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Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Friendly Yeniseian steppe pastoralists


For most people the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland debate isn't just about language, but also, or even more so, about things like ancestry, politics, racism, and ethnic pride.

I don't want to get into all the dirty details in this post, but, for instance, many of those who argue vehemently against a steppe homeland seem to really hate the idea that their ancestors were, at some level, dominated by a bunch of sheep and cow herders from an obscure part of Eastern Europe. Why? I'm pretty sure because they find this humiliating.

Hence, PIE homeland debates are generally very emotional and often degenerate into shouting matches. So what would happen if we assumed that those sheep herders weren't Indo-Europeans? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that they spoke extinct Yeniseian languages.

Well, nothing really...


We still have them expanding in a big way out of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. And the fact that their impact was mostly male mediated, especially at the two ends of its range, in Iberia and India, suggests that they weren't just friendly pastoralists looking for new grazing fields.

In fact, in India, steppe ancestry, including Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a, is much more pronounced in the upper castes than in the rest of society. But who knows what that means, right? Maybe those friendly "Yeniseian" steppe pastoralists just got lucky or something?

But that's OK, perhaps this will always remain a mystery? In any case, does anyone know if there's any sort of Yeniseian substrate in Celtic or Mycenaean? Haha.

See also...

"Heavily sex-biased" population dispersals into the Indian Subcontinent (Silva et al. 2017)

Migration of the Bell Beakers—but not from Iberia (Olalde et al. 2018)

Steppe admixture in Mycenaeans, lots of Caucasus admixture already in Minoans (Lazaridis et al. 2017)

37 comments:

Ric Hern said...

I just do not understand why people, who are descendants of Steppe people, do not acknowledge their Forefathers. We can not choose our Forefathers. They were who they were.

I have heard about some (very few) similarities between Gaelic and Nivkh...?

Samuel Andrews said...

You should be able to see that their reaction is normal not a mental illness or idiotic. You shouldn't expect to convince them all. Just make sure the official voices on the topic don't say "It's a mystery" in fear of offending people.

I think you emphasize the greatness of early IEs too much. I understand they were pretty impressive, that they deserve recognition, but......



pnuadha said...

The media provides a lot of help in undermining the European ancestry of the proto Indo Europeans. However, they aren't trying to protect Indian heritage/identity; instead they have a more sinister agenda which is to say that Europe does not belong to the Europeans. For some time now there has been an agenda to chip away at European identity and claim that Europe does not belong to the Europeans. To this end you will see things like European arent native to Europe or Europe has always been multiracial. Even world renown geneticists who know darn well know the geography of Europe, call the Pontic Caspian steppe part of Central Asia in order to make the Indo European expansion in Europe appear foreign. This is done to no other people. Regardless the minor or major discontinuities people in Japan and India, Japanese and Indians unquestionably belong to their land.

Its really upsetting that the media has this take. As a person of European heritage I think the indo European expansion is a neat way of saying the Europeans are very much a family. It is amazing how much all of Europe was shaped by the same few events. As david said, a big chunk of our heritage actually comes from a small area in Southwest Russia.

Le skipper de Pytheas said...

It would be great to be able to claim that our forefathers painted Lascaux, Altamira, ou Chauvet, or build the pyramids, Mohenjo Daro, the tower of Babel, Stonehenge or Carnac, or invented agriculture, writing, the alphabet, the wheel or copper smelting...
Taming the horse and starting the first waggon traffic-jam isn't enough !

pnuadha said...

@samuel,

I find them more interesting rather than "great". I guess you could say that the CT culture of Ukraine was great for its sophisticated society but I like the novelty of having steppe herders in my heritage in addition to advanced farmers. But the steppe people were more than just successful herders. They probably helped to shape European thought/character. David Anthony talked about the social rules that needed to exist on an expansive steppe. Basically, when on the steppe, you had to trek through other peoples' land, coming into contact with strangers, and negotiating on an individual/family level. Thats pretty unique. It probably led an emphasis on trust and reputation. As far as I can tell, the early IEs were not warlike and they moved up the danube as families. The small autosomal changes from Yamnaya to CW and BB tell us this.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Colin,
"However, they aren't trying to protect Indian heritage/identity; instead they have a more sinister agenda which is to say that Europe does not belong to the Europeans"

Yep.

