp: There is clear Iranian influence on Germanic. However, I tend to rather attribute it to IA/ early medieval contact (Goths around the Sea of Azov, Alans, c.f. the outliers in early medieval Bavaria), than to a more basal relation. In general, parallels are not so much with Iranian in general, but particularly strong with Ossetian. Look, e.g., at the following

- "horse": OHG ors/ros (methathesis)<-> Oss. urs

- "(she-)goat": German Ziege, OHG ziga <- Oss. saeg <-NEC *tVqV-, e.g. Ingush tɨqo (after Björn 2017)

mzp1 said...

Diabolical is already in English.

You are saying
English borrowed it from Diabolos
Made two versions of it, Diabolos1 and Diabolos2
Change Diabolos1 to Devil
Kept Diabolos2 to Diabolical
And all other Germanic languages borrowed Diabolos and changed it to some form closer to 'devil', all independantly.

'Devil' is a native Germanic word, cognate with Iranian 'Deva'. Diabolical is a Greek borrowing into English.

Onur Dincer said...

@mzp1

It is just poor linguistic research.

Devil, Duuwel, duvel, duivel, teufel, djavel are all closer in form and meaning to Iranian 'Deva' than to 'Diabolos'.


No, it is solid linguistic research (more below). None of Germanic peoples have Zoroastrian influence.

Also, it doesnt make sense that a borrowing from Greek would find it's way into so many Germanic languages independantly. Diabolical is borrowed from Greek/Latin into English, but I dont think exists in German or Dutch, google translate returns forms of 'devil'.

Greek "diabolos" passed to Germanic languages via its Latin form "diabolus." Germanic peoples all converted to Catholic Christianity during the Middle Ages and as such came under the heavy DIRECT influence of Latin, the language of high culture and liturgy in Catholic Europe, together with its religious vocabulary, so they all could borrow religious vocabulary from Latin independently. Also the early and middle forms of "devil" and similar Germanic words that are descended from Greek "diabolos" by way of Latin look more similar to the Greek/Latin form than their modern Germanic forms are, their evolutions and chains of transmission are easy to follow from the literature.

mzp1 said...

@FrankN,

Thanks, you are correct, and about Ossetic too, but there are some very 'low-level' words which I dont think can be borrowed eg "Daughter", "God" etc. I cover all this in the video, there is a lot there esp in terms of Mythology, I cant go into here, but it needs to be appreciated as a whole.

mzp1 said...

@Onur,

Western Christianity used the form 'Satan' not 'Devil'.

"None of Germanic peoples have Zoroastrian influence."

Like I said, I wont go into it here, but I have covered HUGE material in my presentation regarding specifically Iranian Germanic similarities/influence. This is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Onur Dincer said...

@mzp1

Thanks, you are correct, and about Ossetic too, but there are some very 'low-level' words which I dont think can be borrowed eg "Daughter", "God" etc. I cover all this in the video, there is a lot there esp in terms of Mythology, I cant go into here, but it needs to be appreciated as a whole.

"Devil" is hardly low-level, it is a religious concept specific to the Abrahamic religions.

Onur Dincer said...

@mzp1

Western Christianity used the form 'Satan' not 'Devil'.

What is "diabolus" then (not to mention its vulgar Romance forms such as "diablo," "diavolo" and "diable")?

mzp1 said...

'Devil' or forms of 'Deva' is a concept in Zoroastrian and the opposite concept in IA, Greek, Latin and most other IE languages.

The Abrahamic idea is hugely influenced by Zorastrianism. Pretty much the whole of Christianity and Islam is lifted from it.

Onur Dincer said...

@mzp1

'Devil' is a native Germanic word, cognate with Iranian 'Deva'. Diabolical is a Greek borrowing into English.

"Diabolical" was a word hardly used or even heard by the lower classes, so it is much closer to the original Latin form than the commonly used "devil" is.

mzp1 said...

@Onur,

I think I will not continue this with you now as I see little value in discussions with yourself.

Onur Dincer said...

@mzp1

The Abrahamic idea is hugely influenced by Zorastrianism. Pretty much the whole of Christianity and Islam is lifted from it.

