Anyone who still thinks that Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a originated in South Asia should burn this map into their brains. It'll come in useful over the next few years as we learn from ancient DNA about the conquest of the Indian subcontinent, and indeed much of Asia, by pastoralists from the western Russian and Ukrainian steppes.
X marks the spot of the burial site of Poltavka sample I0432 from the Mathieson et al. 2015 dataset. This individual belongs to Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a-Z93(Z94+), which today accounts for well over 90% of the R1a lineages in Asia and peaks in frequency at over 60% in the northern parts of South Asia.
Moreover, the dating of his burial site, 2925-2536 calBCE, suggests that he lived not long after the Z93 and Z94 mutations came into existence. That's because Z93 doesn't appear to be much older than 5,000 years based on full Y-chromosome sequence data (see here and here, including the comments).
So I0432 could well turn out to be a crucial piece in the puzzle of the peopling of South Asia.
Interestingly, this individual was flagged as an outlier in the Poltavka sample set by Mathieson et al., hence his other moniker: the Poltavka outlier. However, this wasn't because of any ancestry from South or even Central Asia. In fact, it was because he was too western.
Principal Component Analyses (PCA) featuring a wide range of present-day and ancient samples from Europe and Asia, like the one below, show that Poltavka outlier clusters further west than most Corded Ware individuals from Germany. Right click and open in a new tab to view full size.
In the past, using qpAdm, I modeled Poltavka outlier as 63.7% Yamnaya Samara and 36.3% German Middle Neolithic. This is probably not very far from the truth, but qpAdm offers a supervised mixture test in which the results are heavily reliant on the choice of outgroups, so I thought I'd revisit the issue with TreeMix, which allows an unsupervised analysis.
In a dataset including seven relatively high coverage Copper Age (CA), Early Bronze Age and Middle Neolithic (MN) European genomes, TreeMix picked out Poltavka outlier as the most likely sample to be admixed, showing a mixture edge of 33% from the base of the branch leading to the Iberian MN individual to that of Poltavka outlier.
This outcome is very similar to my qpAdm model, but it suggests an even more western source of admixture in Poltavka outlier. Could this admixture actually be from Iberia? I wouldn't discount this possibility, considering the presence of Bell Beaker communities, possibly of Atlantic or even Iberian origin, as far east as present-day Poland. Indeed, according to Cassidy et al. 2015, German Beakers show high affinity to MN and CA Iberians (see page 51 in the supp info here).
I double checked my TreeMix result with D-stats, and yep, when placed in a clade with Poltavka or Samara Yamnaya, Poltavka outlier shows the strongest signal of admixture from the Iberia MN individual.
At the same time, however, the signal from the Early Neolithic (EN) Iberian fails to reach significance (Z=<3), which suggests that, in fact, TreeMix and D-stats might be seeing the Iberia MN sample as the most attractive mixture source due to her high level of Western European hunter-gatherer (WHG) ancestry, which Poltavka outlier also has plenty of, rather than anything specific to Iberia.
In any case, it's clear enough that Poltavka outlier was the result of mixture between Yamnaya-related western steppe pastoralists and the descendants of Middle Neolithic Europeans with a high ratio of WHG ancestry. Where this admixture actually took place and which archaeological cultures were involved will have to be resolved with further sampling of ancient remains from Central and Eastern Europe.
However, it's already impossible to place the origin of Poltavka outlier anywhere in Asia, which suggests that both Z93 and Z94 are also from well inside the generally accepted borders of Europe.
This obviously has implications for the origins of the Indo-Iranians, because the widespread presence of these mutations in Asia gels very nicely with the idea, and indeed academic consensus, that Indo-Iranian languages expanded rapidly from the Eurasian steppe into Asia during the Bronze Age.
Considering that Poltavka outlier came from a Kurgan burial, and was therefore an individual of some social standing, he might be the direct ancestor of many millions of present-day Asians. If so, this won't be very difficult to prove in the near future as ancient DNA research revs up a few notches.
On a related note, apparently there's a paper on the way with ancient DNA results from Rakhigarhi, a Harappan site in Haryana, northern India (see here). As far as I know, the results will include Y-chromosome haplogroups of three males, but I don't think we'll see any decent genome-wide data at this stage. However, hopefully I'm wrong and the paper will come out with full ancient genomes.
Feel free to post your predictions in the comments. I'm tentatively expecting a couple of instances of J2 and maybe an L or H. Razib made basically the same prediction recently so I'm not being original. What I do know is that we won't see any R1a-Z93. The only way that might happen is if, say, someone coughed or sneezed on the Harappan remains.
Data source and reference...
Mathieson et al., Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians, Nature, 528, 499–503 (24 December 2015), doi:10.1038/nature16152 See also...
The beast among Y-haplogroups
348 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 348 of 348There is a discrepancy between the J2b map in this new paper and these J2b-M12 and J2b-M205 maps (http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/28518-Map-of-J2b-and-it-s-two-major-clades). There is an accumulation of J2b-M12 and J2b-M205 (under M12) in Russia. J2b-M205 has an interesting distribution as this clade looks like concentrated in Western Turkey and southern Russia. Does anyone know where the oldest clades are? According to yfull, its TMRCA is 5600 ybp.
The other branch of J2b (M241) has two deep sub-clades: the Indian one with TMRCA of 7100 ybp, and the European one with TMRCA of 5800 ybp, which is well-anchored in South Eastern Europe. According to yfull, there is also a Mordovia-specific subgroup in North Western Russia. In Iran J2b-M12 is very unevenly distributed and is lacking in many groups. There is J2b-M12 in Tajiks, Turkmens, Adyges, Nogais and Kumyks but it is mostly non-existent in autochthonous Caucasian groups such as in Dagestanians and Chechen/Ingush. It looks like J2b has started spreading a long time ago and it may have been present on the steppe but its distribution is not Indo-Iranian or Indo-European. J2b-M12 is found in Bulgaria but it can be very old.
J2a-M67 covers Caucasus-specific J2a haplotypes and this branch is found in Iran, Europe, Central Asia and in Western Mongolia but not in India or Pakistan (except in Brahui). This clade does not seem to be older than 4800 ybp in Europe provided that European subtypes are derived from West Asian clades which are missing in yfull. However, the age of the Caucasus specific J-Z7671 is even 12400 ybp according to yfull. J2a-M67 is found in Bulgaria but it can have a very diverse origin. Also J-M92 (under M67) is found in Bulgaria, but I have no idea how it relates to West Asian clades. In any case, the distribution of J2a-M67 does not correspond to the distribution of Indo-Iranian groups.