How far back someone can trace their ancestry to a plot of land does not determine whether that land belongs to them. If, they have established their community on that land it is theirs. Usually, that community has a heritage going back 100s or 1,000s of years. Usually ancestry goes back even further. That's long enough time for me.

People won't do this but the easiest ethnic groups to attack using the methods used on Europeans are Central Asian Turks. Central Asia has been diverse for a while. There have been recent events of migration, admixture.

"Even world renown geneticists who know darn well know the geography of Europe, call the Pontic Caspian steppe part of Central Asia in order to make the Indo European expansion in Europe appear foreign. This is done to no other people. Regardless the minor or major discontinuities people in Japan and India, Japanese and Indians unquestionably belong to their land."

Yep. Plus, Andronovo/Sintashtawere, proto-Indo Iranians, were literally "white" in terms of pigmentation. Take away some of their Steppe ancestry and they'd be in the huge roughly 50/50 Steppe-"old europe" cluster most modern Europeans are in. Despite that Sintashta/Andronovo are still referred to as ambiguous or Eurasian.

"As a person of European heritage I think the indo European expansion is a neat way of saying the Europeans are very much a family. It is amazing how much all of Europe was shaped by the same few events"

Yep.

KatharĂ³s said...

The same thing can be said about Islam and Arabs. I know Iranians who are faithful Muslims but still make sarcastic comments about Arabs as Bedouin locusts munchers.

-They ask you , about the bounties [of war]. Say, "The [decision concerning] bounties is for Allah and the Messenger." So fear Allah and amend that which is between you and obey Allah and His Messenger, if you should be believers.-

Which is an aspect of interest in regard to the Indo-European believe system, their system of thought also had to be fuelled by some sort of religious motives, in a sense that it helped them dominate other groups and not immediately fade away into obscurity. The so called “Wild Hunt” in European folklore is likely a distant memory of the Indo-European horde. lol

epoch said...

This debate also takes over anything else. Here we have the Caucasian paper showing that the hugely interesting Maikop horizon was populated by two different ethnics, which did not mix. How hugely interesting is that! How did that work? Were the steppe Maikop folk merely considered Maikop because of the pottery? Why did the Caucasian Maikop folk start to bury in Kurgans? The earliest Kurgans seem to be from the Eneolithic steppe folk at Progress, as the papers Sup Info states:

"Complementary to the southern Eneolithic component, a northern component started to expand between 4300 and 4100 calBCE manifested in low burial mounds with inhumations densely packed in bright red ochre. Burial sites of this type, like the investigated sites of Progress and Vonyuchka, are found in the Don-Caspian steppe10, but they are related to a much larger supra-regional network linking elites of the steppe zone between the Balkans and the Caspian Sea16. These groups introduced the so-called kurgan, a specific type of burial monument, which soon spread across the entire steppe zone."

How and especially why did this transfer of burial ritual happen? Hugely interesting questions, but completely ignored.

spagetiMeatball said...

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Most IE's got Turkified at the start of the millenium.

Although come to think of it R1a/R1b is very prominent in many ancient Turkic burials, so turkic might be some kind of IE-mongolic pidgin.

Davidski said...

Most IE's got Turkified at the start of the millenium.

I wouldn't say most. Only most of those on the steppe and in western Asia.

Matt said...

On "greatness"; One of the things about tying IE expansions ultimately to these steppe movements (and that's still how things seem to point) is that they do not seem to have been culturally "great", in the terms we'd usually define it, in the senses of being larger scale and a clear advance in technology and sophistication towards what we enjoy today.

This is what is confounding to some people who seem to expect a cultural "greatness" to have been linked to an expansion, and possibly motivates part of identifying the IE with the Uruk Cultural expansion and similar phenomena linked to urbanism, density and technology, which were unquestionably "great".