But hardly any vocabulary influence other than a few words such as "paradise."

Rob said...

@ Ebizur

“The late UP bottleneck that ended up with the dominance of Y-DNA I2 and mtDNA U5 in most of Europe was mainly caused by the LGM. Low population sizes and violence played their roles too, but the main culprit is the LGM, ”

Not quite
It was but one factor, others included the late glacial transformations and series of technocomplex expansions. I2 was not dominant everywhere (eg Iron gates or Baltic)

klevius said...

I1 seems in genetics like Uralic languages in linguistics. An I1/R and Uralic/IE band stretching over Karelia and southern Finland over Sweden and Norway down to Denmark, northern Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and British Isles - whereas I2 follows a southern route. "Kurgan giants" mated with smaller but highly intelligent - due to closer approximity to Altai (Denisova cave etc.) i.e. a main evolutionary hotspot - para or proto-Uralic speaking women. As a consequence those kids who stayed in the "Uralic zone" spoke their mother tongue while those who were raised on the steppe were submerged in (P)IE. And some of the boys became both big and intelligent in a time and place where size really mattered.

Onur Dincer said...

@Rob

Not quite
It was but one factor, others included the late glacial transformations and series of technocomplex expansions. I2 was not dominant everywhere (eg Iron gates or Baltic)


I did not say I2 was dominant everywhere in Europe, but in most parts surely. Last time I checked, my name was Onur.

FrankN said...

@Santosh: "would't we expect the two languages (hypothetical Indus centum IE and satem IA) to be quite diverged from each other by the time of arrival of IA resulting in loss of mutual intelligibility?"

Well, that depends on various things:

1.) Dating:
a.) Archeologically, and now genetically confirmed, we know that NW Iranians reached and overformed Namazga III. However, the exact timing of that process has remained unclear to me. Namazga III is generally assigned to a timeframe between 4,000 and 2,500 BC, which is quite a range (I don't recall the AMS dating of the Namazga III individual analysed recently, can anybody help out in this respect?). Now, let us, for reasons that will become clearer below, assume that the overforming, and IE-sation, occured contemporary to Maikop, i.e. from ca. 3,800 BC onwards. IOW - 3,800 BC would be the date when both streams split geographically, to aftwards first diffentiate dialectically, and later on diverge into different languages.

b.) Similarly, there is uncertainty about when PIA-speaking Andronovo pastoralists started to interact with Namazga-derived (hypothetically Para-Tocharian speaking) urban BMAC dwellers. Maybe as early as 2,100 BC, maybe only around 1,800 BC.

c.) This means that both IE streams would have undergone their specific developments for some 1,700 - 2,000 years (probably more towards the lower end, if allowing for some initial dialect continuum). For comparison:

- The dissolution of Late Latin into different Romance languages is commonly assumed to have started around 400 CE, i.e. 1,600 years ago;

- English separated from Continental W.Germanic languages some 1,500 years ago;

- Proto-Germanic is commonly dated to 2,000-2,500 years ago.

IOW: Both streams would most likely not have been mutually intelligable anymore. But learning each other's language would not have been much more difficult than, e.g., learning Portuguese for a modern Italian, or learning English for a modern German (and certainly easier than learning German for an Icelander). You would find typical accents, also grammatical mistakes, but understanding each other should still have been relatively easily achievable.

t.b.c.

FrankN said...

I already hear some of you saying: You can't compare Romance to Chalkolithic languages. After all, Latin ontinued to be used as church and academic language far into the medieval, and thus homogenised the various languages under development. Correct! That takes me to the second "it depends ..":

2. Character of language spread:

There is, of course, a massive difference between language export to a remote area (say: Iceland) where the language deevelops further in relative isolation, and establishment/ spread of a lingua franca that connects, and homogenises, dialects across a wide geographic range.

As concerns PIA (Sintashta/ Andronovo), Witzel assumes the latter, as it plausibly eplains the assymetry of manifold IE loans into Uralic and also Altaic, but only a handful borrowings in the opposite directions [One of these borrowings may be PIE *h₁éḱwos "horse", derived from Proto-Altaic *èk‘á “to move quickly, to rage”, plus IE thematicisation‎ -wos "being (n,)".]