J-M47 is specific to Iran and extends to Qatar and Pakistan (India?) but is rare in Europe. This distribution does not look like being of Indo-European origin but it could be related to Indo-Iranian in the same way as I2 is related to European IE languages. J-L24/25 is typical for the Near East and Iran in general but is rare in India. In Europe most clades seem quite recent, but again yfull lacks West Asian reference points. Again, there is no good correlation with IE and Indo-Iranian groups. J2a-PF5197 seems pretty old both in Europe and India and there between but this subtype is not at all frequent in Europe. J2a-M68 is found in India and a parallel branch is also found in Europe but this subtype is rare in Europe and the West Asian context is probably missing in yfull. J2a-Z6046 is probably old in Iran/Pakistan and Caucasus but recent in Europe, and again there is no good correlation with European IE groups or with Indo-Iranian groups.
From the steppe point of view, J2b is however interesting!
@Davidski
And please let's be serious; Indo-European, let alone Indo-Iranian, did not expand during the Neolithic.
Sredny Stog was Indo-Europeanized by Males from the Balkan Neolithic. So in part Indo-European did spread in the Neolithic. Great article by Dienekes below.
J.P. Mallory reviews a work on the archaeology of the Sredny Stog and Novodanylovka cultures of the northern Pontic area, which are considered by some to be the original Proto-Indo-Europeans. It is interesting that the females are Proto-Europoid, while there is an intrusive Mediterranean element of Balkan origin among the males.
D. Ya. Telegin et al. Srednestogovskaya i Novodanilovskaya Kul'tury Eneolita Azovo-Chernomorskogo Regiona. Kiev: Shlyakh, 2001.
Reviewed by J.P. Mallory, JIES vol. 32, 3/4, p. 363-366.
"The third section of the book surveys the anthropological literature concerning the Sredny Stog and Novodanylovka cultures. For the twenty Sredny Stog burials from Igren, we find the somewhat unusual situation of women outliving males on an average of 7.8 years (males - 35.8 years, females - 43.6); only one individual lived passed 55 years. In terms of the craniological analysis of physical characteristics the Sredny Stog females tend to exhibit a homogeneous Proto-Europoid type that is most similar to the earlier inhabitants of the region. The series of male crania, however, tend to vary more and indicate both more robust Proto-Europoid and more gracile southern European (or Mediterranean) components. The analysis of six Novodanilovka skulls from three sites suggests again the presence of both Proto-Europoid and Mediterranean types. The cranial evidence as a whole suggests a mingling of local Proto-Europoids (seen especially in the east) with more gracial south-east European types in the west, a attern that might be explained by the flow of populations from the Balkan Neolithic (Tripolje) into the western Ukraine."
@Rob: STR networks are what you use for lack of a better tool, still worth looking at in absence of other data before speculating wildly rather than speculating wildly based on nothing and then shrugging off at the haplotype network as if it was just meaningless data. Are we trying to do science or just satisfying our wishful imagination with tales coated in pseudoscientific gibberish?
"The point is that the arriving Turks would have brought distinct set of Y markers which would have made significant impact on the Anatolian genoscape"...
The point is that nothing in the J2 structure points at that.
@Aram:
"My point is that most of the time elite dominance is overestimated because of lack of fine details".
And my point is that what you say is nothing but an speculation based on nothing. Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, but neither it is evidence at all. Without evidence you cannot claim that there is anything going on there.
"It was directed against 'ghost elite dominance' theories that some propose for Armenians".
That's probably a wholly different story: in Armenians we do see the arrival of a good deal of European-derived R1b (which has deceived some into reading too much on the raw diversity of this haplogroup, being in fact made up largely of terminal European-derived branches - what we can see in haplotypes, some of which are also found in Turkey).
"Chechen branches are very young"...
That's a non-argument: trash in → trash out. You can't argue phylogeny based on molecular clock wild speculations: you need phylogenetic data.
"My theory is that M67 is partly related to Hurro-Urartians".
Not sure what's the merit of that "theory" but, linguistically speaking, Hurro-Urartean is probably related to NE Caucasian, which includes Chechen.
@Kristiina:
They are different lineages, there is another J2b-M205 map in the same study and largely overlaps with your map's West Anatolian (and not Central Anatolian) distribution and also in the Aegean and Armenian/Kurdish hotspots. The lack of the Russian one clearly owes to sample strategy.
@Romulus
Sredny Stog was Indo-Europeanized by Males from the Balkan Neolithic.
You're not making any sense. There's plenty of linguistic and genetic evidence now that early European farmers weren't Indo-Europeans.
Substrate words related to farming in modern European languages originate from around the Aegean and are clearly non-Indo-European.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/linguistics-archeology-and-genetics-l-g.html
@Davidski
It makes perfect sense, you just don't want to accept it. All the major papers coming out this year are going to support it too.
Let me know when the first major paper comes out supporting it. It'll be interesting to see how they explain that all of the Y-DNA in early Kurgan graves is EHG derived.
That "Meditteranean" component in Sredny Stog is CHG and comes from the Caucasus , it's not ENF. There's no ENF in the steppe until the CWC expands out east much later in time.
Can't see Tripolje as anything but EEF, possibly with a high level of WHG admix.
Tripolje mixed with Sredny Stog on the western edge of the steppe in Ukraine. Caucasus-derived groups probably mixed with Sredny Stog near the Sea of Azov.
So it' likely that Sredny Stog had EEF admixture in the west, and CHG admixture in the east.
Poltavka outlier may actually pre-date the formation of Corded Ware, and might be a hint of what we'll soon see from remains on the Ukrainian steppes. In other words, EHG/CHG/EEF/WHG mixed groups with loads of R1a.