It seems more like (if the steppe idea is right) the IE were often "small" / small-scale peoples, who were willing and able to migrate far and wide. Some of the societies they encountered were even smaller scale societies which they replace (against smaller scale horse herders in Central Asia), and they formed horizons of very wide geographical extent, though less high density.

When IE spread over a territory that was associated with more sophisticated cultures, usually of high sophistication but small range, it seems like it was usually following a regress and collapse of cultures there, probably for endogenous reasons and not invasion. The collapse of the IVC, failing agriculture in the Atlantic Megalithic British Isles, probably the SE European Balkan cultures to endemic warfare and so on.

This seems to me like it could have given an opening to probably small scale IE speaking cultures, like the groups forming at Swat or the Northern Beakers, to expand (though the Swat culture itself is possibly not Indo-Aryan, as we've previously discussed, for reasons of y-haplogroups). Followed on later in history by the spread of IE a civilizations - the Greeks and Romans particularly notable ones that helped seal the deal in Europe and Anatolia by replacing some of the still extant non-IE speaking groups about (e.g. Etruscans, Iberian languages).

I don't know if we wouldn't have had a better world if the IE had not been in place to seize on the opportunities; you can argue that IE descendant cultures generally tend to represent a significant regress in aspects compared to the cultures they replace (IVC vs Vedic groups, for'ex, assuming IVC non-IE, or Minoans vs Mycenaeans). Maybe it would've been a better world if places that seem to have had IE migration after collapse had space to recover after collapses. I don't really believe that early IE had some special set of cultural ideas that were necessary or useful for progress of society, at least for much other than to spread far and wide.

But this is the history of our world and with these alternate history scenarios, we really don't know how else it could've turned out!

Grey said...

in the sort of online games where you create an avatar to run around fighting monsters in the western version the "humans" are generally portrayed as very barbarian and covered in tribal tattoos and there's usually also an option for an "elf" "other" who are portrayed as much more refined and civilized while in the east Asian versions of those games the "humans" are stylistically very similar to the western "elf" and the alternative "other" are generally half-beast, hybrids of fox/wolf/tiger etc and human.

i suspect the reason for this is related to the apparent dislike of the steppe biker gang theory - the more civilized people are the more they want their ancestors to be the great civilizers and the more recently barbarian people are the more they want their ancestors to be a bronze age biker gang - or if you're ultra-primitive like me you want them to be yetis.

Grey said...

Matt

"When IE spread over a territory that was associated with more sophisticated cultures, usually of high sophistication but small range, it seems like it was usually following a regress and collapse of cultures there, probably for endogenous reasons and not invasion. The collapse of the IVC, failing agriculture in the Atlantic Megalithic British Isles, probably the SE European Balkan cultures to endemic warfare and so on."

that's how i mostly see it - farmers expanding without knowledge of crop rotation and drainage, filling up and then exhausting the soil except on the limited number of sites of loess soil within flood plains (so soil refreshed with spring floods but self-draining loess soil so not a swamp) with a lot of farmer-farmer conflict as they fight over the shrinking amount of viable land and herders (previously catalyzed into existence by farmers on the edge of farmer territory) being sucked into the vaccuum of the farmer population collapse.

#

"I don't know if we wouldn't have had a better world if the IE had not been in place to seize on the opportunities"

I think there's an element of inevitability to this - one of my pet theories is innovation requires a combo of brains and an x factor i'll call "wildness" and although civilization may select for brains (or at least used to) i think it also selects against "wildness" so if correct civilization contains the seeds of its own stagnation unless it either a) artificially maintains a minimum amount of wildness somehow or b) it gets periodically invaded by barbarians - the first option would be better imo as it would prevent the "dark ages" part.

a said...

In your diagram, there are seven red arrows. The center arrow is situated by some of the oldest Yamnaya kurgans and or Sarmatian burials and or wagon burials and or horse. The region evolved into an Indo-European speaking culture{Digor/Iron} known as-Ossetia-Alania. The modern population of R1b-Z2109/10+ are directly descended from the ancient Yamnaya Kurgan/pit grave/ochre culture; an incredible 5000-6000 years of history concentrated in one small region.

Sofia Aurora said...