I think the same may be assumed for the Maykop-Namazga-(BMAC - IVC) trajectory. The richly furnished Maikop Kurgan contained, a.o., some 50 Turqouise, and even more Carnelian beads. A major source of Turqoise over the last 2 millennia has been the deposit between Nishapur and Mashad in Chorazan, and that deposit, located less than 300 km S of Namazga, is the most likely (and proximate) origin of the Maikop beads.
Carnelian is somewhat more widespread, and minor occurrence has, e.g., been reported from Crimea and around Pomorie, Bulgaria. However, a main supply source during the Chalkolithic was Gujarat, dubbed “Land of Carnelian” by Sumerians, Since Carnelian, presumably of Gujarati origin, already appears on the Iranian plateau during the 5th mBC, one may assume the Maikop finds having the same provenance.
Moreover, Maikop has also yielded Lapis Lazuli beads, which can hardly have originated from anywhere else than the mountains of Badakhshan (NE Afghanistan). And, last but not least, archeo-metallurgical analyses suggest that some of the copper used in Armenia, and also Maykop, wasn’t sourced locally from the Caucasus, but from the Alborz mouintains in NW Iran (c.f., e.g., https://f-origin.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/3148/files/2016/03/Bobokhyan2014_Transition_to_Extractive_Metallurgy.pdf )

All this suggests that neither Maypop, nor Namazga were one-off colonization attempts out of the Lake Urmia basin, but remained interconnected by some kind of interregional trade system that reached as far as NE Afghanistan, possibly even Gujarat [and, beyond Makop, possibly extended as far as Baalberge, that a/o exchanged wheel-making technology with Maykop, and of course also must have gotten their domesticated horses from somewhere].
This doesn’t necessarily mean professional, long distance traders. More likely are transhumating pastoralists either collecting valuables themselves during summer graze in the mountains, or picking them up somewhere at a local market, in order to have something to trade in for (winter) grazing rights, and/or salt. Such mechanisms, originally focused on Obsidian (Armenia, Cappadocia) traded against salt (Jericho) are attested since at least 10,000 BC, and well evidenced for the Haji Firuz LN.

West Africa, in the form of Fulani and Hausa, illustrates how a pastoralist language can emerge as reasonably homogenous lingua franca across a wide geographic area. (P)IE may well have spread the same way.

Unknown said...

@FrankN
"- the aDNA we have so far looks like "too little, too late" when it comes to Anatolian, Greek, and Indic (Yeah - I know, "Kulturkugel", "further sampling will clarify things" etc., but that sounds more and more desparate);"

I'm not sure why you deride the kulturkugel model, it has been exactly demonstrated through the recent paper on central asian dna. Infact, the kulturekugel model should be applied to the spread of greek and hittite as well (although once steppe dna shows up in hittite we can return to elite dominance models.

"- Finally, there is the issue of PIE loans into Sumerian - not just a fringe theory, but already adressed by Pokorny, and also, e.g., analysed (and confirmed) here
https://slidex.tips/download/sumero-indo-european-language-contacts
IMO, the compiled evidence is highly convincing (I may get into details in a separate post, if there is interest), but unexplainable from the Steppe theory."

Not sure how you arrive to the conclusion that PIE loans in Sumerian can't be explained by the Steppe theory. Infact, only the steppe theory is in a position to explain this as Sumerian was spoken in the steppe. Please read the following article by Simo Parpola where he shows linguistic evidence for the presence of sumerian in the steppe: http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/42TurkicAndSumer/SimoParpola_Altaic-UralicAndSumerEn.htm

What we are looking at, in the time frame of PIE is the following: https://i.imgur.com/Wyta11s.jpg

"There is, of course, a massive difference between language export to a remote area (say: Iceland) where the language deevelops further in relative isolation, and establishment/ spread of a lingua franca that connects, and homogenises, dialects across a wide geographic range.