@Romulus: Sredny-Stog II (Sredny-Stog I is still part of Dniepr-Don, i.e. local pre-Kurgan Neolithic) shows clear Kurgan elements (with a scatter of diversity that speaks of a transitional phase) that just cannot be owed to Central Europe or the Balcans. Sredny Stog II is clearly the stepping stone of the earliest Kurgan movement westwards, being almost necessary to explain both the Balcano-Danubian kurgans and the ones of Baalberge, which are the oldest ones out of Eastern Europe and seem to require that kind of territorial cuasi-continuity (there's still a notorious initial gap between SS-II and Baalberge, between the Dniepr and the Elbe, suggesting that the Baalberge founders were quite peculiar in their outreach, some sort of "adventurers", very mobile in any case). Another thing is that inside the complexity of Sredny-Stog II there may also be Cucuteni-like influences but we cannot attribute to them the Kurgan aspects in any case: it was a transitional phase with a complex patchy cultural geography.
You guys could probably agree more easily if you understand that Sredny-Stog II was not a homogeneous culture but rather a patchy and complex archaeological (paleohistorical) phase that indicates transition between the local Neolithic to the Kurgan era, but still not fully Kurganized. It's very possible that the various groups within it may have diverse ethno-political affiliations and even fought with each other. The transition was not yet complete under Yamna, the Kiev area of this time seems to have been strongly affected by the late Danubian Baden culture, which may have called the shots in much of Europe for several centuries. It is only completed with the incorporation of that Kiev/West Ukraine area to Luboń culture, which is surely Indoeuropean (Baalberge-derived) but Western (Baden- and Funnelbeaker-influenced) rather than Eastern, and a precursor of Globular Amphorae and (with whatever Eastern, Catacombs, influence) Corded Ware.
The Kurgan invasions did not automatically change everything since day one, although they were clearly disruptive in many areas, but between the early ones (which correspond to Sredny-Stog II) and the consolidation (best embodied by Corded Ware) there is a long complex transitional period, with some level of tug-of-war and mutual influences between the various cultures, Kurgan or pre-Kurgan. All that took more than a thousand years to complete: ~4000 BCE for SS-II to ~2900 BCE for Corded Ware, much of that period was under the apparent hegemony of Baden culture, a large Danubian "confederacy" in the Carpathian Basin, that clearly influenced other areas before it collapsed (giving way to Vucedol culture, which is generally considered IE). Once Baden collapsed the Danubian (LBK) legacy was finished (except for the last Cucuteni-derived stand in Moldavia, known as Foltesti culture).
We have to understand all this complexity rather than thinking on single and way-too-simple waves.
@Maju
Kurgans may have originated on the steppe but elite burials did not, also of note not all kurgan burials are elite burials. People living in primitive societies do not spontaneously change their subsistence strategy, the reason we see a cultural shift on the Steppe is contact with the farmers via Cucuteni/Starcevo. Any race of brachycephalic people originating in Siberia were not the Proto-Indo Europeans, these people all shared a common tongue in an Agglutinative Language.
Any race of brachycephalic people originating in Siberia were not the Proto-Indo Europeans.
lol
According to the Kurgan hypothesis, Proto-Indo-Europeans formed on the western steppe during the Eneolithic. But FYI, not all EHG remains are brachycephalic. Many are dolichocephlic.
It's extremely difficult to take you seriously. But I suppose you're useful here as comic relief.
Trying to deny that the R or R1 ancestor was Brachycephalic is so stupid that it's not worth addressing, it's as stupid as the idea that a Siberian people magically dropped their Siberian language and decided to an invent a language nothing like it. EHG is brachycephalic because of ANE. As ANE increases Brachycephaly increases , end of story.
EHG is brachycephalic because of ANE. As ANE increases Brachycephaly increases, end of story.
Typical bullshit from Romulus.
How old are you? 12 or something?
Onur
***Where do you get that? The first map is a J2a map and the second map is a J2b map. No other subclade info is given for those maps in that paper.***
They have a little bit strange method to note SNPs. But look at the supplementary Excel file and by comparing the data that You know about Turkey You will see that what they note J2 M410 is actually J2-M410+ M67- M47-
@Romulus: "racial" speculations will not persuade me, among other reasons because phenotype changes as people get mixed and sometimes even without that (German cranial measures have changed within the last century for no apparent reason at all, for example). But mostly because I understand Indoeuropeanization primarily as ethno-linguistic or cultural change, rather than mere demographic change (which may or not or only weakly happen, depending on what specific culture and space-time you consider: elite domination is a real phenomenon driving ethno-cultural and linguistic change).
Anyways, the Cucuteni influence effect (limited in geography) is real but not what defines best Sredny-Stog II as transitional complex cultural layer. And the Cucuteni and later also Baden influences eventually were superseded or erased by the process of Kurgan consolidation as mentioned before in great detail. So it's futile to search for Indoeuropean roots in Cucuteni: as with the rest of the early Neolithic cultural package, plausibly Vasconic, it was in the losing side, although they certainly had their day and also must have left substrate influence in several ways (linguistic remnants almost without doubt but also cultural-behavioral quite probably).
@David
That's a pretty weak ad hominem, obviously because you have no real argument. Mal'ta boy was Brachycephalic. Your desperate agenda to paint R1a as quintessentially European in origin is transparent and pathetic. We are ALL descended from ALL of these people, unlike you some of us just want to understand the truth.
@Maju
Dismiss craniometric study if you want but you are only doing yourself a disservice by ignoring completely valid scientific data because of a unscientific taboo. I don't know if you follow Bell Beaker Blogger but the book he has up on his blog has craniometric study as it's main focus, specifically the brachycephaly of the Bell Beaker people.
http://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.ca/2016/01/a-folk-who-will-never-speak-falileyev.html
Romulus,
I don't know whether Mal'ta boy was brachycephalic or not, but most of the EHG skulls I've seen don't look brachycephalic. And it was EHG that carried R1a, not Mal'ta boy, who may have belonged to an offshoot of ANE and R that didn't leave any modern descendants.
Your theories are weak and stupid.
@ Maju
"Anyways, the Cucuteni influence effect (limited in geography) is real but not what defines best Sredny-Stog II as transitional complex cultural layer. And the Cucuteni and later also Baden influences eventually were superseded or erased by the process of Kurgan consolidation as mentioned before in great detail. So it's futile to search for Indoeuropean roots in Cucuteni: as with the rest of the early Neolithic cultural package, plausibly Vasconic, it was in the losing side, although they certainly had their day and also must have left substrate influence in several ways (linguistic remnants almost without doubt but also cultural-behavioral quite probably)."