I dunno about Celtic but i can reassure you that there is no Yeniseian substrate in Mycenaean or in Greek in general.

The fact that people don't like the steppe hypothesis is that they afraid that it will "awake" moral and ethical concepts and ideas that the PIE had.
With other words they are afraid that if the kurgan people is the "urvolk" of modern Europeans then the latter will search which were their ancestors' beliefs, moral code, behavioural patterns and existencial world!
They will search the PIE vocabulary and language to see its etymological meaning and to the mind of the anti-kurganist mind that will make people pro-Nazi!

Off course it is fine to say that the first Brits were black based on a "out of the jungle" Cheddar man's facial reconstruction.
But they avoid saying how stupid they were when they were labeling as "Melanesianoid" the Kostenki 14 (although the Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences clearly proved that assumption wrong)!

Vircazhm Magazine said...

Oh no! I can't believe you opened the can of worms. But, here I go . . .

There was a time when we couldn't seriously talk about PIE expnsion in academia, but all this genetics brought it all back. It can't be denied now. There was all that post WWII and New Left fear of Nazi ideology.

Now, we have to face up to the fact that there was a remarkable populational event in the early bronze age. And, how do academics deal with the inevitable fact that people in the world are going to take their findings and color them one way or another for various personal and political agendas, good and bad?

When_in_Rome said...

Colin Welling makes a good point. Researchers do seem to downplay the Europeanness of the Indo-Europeans, geographically, genetically, as well as phenotypically. It looks like a push to break down European heritage and claims to a homeland. I keep seeing media outlets push it as a pro-migration stance but they don't push the same for non-Western countries.

I don't see many Europeans denying the Indo-European migrations. Rather, it looks like many Europeans are excited by the idea of nomadic warriors taking claim of a land. Wasn't this partially the inspiration behind Lord of the Rings? Rather, I see Indians being the largest opposing voice, because from their perspective, researchers are trying to claim that white Europeans from outside of India brought them their religion, language, and civilization. They dislike this idea, not because they were unsophisicated or barbarian, rather because they were not from India or look like many Indians. Some opposition do however believe there was a migration, but that they did not bring the language, while others deny any migration to India in the last 10,000 years.

pnuadha said...

@sofia

The articles on Cheddar man mislead people into conflating skin color with ancestry. Yeah, he was dark but he was still European and tied to modern Europeans. You have to understand that these articles are written in the context of mass immigration to Europe with an intention to justify it. They know that this type of immigration is causing a demographic replacement, so they subvert peoples' natural desire for self preservation by arguing that European isn't a real thing. Just look at the Gaurdian's take on Cheddar Man. "The fact that he has the darker skin tone reminds us that we are all one race – the human race". Somehow, finding out an ancient european is related to modern europeans is a sign that Europeans arent unique at all... Again, they only do this to Europeans. Nobody questions that Native Americans are a distinct people with a homeland.

Knowing what I know about European history I find it somewhat amusing that Eastern Europe might once again better preserve European heritage.

aniasi said...

@Davidski

In India the issue is far more complex. The fundamental push is to associate the Vedas with a civilisation, in this case the IVC. You get three streams,all seen on your blog, therefore, with all pushing for an Indo-Aryan IVC. Stream one is classic Out-of-India, which usually seems to be the arguers here that say that the only way we can interpret the Vedas is through their own mystical-magical lens. Stream two says that the Iran Neolithic component was the main carrier of IE, and therefore the IVC was IE from its inception. The third pushes for a non-Yamnaya, but still ANI/Siberian, component that meant that the IVC was already IA and 'steppe' by its highest peak.

You have already explained why none of these scenarios work. Nonetheless, this is why the steppe theory is opposed so vehemently. The persistent idea of a "Vedic Civilisation" attempts to mix religion, ethnicity, and archaeology in ways that make no sense. The steppe theory axes any connection between the Vedic peoples and the IVC, and therefore strikes at the narrative that religion and spirituality are tied to civilisation.