As concerns PIA (Sintashta/ Andronovo), Witzel assumes the latter, as it plausibly eplains the assymetry of manifold IE loans into Uralic and also Altaic, but only a handful borrowings in the opposite directions [One of these borrowings may be PIE *h₁éḱwos "horse", derived from Proto-Altaic *èk‘á “to move quickly, to rage”, plus IE thematicisation‎ -wos "being (n,)".]

I think the same may be assumed for the Maykop-Namazga-(BMAC - IVC) trajectory. The richly furnished Maikop Kurgan contained, a.o., some 50 Turqouise, and even more Carnelian beads. A major source of Turqoise over the last 2 millennia has been the deposit between Nishapur and Mashad in Chorazan, and that deposit, located less than 300 km S of Namazga, is the most likely (and proximate) origin of the Maikop beads. "

I'm not entirely clear what you are suggesting here, but to try to separate Indo-Iranian from Sintastha is impossible for many reasons:

1. Rig Veda mentions chariots. Therefore Sinthastha spoke Indo-Iranian as it is the first site where chariots are found.

2. David Anthony goes into great depth to describe that the details of funeral sacrifices at Sintastha show startling parallels with the sacrifice funeral rituals of the Rig Veda: https://i.imgur.com/nFkxqVD.png pg. 375 of his book. Moroveer, SIntashta contains large circular fortified sites (city?) that produce bronze/copper on an industrial scale, which is 1:1 how society is described in the Rig Veda.

3. The BEST AND CLEAREST reason however is the following(also from David Anthony) which undeniably links Sintastha to the Rig Veda and Indo-Iranians: https://i.imgur.com/2mCTK2r.png

How can anyone deny the clear parallels between the Srubnaya dog sacrifices and the dog sacrifices mentioned in the Rig Veda? Although these sacrifices havne't been found at Sintastha sites, they had necklaces with dog teeth. They had dogs!

jv said...

Thanks again!

jv said...

Thank you!

Vara said...

@FrankN

In your model how do Indo-Aryans reach Syria and West Iran in 18th century BCE or even earlier?

Rob said...

@ Stefan

“I'm not sure why you deride the kulturkugel model, it has been exactly demonstrated through the recent paper on central asian dna”

If you mean the assimilation of a handful of steppe nomads into south central Asian society, then yes

Ric Hern said...

@ FrankN

When you have Steppe people in the Kuban Steppe who migrated Southwards as can be seen with the Fortresses in the Caucasus showing clear Steppe influence at an early age and a Steppe like environment stretching all the way into Azerbaijan it would have been just a hop into Hajji Firuz. We see two different kinds of horses at Alikemek-Tepesi and this can be attributed to a spread from the Steppe. From Alikemek-Tepesi domesticated horses spread West to Anatolia and Southwards into Northwestern Iran...

We know that Gutians (Who come from the North of the Sumerians) certainly had the opportunity of influencing Sumerians. And we know that Hittites and Gutians appeared in the Middle East/Anatolia at roughly the same time.....

So the Steppe Hypothesis is still not dead at Hajji Firuz....

Santosh said...

@FrankN
"2. Character of language spread:

There is, of course, a massive difference between language export to a remote area (say: Iceland) where the language deevelops further in relative isolation, and establishment/ spread of a lingua franca that connects, and homogenises, dialects across a wide geographic range."

Fascinating! So there is already some substantial amount of work done in linguistics to understand the phenomenon of different rates of change in different languages? Could you point me to any basic literature that deals with this issue in more detail, especially expanding upon this particular dimension to do with isolated development and development as a lingua franca, if you are aware of such work and if it is possible? Thank you very much again!

But that said, I did not understand how a lingua franca achieves a high amount of homogenisation of various dialects. It may perhaps be the case that those dialects that are already genetically related can be homogenised by choosing a lingua franca which is one among them or their recent common ancestor/common aunt language from historical memory, like the relationship of Romance languages to Classical Latin (I would love to see in more depth how the use of Classical Latin as the scholastic language affected the development of Romance languages). To what extent can this be possible with totally unrelated languages like the other example you have given- Indo-Aryan, Uralic, Altaic (? you believe in that grouping? my infinitity-fold more amateur self naturally leans ultra-conservative in these matters and fears such groupings lol)? At most, I can see lexis getting a lot homogenised in these languages, by virtue of borrowing from the selected lingua franca which is IA into Uralic, etc.- but how is homogenisation of other things like grammatical affixes, etc. achieved? Uralic grammatical peculiarities would continue to stay Uralic and Indo-Aryan ones would continue to stay Indo-Aryan, no? And they would continue to undergo changes according to their own without much respect to the features of any lingua francas, no? If in case I did not properly understand what you meant by "homogenisation" and am in want of more knowledge of theoretical historical linguistics, then I request you to kindly improve my understanding and/or point me to resources that you are aware of that can do that, if possible. If you don't have the time to do that, it is fine also. I thank you very much again for responding to me.