This is a very dated view
First of all, it assumes discreet entities "Old Europe" vs "Kurhan world
". It misses entirely the complex processes of the copper age watershed in Europe
Moreover, the chronological and typological classification of the pre-Yamnaya phase have been modified in recent decades; and Sredni Stog has been superceded as a classicatory label. And CT dos not only have an important role in formation of Yamnaya, but it probably colonised significant parts of the western steppe.
Your entire perspective sounds like you're simply reciting Gimbutas, 1970-Whatever
@Romulus,
Basically all humans are (prob., don't know of official research)dolichocephlic except East/North Asians and Amerindians. Papuans, Polynesians, most Africans, and West Eurasians have the same basic head shape. The short wide faces of Mongoloids is weird for humans.
I don't understand why bloggers think all North Eurasian HGs had super wide and short faces like Mongoloids or Neanderthals.
Look at these reconstructions of Khvalynsk people. They look normal for modern Europeans.
http://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/w496/meon-12/hvalynsk/hvalynsk-6-1-.jpg
http://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/w496/meon-12/hvalynsk/hvalynsk-7-1.jpg
http://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/w496/meon-12/hvalynsk/hvalynsk-35.jpg
Most Europeans were dolichocephlic until the Middle Ages, although many Bronze Age Bell Beakers were apparently brachycephalic.
And then, most Europeans were brachycephalic from the Middle Ages to WWII. After WWII most, maybe all, European populations started getting taller and longer headed and today most are probably Mesocephalic.
During the 1960s, or around that time, Germans had a brachycephalic index of 82, while Eskimos had an index of 75, which is dolichocephalic. Haha.
Even Japanese had an index of 80 at the time. This is the type of hard science that Romulus swears by. lol
@David
Well you've moved up the crappy argument tree from ad hominem to anecdotal, so congratz on that.
I can give you my assurance Malta boy was Brachycephalic, he was classified as being part of the Mongoloid race before having his DNA tested (based on cranial analysis). Afontova Gora was too. Given that we know the period from Paleolithic to Neolithic Europe was purely Dolicho Long Skull, it's fairly obvious how the Eastern Half became Brachycephalic. Bell Beakers, Indo-Aryans, also Brachycephalic, it's visual evidence of Steppe admixture.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/PSM_V50_D602_World_cephalic_index_map.jpg
@Krefter
About half of Europe is brachycephalic (see picture above), historically Celts and Slavs display this trait the most (as opposed to Scandinavians), so it's not a surprise that they look like modern Europeans.
@David
the idea that skull shape can change based on diet is a hoax, if eat a lot of rice am I going to start looking Chinese? get real
I've never seen any cranial data on Mal'ta boy, and there's no way I'll believe you that he was brachycephalic. You're living in la la land.
Do you even realize that Eskimos are dolichocephalic?
@David
Mongoloid features had been originally acknowledged in the skeletal remains of a child found at the site of Malta. Alexeev (1998, 323) in his later publication was more cautious, stating that this area was“inhabited by a population of Mongoloid appearance".[1]
Eskimos are dolichocephalic? Hahaha going to need a source on that. They have some pretty big heads so maybe they are in their own category.
the idea that skull shape can change based on diet is a hoax, if eat a lot of rice am I going to start looking Chinese? get real
Straw man argument. Head shape can change from generation to generation, not within someone's lifetime you complete moron.
Can you prove these are hoaxes?
Brachycephalization and debrachycephalization in Bulgaria during 20th century
http://press.mu-varna.bg/ojs/index.php/ssm/article/view/830
The phenomenon of debrachycephalization in Jena school children
http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/10027042
Eskimos are dolichocephalic? Hahaha going to need a source on that.
Man, you're really dumb.
"The typical Greenland Eskimo cranium is large and dolichocephalic."
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mwVZAVC4OnUC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=Eskimos+dolichocephalic+cranial&source=bl&ots=3_lt_ybPSe&sig=2D6ahQ-iN2ymts_gmxnGrI9goFQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWl4rfpLDKAhWH3KYKHcB0A8QQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=Eskimos%20dolichocephalic%20cranial&f=false
Debetz (1946) identified the remains of “nothern Asian Mongoloids” at the site of
Afontova Gora 2; they included a fragment of the frontal bone. Mongoloid features had
been originally acknowledged in the skeletal remains of a child found at the site of
Malta. Alexeev (1998, 323) in his later publication was more cautious, stating that this
area was “inhabited by a population of Mongoloid appearance.”
I'm not disagreeing that over long generations head shape can change, the whole end game of human evolution after all is larger and larger cranial capacities, but the sudden appearance of brachycephalic skulls in Europe where no previously occurred is not explainable by slow evolution. The studies you link show a change of 1-2 points on the cranial index over several generations, but from Neolithic to Bell Beaker the change is not so insignificant.
@David
If not knowing the cranial index of a Greenland Eskimo makes me dumb then so be it, but they are the exception to every other group of native americans.
Ainus are dolichocephalic, and so were paleo-Aleuts. I'm sure I could find more examples within the so called Mongoloid family that I'm not aware of yet.
And yes, Ainus are East Asian, and so were the Jomon.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25753365.pdf
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1bGNFNDfw4AC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=paleo-Aleuts+dolichocephalic&source=bl&ots=YDGsIl7CSZ&sig=rX3j1qfbVH6iQQjgwTm_RWx33FY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhp6bjrrDKAhWj2aYKHT1hCD0Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=paleo-Aleuts%20dolichocephalic&f=false
So you've failed to prove that Mal'ta boy was brachycephalic, or that it's even relevant, considering my examples of dolichocephalic East Asian/ANE populations like Eskimos and Aleuts.
Also, there's no evidence that Bell Beakers were by and large brachycephalic. All we know is that some were, and this was a big deal in the past. It's no longer a big deal.
https://www.academia.edu/11765209/LEMERCIER_O._2015_-_European_Bell_Beakers_Phenomenon_Data_Problems_and_Prospects_Talk_in_Harvard_Medical_School_Department_of_Genetics_ReichLab_Boston_MA_USA_March_23_2015
Onur
Another hint to understand that map. Look at the Chechens and East Georgia. That place should be red if this map was J2a, but it is practically blank. Also it doesn't make sense that Armenia or West Iran has lower J2 than Indus valley. So that map is approximatively L24/L25 + some Indian specific branches and it is M67- M47-.