This also ties into why I think you are wrong on the invasion narrative. I don't doubt that warfare and conflict played a role in the rise of the Indo-Aryans after the end of the IVC, but we have no signs of an invasion in the time you mentioned. Even then, the oldest segments of the Rig Veda describe them fighting one another. The biggest thing that strikes at your narrative is that the highest percentages of steppe ancestry are consistently found in the priestly castes. Even previous studies you have cited here have noted 'excess' steppe ancestry in Brahmins.

The Vedic religion describes a society outside the cities that embraces the open regions outside centres of population, and even post-Vedic texts emphasise the idea that the wilderness is sanctifying. Aranyakas are literally explanations of the Vedas that must be learned in the forest, and numerous Sutras command that Brahmins should learn and live in areas that are more undisturbed and 'natural'. The texts emphasise a spartan life for Brahmins, beginning in youth, and this same tradition survives into the epic period. I am inclined to see this as being the largest push for the success of Indo-Aryan males in late Bronze age South Asia. Not only were they better adapted to a tougher life, but they were seen as holier for being raised in such a manner.



Ryan said...

Not actually the craziest idea, just off by a few thousand years. Weren't the original Xiongnu/Huns possibly partly Yeniseian speaking? The expansion of Yeniseian peoples from around Beringia to an area spanning from Rome to New Mexico is pretty damned impressive, even if linguistic continuity broke down in Eurasia.

Arch Hades said...

Well the expansions happened, just what was the location of the Mother language is what's up for debate. There's no denying what's proven in the genetic record now via the evidence from Ancient DNA. So as much as anyone wants to make it about racism or cultural or national pride or whatever, the real and only problem to solve is merely language.

Matt said...

Grey: in the sort of online games where you create an avatar to run around fighting monsters in the western version the "humans" are generally portrayed as very barbarian and covered in tribal tattoos and there's usually also an option for an "elf" "other" who are portrayed as much more refined and civilized while in the east Asian versions of those games the "humans" are stylistically very similar to the western "elf" and the alternative "other" are generally half-beast, hybrids of fox/wolf/tiger etc and human.

Maybe for China and perhaps Korea, with the whole "beautiful Korean MMO" thing, I'm too much of a weeb to let it go for Japan ;)

So I'd have offer a counterargument; the most popular game series in Japan for most of the 21st century (and I think currently) is the Monster Hunter series, which is about colonizing a new continent, hunting monsters and then being clad in outlandishly ridiculous looking barbarian armour and wielding huge fantasy weapons made from bits of those monsters. The second most popular is probably the Yakuza series about being a ridiculously tattooed macho man gangster who goes around punching people in the face. Which kind makes sense since tattooed warriors tended to last a bit later in Japan than in Christianized Europe and are a bit less foreign to the culture in a way. (The third most popular is Souls, which is about a sort of grim dark, very bloodied and gory medieval European world of sorts where the player is sort of a faceless, armour clad warrior).

(A tangent I never expected to go on in Eurogenes comments!)

Generally, there's probably some effect in having a culture that thinks of itself as very civilized for a long time (and I guess China with its longstanding dynasties seems like this more so than Japan, for'ex). But on the other hand, I don't know how much Koreans would be bothered if it turned out that they spoke a language which had its origins, along with much of their genome, in less "civilized" people who encountered incoming agriculturalists from China, more than they thought.

It seems like on an emotional level it's driven more by specifically in some people having preconceived notions about where in West Eurasia peoples *could* expand from, or the predominant or only possible directions of influence (if they happen to be technically right, then great, and if they're making a technical argument great, but if not it is a bit of a mental block for them). And that is possibly due to the whole way the study of prehistory has evolved there, in connection with the present day conditions of different parts of the whole West Eurasian sphere.

Alexander said...

Colleagues!

below some papers on Yenissean topic. Two year old, but still contain some living ideas

http://www.t-science.org/arxivDOI/2016/09-41/PDF/09-41-29.pdf


http://ejournal8.com/journals_n/1461227205.pdf
http://ejournal8.com/journals_n/1484322251.pdf
Ancient Paleo-DNA of Pre-Copper Age North-Eastern Europe:
Establishing the Migration Traces of R1a1 Y-DNA Haplogroup
Part 2.


http://ejournal23.com/journals_n/1453208266.pdf
http://oaji.net/articles/2017/318-1489389437.pdf
http://ejournal23.com/journals_n/1492109716.pdf

A said...