Simon_W said...

FrankN said:
„The development of Italic has still not been explained satisfactorily. One might, of course, assume that Italic entered the peninsula via the E. Alps as part of the Urnfield Expansion, ca. 1200 BC. In that case, the Urnfield language would have been Pre-Proto Italic, and Unetice, as Pre-Pre-Proto Italic, would mark the point where Italic and Celtic split (all relevant studies, including Ringe/ Warnow, date that split to 2,200 BC at latest).“

The Urnfield culture wasn't completely homogenous, there are many smaller groupings discernible: Middle Danubian, Southeastern, Central German, South German, Northern, Lower Rhine, French/Iberian, North Italian and the Lusatian culture. The latter being the earliest Urnfield group. So, no need to ascribe a Pre-Proto-Italic language to the entire complex. Nor am I convinced of Unetice being the sole and ultimate origin of the Urnfield ethnicities, I think that's quite controversial.

FrankN said:
„The Urnfield – Proto-Villanova scenario is fraught with two more problems: Firstly, Proto-Villanova blends rather seamlessly into Villanova proper, that, however, centers around Etruscan-speaking Tuscany. So, Villanova (and, by extension, possibly also Proto-Villanova) may at best display a multicultural, Etruscan plus Proto-Italic, assemblage (we have various sources attesting that Rome was under Etruscan role during Villanova proper).
Secondly, when earliest attested, in the 6th cBC, Italic languages appear already too differentiated to have originated from a proto-language that entered 600 or less years ago. This concerns especially Old Latin vs. Osco-Umbrian.“

But then again some people have criticized the name of the Protovillanovan culture as prematurely interpreting it as an early variant of the Villanovan culture, when some of its regional groups may rather be interpreted as early variants of other cultures. E.g. De Marinis favours the name „Protoveneto“ over Protovillanovan for the Veneto in the FBA. In my opinion the Protovillanovan was multiethnic, whereas the Villanovan was primarily Etruscan.

It's interesting that Osco-Umbrian shares some features with Celtic at the exclusion of Latino-Faliscan and Venetic: Of course best known is its sharing of the *kw>p shift with p-Celtic languages. But it also shares the *gw>b shift which is pan-Celtic. Furthermore it shares the retaining of word-final *-m with archaic Celtic languages like Lepontic and Celtiberian. Latin on the other hand shares some features with Venetic, at the exclusion of Osco-Umbrian: the rendition of *bh/*dh/*gh as b/d/g in word-internal position; and the same development of initial *gw>w / *gwh>f and *kw>kv, as well as the notorious *kw>kw which marks q-Italic. So apparently Osco-Umbrian has closer links to Celtic than Latino-Faliscan and Venetic. Since the latter are geographically separated by Osco-Umbrians, the latter may have arrived later from the north. Presumably with the Protovillanovan wave. But how did Latino-Faliscan arrive in peninsular Italy? Maybe with the Terramare influence from the north in the LBA? According to some scholars it was pretty strong on the Tyrrhenian side.

I wouldn't necessarily say that the North Italian and Tuscan Beakers were not important, after all at least the North Italian ones show a clear steppe signal, for the first time in Italian prehistory. Also, like Rob said, there was also a trans-Adriatic influence, e.g. with the Cetina culture which was more or less contemporaneous. And these two different streams merged together in the MBA Apennine culture. But this doesn't explain the connection between Latin and Venetic, so Latino-Faliscan may go back to the Terramare culture which in turn may have roots in BA Hungary. It's controversial, but arguable. Unfortunately it will be hard to prove because the Terramare people cremated their dead.