Kristiina
Yes J2b is mysterious. I don't believe that Neolithic people can jump from Aegean to India and vice versa. So I expect some J2b in Steppe maybe in post-Yamna Catacomb period. Also in Mycenean Greeks.
Coldmountain
If You ask my opinion about J2a. I will say that it correlates quite well with the ancient non-IE people like, Hurrians, Kassites, maybe Minoan Civilisation and Etruscan ( but I have some doubts about their Eastern origin ). Maybe Sumerians also will have some J2a.
My point was that the Neolithic theories are still popular in some groups and they can try to use this distributions as arguments. Personally I am fine with R1b/R1a story. I still keep open door for J2b. That's why I am impatiently waiting Mycenean and Catacomb data.
On the basis of the map Romulus posted, brachycephalic/ dolichocephalic index has nothing to do with East Asian - Westen Eurasian distinction as Chinese, Japanese and most Native Americans are dolichocephalic. The map clearly shows that the most brachycephalic people live in Tibet, Central Asia and Mongolia.
My feeling is that many of you think that dolichocephalic is better than brachycephalic but I would not say that a dolichocephalic man is more attractive than a brachycephalic man: again, average is probably the best. By the way, I have a very small head but it really doesn’t bother me at all and I do not think that nobody has ever noticed it.
I do not think either that proto-Turks were yDNA J folks (maybe they had J2b though). Most Turkic groups are mostly ydna R folks and that’s also why I think that Turkic and IE languages are related. Autosomally, in Turkic groups C and Q correlate quite nicely with HAN admixed ancestry and ydna N with Volga and North Siberian related ancestry.
Azerbaijanis (Oghuz) R1b 11%, R1a 7%
Turkmens (Oghuz) R1b 36.7%, R1a 6.7%
Turks (Oghuz) R1b 16.1%, R1a 6.9%
Gagauz Etulia (Oghuz) R1b 14.6%, R1a 26.8%
Balkarians (Kipchak) R1b 13%, R1a 13%
Karakalpaks (Kipchak) R1b 9.1%, R1a 18.2%
Kumyks (Kipchak) R1b 19.7%, R1a 13.2%
Kyrgyz (Kipchak) R1b 1.9%, R1a 63.5%
Tatars (Kipchak) R1b 8.7%, R1a 34.1%
Uyghurs Kazakhstan (Karluk) R1b 0%, R1a 22%
Uyghurs Xinjiang (Karluk) R1b 17.6%, R1a 22%
Uyghurs Ürümqi (Karluk) R1b 8.2%, R1a 28.6%
Uzbeks (Karluk) R1b 9.8%, R1a 25%
Dolgans (Altaic) R1b 1.5%, R1a 16.4%
Khakass (Altaic) R1(xR1a) 7.6%, R1a 28.3%
Northern Altaians (Altaic) R1b 6%, R1a 38%
Southern Altaians (Altaic) R1b 1%, R1a 53%
Shors (Altaic) R1(xR1a) 19.6%, R1a 58.8%
Teleuts (Altaic) R1(xR1a) 12.8%, R1a 55.3%
Tofalars (Altaic) R1(xR1a) 12.5%, R1a 12.5%
Yakuts (Altaic) R1b 1.9%, R1a 1.9%
Chuvashes (Oghur) R1b 3.8%, R1a 31.6%
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_by_ethnic_group, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_Central_and_North_Asian_populations
Kristiina
Very interesting figures, but i think one would be looking up a big hill to pose an IE - Turkic link, apart from the more questionable attempts by Nostraticists.
@Rob: I'm saying Baden = Danubian, and Gimbutas said Baden = Kurgan (why?!), so quite obviously I'm not following Gimbutas but my own scheme based on more updated prehistoric reconstruction from the 21st century, often my own interpretation of raw archaeological data (but I also rely on a lot of different qualified opinions, including Wikipedia sometimes - yeah, why not?) So when you say: "The classification and chronology of pre-, proto-, and proper Kurgan has been modified somewhat since Gimbuta's formulation, which you appear to be echoing", you are misunderstanding everything I'm saying and rather echoing some ill-informed opinion. Not the first time I read that false claim that I allegedly follow Gimbutas to the letter, I wonder who is spreading that lie and why you guys don't even bother contrasting it before parroting.
And a curious thing in this issue is that David and I are punctually agreeing (who would have said!) and that's because we are both paying attention to the data, at least for the case at hand, rather than just saying: "my wild speculation is best because Gimbutas [nobody mentioned her before, mind you] is wrong". Well, Gimbutas was right in surprisingly too many things but not in everything (Baden, Remedello are not Kurgan cultures, impossible!) but the matter is not determined by her being right or not but by you and me and the modern prehistorians of the world getting the most up to date data and correctly interpreting it.
The reality is that, while I did have some idea of the Kurgan hypothesis, I actually reconstructed it (for Europe) out of reading other more modern authors on European Neolithic and Chalcolithic, taking massive notes and working on them for months, years, decades (it never ends). I may have details wrong or not up-to-date but I'm not following Gimbutas. I only read some of Gimbutas' work much later and found it surprisingly correct for such an "old" researcher (in that is where you recognize a classic or a giant: in her/his capacity to withstand the test of time). For me Gimbutas is about as "old" as it may be for you: I'm 47 years old not 97!
@Romulus: I do follow BBB (probably one of his first readers) but the link you point to discusses linguistics, not skulls. As for the value of chraniometry, well, I'd rather rely on other data such as aDNA, archaeo-cultural affinities and such. Otherwise it's like trying to interpret the past based on blood groups: it can give you a very vague idea but not really good enough.
@Rob (second round): "First of all, it assumes discreet entities "Old Europe" vs "Kurhan world"".
You are not discussing the specifics but rather trying to redefine the discussion in terms I'm not really using. For example I would not place Vinca-Dimini in the same category as the mainline Neolithic (they are clearly a second intrusive wave), I reckon the complexity of cultural hybridization and the importance of nuanced cultural understanding. Obviously Cucuteni is not just LBK but something on its own right, very possibly with EHG admixture and other influences, but for most purposes it's mostly an LBK offshoot and in any case very clearly a non-Kurganic culture and a most clear victim of Kurganic expansion.
"Sredni Stog has been superceded as a classicatory label"...