Matt: "the spread of IE a civilizations - the Greeks and Romans particularly notable ones that helped seal the deal in Europe and Anatolia by replacing some of the still extant non-IE speaking groups about (e.g. Etruscans, Iberian languages).[...]
Maybe it would've been a better world if places that seem to have had IE migration after collapse had space to recover after collapses"

They weren't just indo-european civilisations, they were a mix of indo-european and pre-indo-european. Greek art has its roots in the pre-indo-european neolithic civilisations of greece and the balkans, for example. In western europe pre-indo-european practices and knowledge from the megalithic culture continued, maybe all the way to the iron age celtic druids. etc

Grey said...

Matt

"Maybe for China and perhaps Korea, with the whole "beautiful Korean MMO" thing, I'm too much of a weeb to let it go for Japan ;)

So I'd have offer a counterargument; the most popular game series in Japan..."

fair point - i was mostly thinking China/Korea.

Jawa Sun said...

AIT denialists need genetic evidence if they disagree with Davidski’s assessment. Comparing this invasion versus the British and Islamic “invasions” is a good start. Do Dalits/Tribals who were enslaved/abused have the same account for history, and feeling when looking at the data? The oldest populations in India have been put through the the worst forms of psychological and physical slavery, the remaining have mostly been found retreating to the hills to escape the wrath, or making their way to a slum. Is there any cultural evidence that shows that these people had a voice to express themselves without the fear of being beheaded for wanting rights like reading or seeing their children do more than just shit cleaning? History has been told through the eyes of a minority descending from Vedic invasions, and will be mostly biased at best. Attempts to lie, shift the blame on the British, and aiming all the rage at Muslims is not just a simple defensive posture but a disturbing failure of human ethics that will be what people remember first once we get to the details of what actually happened.

Look at it this story as an example for this behavior at a larger scale: a holyman with many followers is accused of raping and killing a young tribal girl from the forest years earlier. The mother is demanding justice and there is a child too, with somewhat of a phenotype to match the story. Everyone takes the man’s version of the story as proof, and cites a bunch of chants he wrote about how he views himself to highlight why he wouldn’t do such a thing. He himself speaks grandiosely about his divine lineage, and good actions cited in his writings. He hyper-emphasizes his vegetarianism, spirituality, and lack of a violent bone in his body. If he did incriminate himself by secretly writing down the details of the assault in poetic metaphors, he had no idea that DNA scientists later could track and prove their encounter (but he did document a system that maps the star shaped phylogeny to actual names of those whom may have raped and killed). The mother knows his mythological songs praising himself mean little and won’t bring her daughter back, but prays the evidence will be discovered. The child has to choose between the dominant side (with all the resources) that is a hybrid of mothers side and fathers, or just run further into the jungle. The DNA evidence is discovered after the man dies and proves some of the obvious details of the encounter. His supporters say he would never hurt women and definitely wouldn’t touch one of these demons. The world just moves on and focuses on how these holymen patented breathing and peaceful thinking, later this image is mass produced everywhere along with all of their heroic stories all in the face of all of the victims descendants.

Those born as a product of violence may have never had a voice till now. However a closer look at the strongest anti-Vedic forces in ancient India ( Buddhism, Jainism, and carvaka were attempts to stand against the horror they saw, in a fight for equality) says a lot about society and what they were up against. Their concepts around peace and vegetarianism were stolen by the Vedic architects of society in an orchestrated effort to rebrand, exterminate these atheistic uprisings of freedom and tighten the grip on endogamous hierarchies they claim were different races with different degrees of worth. This element of culture and practice has been the main root in all of India’s problems that still persist today. Child marriages and tying girls down to animalistic reproductive cycles with all sorts of violence against them to enforced and maintain purity of lineages between castes. Looking at everything, the evidence is glaringly obvious and agonizing to imagine let alone experience. If Indians are going to move on and solve their issues as a people and culture they are going to have to accept the facts of history and not lie about it because it hurts their image. There is a lot to celebrate if they stop hurting each other.