Grey said...

"Why then are Italic, Celtic and Tocharian that were thousands of miles from Hittite closer to Hittite than Mycenaean is to Hittite ?"

populations hopping to specific regions for a specific purpose e.g. metals?

did these distant locations have that in common?

Ric Hern said...

@Grey

Frank mentioned pithos are found in Hittite, Mycenaean and Minoan Culture so why isn't Mycenaean classified as closer to Hittite Language then ?

Vara said...

@Stefan

"1. Rig Veda mentions chariots. Therefore Sinthastha spoke Indo-Iranian as it is the first site where chariots are found."

Only in book 1 and 10. There is no proof that the Rathas of books 2-7 were chariots and not wagons. In any case depictions of chariots were found in Tepe Hissar IIIB 2400-2170 cal. BCE (Erich Schmidt).

"David Anthony goes into great depth to describe that the details of funeral sacrifices at Sintastha show startling parallels with the sacrifice funeral rituals of the Rig Veda"

He doesn't go over it in depth. Which verses of the Rigveda show parallels with the Sintashta burials?

"How can anyone deny the clear parallels between the Srubnaya dog sacrifices and the dog sacrifices mentioned in the Rig Veda?"

There is not a single mention of Dog sacrifice in the Rigveda.

This OFC is not the first ass pull by the steppe fanatics.

From Kuzmina :"In the Avesta, in the Ardvīsūr Yašt (5.101), dedicated to the goddess Anāhitā, it is said: “At every stream there is a solid built house, it is light, with a hundred of light openings, well-made, with a thousand pillars, firm, with ten thousands of supporting pillars.” From all the various house types that are archaeologically attested in Eurasia during the 2nd millennium BC this description of Anāhitā’s house is closest to the large Timber-grave/Andronovo house. A reconstruction of a large house from the settlement of Atasu, suggested by A. Kh. Margulan (1959: table I), illustrates this description"

1. Anahita first appears in the reign of Artaxerxes II, and was based on a Mesopotamian goddess.
2. How in the blue hell does that description match Andronovo houses? Did they find the floor plan in that text? Maybe I didn't see the verse on the size of the bathrooms. The description is so vague it could match any house including my own.

Do you see a pattern here? Seriously, do they proof read this before publishing? They definitely are no experts on Indo-Iranian religions. I guarantee you that the society of Andronovo does not match with the actual Rigveda.

Matt said...

Totally off topic, a couple of things I found might be interesting for any commentators about the new ancient Icelandic paper (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/1028):

1) Fst scores in the supplement show clear fine scale patterns, which are well below the 3 decimal place limit that most Fst matrices use: https://imgur.com/a/N7so8TT

Like, for Fst from Norway, clear rank order of Denmark->Sweden->England->Scotland->Iceland->Ireland->Wales. Which generally reflects how closeness+drift should interact. But if you rounded that, it would just look like Denmark=Sweden=England, Scotland=Ireland=Iceland=Wales. So you know, if we do the Fst matrix PCoA again, may be worth calculating to 4dp if poss.

2) They put up their PCA data in Supplementary Data files, though unfortunately not with the ancient samples projected positions, but still interesting to see what PCA with very high oversampled numbers of certain populations (e.g. literally hundreds of Isles+Scandinavian samples) can do to smoke out small differences: https://imgur.com/a/JVSM4I6
(Scotland here probably has two clusters; I'm guessing one is just the Orcadians).

Unknown said...

@Rob
"If you mean the assimilation of a handful of steppe nomads into south central Asian society, then yes"

Sorry, I'm not following. The steppe model is the mainstream view on the origin of Indo-Europeans, and the kulturekugel model is used to describe the origins of Indo-Iranians. Infact, theres been recent ballyhoo about lack of steppe DNA in hittites - this can easily be explained in a double kulturekugel model out of eastern EUROPE steppe land models.

@Vara
"Only in book 1 and 10. There is no proof that the Rathas of books 2-7 were chariots and not wagons. In any case depictions of chariots were found in Tepe Hissar IIIB 2400-2170 cal. BCE (Erich Schmidt)."