Has it? By what? It probably depends on who you read. I won't argue this point too much: the reality is in any case that, whatever the label, the post-Dniepr-Don and pre-Yamna phase in the Dniepr and Don basins has marked complexity, with Kurgan influences on one side, Cucuteni ones on the other and also remnants of the DD culture reluctant to be assimilated by either. Call it what you will.
@Aram:
"Yes J2b is mysterious. I don't believe that Neolithic people can jump from Aegean to India and vice versa. So I expect some J2b in Steppe maybe in post-Yamna Catacomb period. Also in Mycenean Greeks".
It's not that way. We see only the remnants, the lineages that were fixated largely by chance. What J2b onion-like structure is telling us probably is about radial expansions within Neolithic from West Asia (quite possibly Kurdistan/Zagros area).
Consider it as follows:
1. There was a number of Neolithic cultures in the Fertile Crescent from Palestine to the Zagros. They were surely not the same thing: at the very least there are two main centers and most probably a good deal of further diversity. They did establish networking centers however like Göbekli Tepe and exchanged knowledge, culture and probably genes too (but not yet becoming homogeneous at all).
2. Groups from this arch of innovation began spreading in various directions, the most important ones (at least for us right now) being Europe and South Asia (with stepping stones in the Aegean and Iran respectively). These groups were not identical (clearly not) but they expanded at about the same time in both directions: probably the ones heading West were mostly Western (PPNB) and the groups heading East were primarily Eastern (Mlafatian or Jarmo group). But there were groups in between that either in this first expansion phase or in secondary ones spilled to both sides. That seems to have been the case with J2b (but not with E1b for instance): the impact of each lineage in each direction was diverse, depending on chance and original geography.
So what we see (and not just in J2b) is people spreading from West Asia in both directions East and West (and also in other directions such as northwards to Uzbekistan and Russia and southwards to Arabia, etc.) It does seem that some sublineages share some "pioneering" traits, being found in the extremes of the expansion wave (at least for J2b range), others became more successful in certain intermediate areas like West Anatolia and others instead had more success in the "Kurdish" homeland. It's certainly a curious onion-like structure that suggests founder effect not so much at the destination but, at least in some cases, at the origin of the migration. This should not surprise us so much when we are witnessing masses of people migrating out of specific devastated locations or in history where we read that the Huns pushed the Goths, etc. It's plausible that the emigrant sublineages were pressed to emigrate one way or another and that they did in both directions. Migrants are almost invariably not conquerors but refugees, even European migrants to America in the 19th century were typically impoverished refugees fleeing the devastation of the industrial revolution and related phenomena. Their migration may have been favored by the receiving-end institutions but in the Neolithic there were no states yet, at least not of any meaningful size: each people was an armed-and-dangerous self-ruling mob.
Marija Gimbutas was a pioneer and had great merit. Her hypothesis may turn out to be correct or not, but at her time it was quite a revolution, I'd guess (I'm not that old either).
It's good to read her now in the light of ancient DNA and check out how accurate or not her findings were. Here an article she wrote in 1993 which is a short summary or her Kurgan/Steppe Hypothesis:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00437956.1993.11435900
(BTW, her 2nd wave of Kurgan invasions comes from Maykop, and it's a higher culture than the waves I and III. According to her it reaches England and Ireland at around 3500 BC. Does anyone know which cultures/burials could she be referring to?)
Alberto,
According to her it reaches England and Ireland at around 3500 BC.
If its that old, it can't be IE :).
@Maju "There was a number of Neolithic cultures in the Fertile Crescent from Palestine to the Zagros."
However, the oldest J to date is Satsurblia from Georgia and the third oldest is from Oleni Ostrov, Karelia. Both were hunter gatherers, so J started spreading before Neolithic and not necessarily from Zagros.
@Maju:
You have been getting the origin of Baalberge aka "Central Funnelbeaker" wrong: It's not a "kurgan" culture (I hate this term for its unspecific and arbitrary use). Instead, it is part of the megalithic sphere, with links especially to Michelsberg (Seine-Rhine) and (post-)Ertebolle (West Baltic), grown on local Rössen (Atlantic/ La Hoguette influence), Jordansmühl (Bohemian) and Lengyel (Danubian-Polish) substrate that had admixed earlier in the Elbe-Saale region.
Some cultural link to CT is evidenced by ceramic recepies. Moreover, some researcher attribute proliferation of the ard, which enabled agricultural and strong population growth in Nordic FB after 3,700 BC, to FB. A south-western origin (mid 5th mBC evidence of the ard near Lucerne/CH) and proliferation via Michelsberg, however, is possible as well.
Instead of linking dozens of (mostly German-language studies), I just refer you to the presumptive "capital" of the Baalberge Culture, the 25 ha walled enclosure of Halle - Dölauer Heide (the largest one in Central Germany), with displays various parallels to MC enclosures. It has provided Central Europe's earliest evidence of industrial saltmaking, in the form of specialised salt-sooting pottery (briquetage), albeit somewhat later (Bernburg culture, late 3rd. mBC).
The following page gives a good ides on respective findings. Scroll down for the overview map first, then check some of the nearby sites (2-6 km distance) listed thereunder.
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=10673
They include:
- The "Steinerne Jungfrau" (stony virgin), CE's second largest Menhir, with obvious pointing towards Brittany
- several stone cists/gallery graves - Halle seems to be their easternmost occurrence. Their trace, often combined with Menhirs, can be followed through the MC-influenced area from the Seine-Oise-Marne Culture allées couvertes via MC/TRB in Westfalia to the Wartberg Culture (Northern Hesse /Thuringia).
- several round barrows, influenced by Early Nordic FB long barrows, which originate in the Ertebolle/Kongemose/Maglemose shell midden burial tradition.
A look at Dave's K10 shows Baalberge as 77.2% AnatNeol and 21.1% WHG. The latter is consistent with pastoralist MC and post-Ertebolle influence. EHG and CHG are virtually absent. However, intriguingly, one sample (I0560) displays 4.5% SWA admix. This may either point to SWA admix being present, and have come from, CT, or represent continuity from EN, which already includes a few SWA-admixed samples (LBK_EN I0797 10.1%, Hung_EN I1506 6.0%)
@Nirjhar
"If its that old, it can't be IE :)"
Yes, the dates seem to be a bit off, though D. Anthony also places the first wave around 4200 BC, with the Anatolian branch speakers going to the Balkans. We'll see how that turns out.