Twilight Musings said...

@ Jawa Sun

This here is exactly the problem about AIT. People will be fine to accept that holy man married tribal women or women themselves fell in love with them (which in fact is in many stories throughout Indian epics, often with parental approval ).

BUT, people have to go ahead and insist it is rape. It is about oppression or some fantasy narrative about how ancient holy men ought to have been.

People didn’t care so much about female sexuality then. They thought children happened due to fruit or holy food.( some still believe that). They had Nagara-kanya, a young woman per city who can entertain whoever she wants.

But no, let’s ignore about how things might have evolved in local culture but impose our modern cultural values to stuff more than 3000 years ago.

Smh.

In a tropical place with heavy infectious disease load, people who insist on not living in crowded places, obsessed about cleanliness and have self-imposed prohibition against participation in wars (due to blood being impure) happen to have more R1a.

But let’s not consider that point about them being against getting in contact with blood.

This piggy-backing other theories on genetics about how R1a arrived and spread without any archeological evidence is the problem. Extrapolating textual evidence selectively is the problem.

mooreisbetter said...

In all seriousness, and not trolling: I'm glad to see you acknowledge that people in the space make assumptions and favor theories based on things like "politics, racism, and ethnic pride" as you put it.

And now I ask you to challenge yourself, again in all seriousness: isn't the opposite corollary also true? If, as you noted, some people are embarrassed that they descend from pastoralists from an obscure part of Eastern Europe (summarizing your words), then aren't some people (ahem) also motivated and biased from the pride, if they themselves are from Eastern Europe, like you.

I've said before that your theories, writ large, are flawed. The model that R1a steppe men practiced elite dominance and within a few generations, killed the non-steppe offspring is not supported by the facts. Most European nations bear a small plurality of steppe ancestry. Moreover, in the nations that are majority R1b, you posit a nation of kings. If everyone's a king, who are the commoners?

I've also posted my responses (too much to detail here) on mechanisms for population change, entitled, "When is a 'Conquest' Not a Conquest." https://snplogic.blogspot.com/2017/04/when-is-conquest-not-conquest.html

You've never responded, on my website or here. Sometimes you delete my post.

You challenged people about their biases in this excellent post. I challenge you. Don't be a hypocrite. Consider that you are occasionally motivated by pride.

Davidski said...

@mooreisbetter

There are way too many straw man arguments in your post for me to bother with a reply.

Maybe try again.

Gabriel said...

@mooreisbetter

First of all, male-mediated migration and elite dominance aren’t the same thing, even if you-know-who has conflated them here.

Secondly, if you are referring to “kurgan royal lines” as a mechanism through which R1b spread, it is one explanation, with clannism and patrilocality being others. Even then, over time these royal R1bs would be denoted to commoner status anyway, and would get fucked by the same royalty that they sprung from or were related to.

Regardless of what David thinks here, these are some points that should be taken in consideration.

Davidski said...

@Them meee

First of all, male-mediated migration and elite dominance aren’t the same thing, even if you-know-who has conflated them here.

Obviously, a male-heavy migration that results in a lopsided outcome with little autosomal admixture but a large growth in the accompanying Y-chromosome clades, especially in upper castes, is a strong indication of some sort of elite dominance.

You can't get stronger than that based on genetic evidence alone. So I haven't conflated anything. It seems rather that you're the one with comprehension issues. I mean, how desperate and stupid do you have to be to ignore this and pretend it means nothing.

But elite dominance doesn't necessarily mean the sort of fantasy that mooreisbetter has concocted, probably for the sole purpose of it being successfully torn down.

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

Actually, I guess you’re right. I said that just out of far-fetched possibility, ignoring no genetic evidence tells such a story, and just for the sake of argument.

Also, given Reich’s estimates, this is not the case regarding Iberia, which obviously saw a disproportionate Y-DNA impact. No doubt India succumbed to the same pattern.