This is the mainstream view. Chariots first appear in Sintastha, so it is indo-iranian. Its probably also Mycenean Greek as they possessed chartios too. I can also see a possible egyptian identity in teh archolgical remains.

"He doesn't go over it in depth. Which verses of the Rigveda show parallels with the Sintashta burials?"

I'm not sure if you read the picture I showed, here you go again: https://i.imgur.com/nFkxqVD.png the parallels are startling! Theres also this evidence:

'The answer may lie, says Anthony, in a 3,000-year-old religious text called the Rig Veda, a book of hymns compiled by the Aryans--the horsemen who invaded the Indian subcontinent from the north. The hymns give detailed accounts of Aryan rituals. In mortuary rituals, warriors were buried with their chariots and horses. A plank roof was laid across the burial chamber, and horses and a goat were sacrificed on the roof and again around an earthen mound built on top. A thousand years before the Rig Veda, the Sintashta people were burying their dead in the same way--down to the last eerie detail.'
http://discovermagazine.com/1995/apr/chariotracersoft500

The sintastha burials are the same as the rig veda burials down to the last detail A THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE RIG VEDA

"There is not a single mention of Dog sacrifice in the Rigveda."
Ofcourse, if you read the RigVeda its all there. Here you go: https://i.imgur.com/2mCTK2r.png
You can also refer to this: https://i.imgur.com/0fow1jv.jpg

Its amazing he published this in 2007 and now gentics has proven him correct.

"From Kuzmina :"In the Avesta, in the Ardvīsūr Yašt (5.101), dedicated to the goddess Anāhitā, it is said: “At every stream there is a solid built house, it is light, with a hundred of light openings, well-made, with a thousand pillars, firm, with ten thousands of supporting pillars.” From all the various house types that are archaeologically attested in Eurasia during the 2nd millennium BC this description of Anāhitā’s house is closest to the large Timber-grave/Andronovo house. A reconstruction of a large house from the settlement of Atasu, suggested by A. Kh. Margulan (1959: table I), illustrates this description""

Kuzmina is the best. The Origins of the Indo-Iranians is the best book on the origins of the Indo-Iranisan written yet (other than DDavid anthony's work). Here's an excerpt from Chapter 4, page 58: https://i.imgur.com/Mxg9qi3.png

There's also more proof here: https://i.imgur.com/m5X4hvX.png

They've also found an Andronvo type weapon at the very battle site of the battle of ten kings: https://i.imgur.com/xKVcnyM.png They found the andronvo weapon at the KUKURETSRA, how can you deny?

Also, many scholar's have argued that the Rig Veda is Iranian in origin.

mzp1 said...

@Stefan,

Your post is funny so I will keep this light.

Whichever book that excerpt came from needs to go in the bin, it just wrong, plain and simple, and embarrassingly so.

Anthony seems to show a woefully poor understanding of Indo-Iranian literature. Yes, dogs are mythical in the Rigved, along with Cows, Horses, Serpents, the Sun, Rivers, Chariot etc. However, those dog sacrifices are very fanciful and certainly not to be found in the Rigveda. The Avesta, in fact, shows a greater veneration for the dog than the Rigved, and in case you dont know, it was written in South Central Asia, closer to Sintashta.

Rigved doesnt know any houses like Sintashta, certainly not large commune type dwellings. Society simply wasnt organised that way, Vedic people were primarily Pastoral, not industrial scale metalworkers, not sure why you dont understand that. It is that simple. Just go to sacredtexts.com and spend some time reading the hymns and it will be clear to you. Dont read Anthony.

"The sintastha burials are the same as the rig veda burials down to the last detail A THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE RIG VEDA"

You have already been asked to provide Vedic references. I have spent years reading Vedic hymns (though not methodically) and I have never come across this type of ritual.

Now coming to the most important point, can you spot the logical fallacy?

1. Chariots are first found in Steppe Burials --> Chariots were first invented in the steppe.

2. Chariots are first found in Steppe Burials --> The Steppe was the first to bury Chariots.

Clearly 1 is a basic logical fallacy, and 2 is correct. To counter, just tell me in which museum I can see Mittani, Hittite and Mycenian era chariots. I cannot, because they werent preserved by elaborate burials in a favourable steppe climate.