But I find it interesting that her 2nd wave is related to Maykop and not to the Volga basin people like the 1st and 3rd waves. Also that she makes reference to the arsenical copper/pseudo-bronze, which is an Iranian invention from the 5th M. and I think a bit underestimated. This arsenical copper/bronze has quite superior qualities than the pure copper from the Balkan copper age, and it spread during the 4th millennium BC throughout Iran, Mesopotamia, IVC, Turkmenistan and Caucasus. It appears in Europe in Vucedol (that I know of) and it could be related already to R1b people there, and probably to the spread of R1b to Western Europe. In the steppe, it might have appeared first in Sintashta with R1a-Z93 people, though there could be earlier imports from the Caucasus, I don't know. I never found a good study about the spread of arsenical copper/bronze which is a bit strange given its importance.
@Rob (and Maju):
"Is there much evidence of a "population crash" in LN Germany ?
Maybe in the Danube vorland, because central Germany looks vibrant."
Central Germany has the best agricultural soils in Germany, possibly in all of Europe west of the Ukranian black earth region. The loess belt starts a bit NW from Dresden and stretches all along the low mountain foothills into Northern Belgium. Some basins (Thuringian basin, Warburg Börde on the middle Weser) are extremely fertile as well.
It is one of the few areas worldwide where agriculture seems to be long-term sustainable - at least the soil quality is still excellent after nearly 8,000 years of more or less continuous cereal farming.
As such, any "population crash" there will quickly see replacement by new immigrants that are attracted by the prime soils. This also means that the "boom and bust" pattern that is quite typical elsewhere, and well observable e.g. for the Gökhem area where agriculture was given up again some 300 years after the Michelsberg colonisation doesn't apply to central Germany. The Scandinavian/ North German population drop, OTOH, which already set in around 3,400 BC, seems to be attributable to southward outmigration, and corresponds to increasing forest cover shown in pollen diagrams.
Now, there are in fact various signs of social upheaval and cultural crisis in Central Germany during the late 3rd mBC, most evident in the Salzmünde culture's strange burial rites. We also have evidence of a full-fledged war between Bernburg/GAC (Atlantic-nordic, FB-offsprings) and Salzmünde (Baden-influenced, Danubian) around 3,100 BC. This war appears to be the culmination of climate-induced migrations out of both Scandinavia/ SW Baltic and Transdanubia into Central Germany, with copper resources around the Harz and the salt springs around Halle providing further incentive aside from the prime soils. But this war predates, and also seems unlikely to have caused the magnitude of the temporary population dip around 2,800 BC that Maju has been pointing at (great blog entries of yours, Maju, btw.).
I think Dave has already provided the answer here:
http://eurogenes.blogspot.de/2015/10/plague-germs-may-have-facilitated.html
The first European evidence of plague germs stems from Estonian CW. It is dated somewhat later, ca. 2,600 BC. However, the purported origin of the plague in Central Asia, early 3rd mBC plague evidence from Afanasievo, the known cultural and genetic link between Afanasievo and western Steppe cultures, and entry of EHG genes intro CEU by the late 4th mBC provide a plausible transmission path.
The medieval Black Death is estimated to have killed 30-60% of the population, depending on the region. The Polish decrease by around 30-40% shown in Maju's diagrams fits well here sizewise. The Central German dip is less pronounced, which may may be well explained by subsequent CW immigration from the Northeast.
@ FrankN
Frank, these might sound like weird questions, but could you give us some of the details about the large-scale enclosures that you are referring to? Are they constructed out of wooden palisades? Rammed earth? Stone? If wooden palisades, how wide are the stick holes, and how many were there?
Also, what do you make of the figures for violent cranial injury in the respective time periods? Personally, I would draw the conclusion that rates of violence were probably incredibly high throughout this period, given that, of all the possible injuries you can give to a man only a small proportion are melee injuries, of which another proportion is to the skull, of which a small number are traumatic enough to leave a mark on the head that can be discerned millenia later. The >10% traumatic cranial injury figure may testify to a much higher frequency of violent engagements, perhaps the kind of universal male involvement in warfare which is e.g. found in kinship-based, small scale societies, i.e. tribes or simple chiefdoms. I suspect that the paucity of mass graves in various time periods reflects the decline in complex social organisation and thus the decline of mass melee warfare or concentrations of people, not so much a decline in violence. What do you think?
As for that arsenic copper, I cannot help but add the following:
“As far as published materials are concerned, the earliest metals recovered in Xinjiang thus far are those from the Tianshan Beilu cemetery in Hami, eastern Xinjiang, which are roughly dated to the first half of the second millennium BCE. Scientific examinations have demonstrated that the metals used by the Tianshan Beilu people include not just tin bronze and copper, but also arsenical copper. The predominant use of tin bronze and arsenical bronze also points to connections with cultures farther to the west and north in the Eurasian steppe, such as Seima-Turbino and Andronovo.”
http://www.academia.edu/4723183/Recent_Research_on_Early_Bronze_Metallurgy_in_Northwest_China
The Significance of the Metal Finds at the Xiaohe Cemetery
“Archaeological evidence for the early use of metals and alloys in Xinjiang is still rather limited. As far as published materials are concerned, the earliest metals recovered in Xinjiang thus far are those from the Tianshanbeilu cemetery in Hami, eastern Xinjiang, which are roughly dated to the first half of the second millennium bce. Scientific examinations have demonstrated that the metals used by the Tianshanbeilu people include not just tin bronze and copper, but also arsenical copper (Mei 2000, 38-39; IHMM 2001, 83 ). It has also been reported that three small copper pieces were unearthed at the Gumugou cemetery near the eastern rim of the Tarim Basin, southern Xinjiang, and analysis suggests that they are made of unalloyed copper (Wang 1983. 121-22). The Xiaohe cemetery is also located at the eastern rim of the Tarim Basin, quite close to the Gumugou cemetery.”
https://archive.org/stream/scientificre00forb/scientificre00forb_djvu.txt
Gao et altri, 2014, tells us that “according to archaeological research and C14 data, the date of the Tianshanbeilu site is 1900–1300 BC (Ding, 1996; Li, 2002, 2009). A large number of bronze vessels and pottery were excavated from the site, and the archaeological culture of this site was named the Tianshanbeilu Culture.”. YDNA from Tianshan Beilu, Hami, Xinjiang, turned out to be 5xN(xN1a, N1c), 1xC. Moreover, “A morphological study of the Tianshanbeilu samples suggests they are a mixture of East Asian and European populations (Wei et al., 2012)”.