Also, kind of related, what’s funny is people think such scenarios can’t pan out given how archaic such societies must have been, even though they were advanced enough to do such things. Must be related to the complex some have to think PIE originated in a region associated with great civilizations, which leads people to ditch the steppe as a potential homeland.

mooreisbetter said...

But that's just it Davidski. You claim you won't rebut my rebuttal because it's a straw man. Well, people like me are forced to define your arguments because you haven't articulated them. And no, don't point to posts. Your posts just ALLUDE to the mechanisms of spread, just like you did in your response to Them Mee immediately above.

So, here's your chance. Explain your conception of how R1b and R1a spread, in two paragraphs or less.

You imply that we are dumb. You imply that we misconstrue your arguments.

Spoon feed it to us then.

Davidski said...

@mooreisbetter

I'm not here to spoon feed you.

If you bother to read the comments from the more learned commentators here objectively, instead of coming up with your own narrative based on...I don't know what exactly, then you should get a very good idea of the most plausible and realistic scenarios in this context.

Also, I link to a lot of open access papers, and these papers have bibliographies. So there's no excuse for not being informed. For example...

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

mooreisbetter said...

More learned? Chuckle. Nice ad hominem.

That Zeng paper is widely panned. The mistaken impression that the results support your hypothesis comes from what seems to be a continued failure to grasp the scope and scale of the Indo-European question. And from the an apparent assumption that if one can detect some population movements originating in the general area of the steppe you favor, then that means they must support your hypothesis, no?

The Indo-European question is not “Was there or was there not a Yamnaya > Corded Ware population movement?” Rather, the question is: what explains the entire Indo-European family? That means Indo-European languages not just in northern and eastern Europe, but also right across southern and western Europe, ancient Anatolia, Armenia, much of the Middle East (Kurdish-speaking areas, Iran, Afghanistan) etc.

That far greater scale is ‘the Indo-European question’. And it's one you continually ignore due to your own inherent biases. We are right back at square one.

Davidski said...

@mooreisbetter

That far greater scale is ‘the Indo-European question’. And it's one you continually ignore due to your own inherent biases. We are right back at square one.

Then explain where all of that R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 suddenly came from in Bronze Age and Iron Age Central Asia and Armenia/Iran.

Hiding in the local caves was it until it was safe to come out?

K Troy said...

@Colin Welling, Europeans who have colonized Non-White European especially The Americas have constantly tried to paint Native Americans
who have always claimed autochthonious status, as recent immigrants to the Americas, and " Not Native" simply because they migrated thru Asia. Only recent Whole Genome Studies by Non-American Bio-Genetisists have now been proved to be direct descendants of the ancestral Native Americans AKA Paleo-Americans. White Euro- Americans have used the whole Bering Landbridge hypothesis as an excuse for their own mass immigration into a non white continent and the individual homelands of the Native American race. White Americans as well as White Anthros and Archaeologists go as far as to invent mythological " White Tribes", " White Mound Builders"," White Queztacoatl", All the High Civilizations in North and South America are claimed as made by "White Gods", White Proxies such as the Ainu, or Polynesians, even though they are NOT, nor ever were Caucasians. European-Americans even have the nerve to call Native Americans " East Asians or Asian" even though they are not genetically similar autosomnally, Paternally, or even Maternally, They do this to justify the unnatural mass European colonization of the Ethnic American continents of the Native American race. The Americas are not the only non-white continents and territories, Europeans and European colonists have tried to rewrite the ancient race and history of New Zealand, and Australia. Any place the have invaded they have tried to discredit the indigenous populations, by rewriting them and disposessing them out of their own history, and by disassociating and disconnecting them from their own direct ancestors, acheivements, and civilizations. Very recent examples of this practice are the Kennewick Man debacle, the Solutrean Hypothesis, Polynesians supposedly teaching the Very Maritime California Chumash Natives how to build their crowning technological acheivement..The Tomol(planked Canoe). Also, the last time I checked, Europe is in Asia. and is considered part of Western Asia. Europe only considers itself its own Continent because of their divergent culture, and Russia is also in Asia. Scientists have declared that the ancestral Native Americans arose in Russia, does this mean they are Russians now!?