And obviously Kurgan burials, along with Wagon and Chariot burials, are exlusive to Steppe and Northern European IEs. They are not PIE. Again, it is that simple, you dont need a PHD to figure it out.

Only Balto-Slavic and Germanic would be descended from Steppe Kurgan builders.

The mainstream consensus in this field is not worth the electronic bytes it is published on.

Vara said...

@Stefan

"This is the mainstream view."

I do not care about the mainstream view. This isn't a popularity contest.

"Chariots first appear in Sintastha, so it is indo-iranian."

Chariots appear in many places that aren't Indo-Iranian. E.g Celtic, German, Egyptian ...etc.

"The sintastha burials are the same as the rig veda burials down to the last detail A THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE RIG VEDA" and "Ofcourse, if you read the RigVeda its all there."

Dude there is no mention of that in the Rigveda. How about you some me some texts from the Veda not some dude who says it's in the Veda. I've actually read the Rigveda.

"https://i.imgur.com/0fow1jv.jpg"

Are you trolling? Cause if so you are pretty good at it lol.

"Kuzmina is the best"

How is she best? By drawing imaginary parallels between a 5th Century BCE goddess and Andronovo?

"Here's an excerpt from Chapter 4, page 58"

Human sacrifice in general existed in South Asia with the Indus Valley. However, in the Rigveda there were no human sacrifices. A few were supposed to be sacrificed to the gods but were saved. The Purusa story is symbolic same as the story of Ymir.

"There's also more proof here: https://i.imgur.com/m5X4hvX.png"

This is a solid proof of a movement from Andronovo to India and we know that from DNA now and that's all the steppe theory has for a proof of a movement, but one has to look at the context. These newcomers were most likely traders and settlers seeking opportunity.

"They've also found an Andronvo type weapon at the very battle site of the battle of ten kings: https://i.imgur.com/xKVcnyM.png"

This is incorrect. The Mitanni culture and metallurgy cannot be traced to the Steppes. West Iranian Grey Ware of the Mitanni derives from the Gurgan Grey Ware of Teppe Hissar IIIC 2170-1900 cal. BCE (Ghirshman).

"They found the andronvo weapon at the KUKURETSRA, how can you deny?"

Because what we have from the battle of Kurukshetra is from the Mahabharata. The description of the battle is about as realistic as the Conquest of Turan by Rustam in the Shahnameh. Also, weapons can be traded.

"Also, many scholar's have argued that the Rig Veda is Iranian in origin."

It's Indo-Aryan.

mzp1 said...

@Vara,

What do you think of the identification of Steppe culture as Turanian, and BMAC as mostly Aryan? It seems to make sense to me.

Davidski said...

So Yamnaya and Corded Ware were Turanian?

Haha.

mzp1 said...

Turan was usually separated from Iran by the Amu Darya.

I didn't say CWC.

I thought CWC were early Celtic, not closely related to Iranian speakers culturally.

The Avesta mentions the Turanian Danus along with the Dasa and Arya. Later in the Shahnama we only find the Turanians mentioned, not the Dasa, maybe becaUse it was recompiled during times when Arya and Dasa were not in conflict.

The name Turan seems to disappear from the historical record, the name Dasa from Iranian literature.

That Zoroastian link I put here earlier has some good analysis.

mzp1 said...

Also, I forgot to add.

In the Shahnama, the Greater Iranian origin myth starts Feridun, who has 3 sons, Salm, Tur and Iraj. To Tur he gives the land known as Turan, to Salm the Western Land, to Iraj Iran.

This causes a long lasting conflict as Tur and Salm feel slighted given Iran is the best part of the empire.

This type of '3 Brothers Origin Myth' is also paralleled in Germanic and Balto-Slavic Mythology, but no others as far as I know.

Davidski said...

@mzp1

Your level of knowledge in regards to Indo-European linguistics and mythology barely rivals that of someone who's never heard of the Indo-Europeans and doesn't have an Internet connection.