@Aram
They have a little bit strange method to note SNPs. But look at the supplementary Excel file and by comparing the data that You know about Turkey You will see that what they note J2 M410 is actually J2-M410+ M67- M47-
Another hint to understand that map. Look at the Chechens and East Georgia. That place should be red if this map was J2a, but it is practically blank. Also it doesn't make sense that Armenia or West Iran has lower J2 than Indus valley. So that map is approximatively L24/L25 + some Indian specific branches and it is M67- M47-.
That map indeed looks nonsensical. They present their results in an obscure way. I will ask the authors of that paper what that map indicates.
@Maju
The craniometric study is in the book (published in 2015), not in BBB's blog post. Sometimes you have to open those links :).
Page 10
https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QQBDCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&ots=SecD4q2yZB&sig=ODRSHUMvJiI22dxssuYT5IMug6M&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=brachy&f=false
It goes into quite a bit of detail on the brachycephalic skull type of the beakers, and even mentions that there were often non brachycephalic women along with brachycephalic beaker men.
@rk: Re MN enclosures
Note first that this is still a lot of "work in progress". A decade ago, e.g. not a single FB enclosure in Holstein was known, today there are five. The Potsdam enclosure I have referred to has also only been discovered recently, on the occassion of the reconstruction of the City Palace, which had been destroyed in 1945, that started in 2010.
There is obviously a lot of variation in enclosure size, material, also function:
On the lower end, there are patterns of small, simple enclosures, just a few km distant from each other, without apparent traces of settlement (though of use for burial and feasting). North of the Harz mountains, they are located near and alongside mediaeval cattle drift routes, and are interpreted as "reunion places" between transhumating herders returning from upland summer pastures, and the resident valley farmers, possibly serving for autumn culling of helfers and old cows, subsequent feasting, secondary burial, plus all other stuff associated with such events (trade fair, marriage brokerage, jurisdiction, "thing"-type collective decision making, etc.)
On the upper end, there are the "mega-sites" I have been referring to before, most of which have only been started to be investigated recently. The pattern emerging to me, after having looked through a few recent reports, is one of long-term occupation (up to 600 years), sizeable permanent settlement, and significant fortification that was several time enhanced.
Good overviews, aside from what I have already linked before, are found here
http://www.academia.edu/20105549/Causewayed_enclosures_in_Northern_and_Western_Europa
https://prezi.com/j99t0w1w6rgh/enclosures-of-michelsberg-culture/
[clickable presentation]
Here a selection of a few papers/ abstracts on individual sites:
Bruchsal-Aue: 6 utilisation phases over 600 years, 4 different generations of earthworks
http://megaconf2015.ufg.uni-kiel.de/conference/contributions/4
[Note also various other abstracts, clickable on the right side, on other sites. From the same conference, but another session, an abstract on Altheim/ Bavaria:
http://megaconf2015.ufg.uni-kiel.de/de/conference/contributions/8 ]
Heilbronn-Schlossberg: "The earthworks consisted of two closely spaced ditches. The inner one was backed by a post- and plank-built palisade which was burnt, collapsing into the inner ditch soon after its construction."
http://totl.eu/klingenberg/
Kapellenberg/Taunus: 2012 excavation summary, in German. Fig. 3b displays the three phases of wall construction: First a simple palisade behind a ditch, then an earth-enforced palisade, finally an earth wall (including many child-head sized boulders) that is still visible today.
http://www.academia.edu/8639231/Neue_Forschungen_zum_Kapellenberg_in_Hofheim_am_Taunus
Halle - Dölauer Heide: Brief German language description from the Catalogue for the 2014 Salzmünde exhibition, with nice 3D models. 10m wide main entrance to the plateau, secured by 4 ditches, accessible via a ramp passable to(ox-)carts. Aside from a few grave mounds, the internal areal hasn't been archeologically investigated so far.
https://www.academia.edu/6981843/Die_befestigte_Siedlung_Bischofswiese_Halle-D%C3%B6lauer_Heide._In_H._Meller_Hrsg._3300_BC_mysteri%C3%B6se_Steinzeittote_und_ihre_Welt_Halle_2013_139-142
@Alberto: in truth that article is a bit hard for me to accept, I think that archaeology has gone a long way beyond what Gimbutas understood or thought she understood, also notice that the dates are calibrated according to a curve not anymore in use (should all be several centuries older).
One thing is clear: she clearly states, according to the knowledge available 20 years ago and the then mainline "Bohemian" model of Bell Beaker origins, that Bell Beaker was Kurgan-derived. That is not anymore supported, as the dates for BB in SW Europe are several centuries older than in Central or Northern Europe, so the "Iberian" model, then supported only by few, has now gone mainstream with good logic. But that's how she seems to imagine the arrival of Indoeuropeans to England: with Bell Beaker.
I've seen more interesting stuff from her but I also understand that it's complicated to get a throughout picture only from archaeology and that 20 years is a lot of time sometimes.
BTW: "the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE" is not "3500" but 2500-2000 BCE. ;)
@Kristiina: but how much ancient Y-DNA do we have from the Fertile Crescent? NOTHING!
Maju, of course it is highly probable that yDNA J will pop up in Fertile Crescent and in Iran. I completely agree with you on this! However, we have Satsurblia J in Georgia 13 000 bp and Oleni Ostrov J in Karelia 7500 bp and the whole Eastern European / Russian steppe lies there between.
Kotias is already J2a, so that branch probably developed near Caucasus, and if I remember correctly Chechens and Ingush who still are mostly J2a are closest to Kotias but correct me if I am wrong in this.
@Maju
Yes, the mainstream before ancient DNA had turned into an Iberian origin for Bell Beakers. Now I'm not sure it's still the case. The Rathlin samples don't look very Chalcolithic Iberian.
Are the Portuguese BB sites really the same as the Central and NW European ones? Especially the burials. Or it's just the pottery that is the same?
About the British Isles, she says:
"The emergence of single male burials under round mounds in eastern Ireland and central England in the middle of the 4th millennium B.C. contrast sharply with the local tradition of communal burials (Bley 1989)" (Page 7).
"In the West, signs of Kurgan elements (single burials under round mounds) appeared in England and in eastern Ireland around 3500 B.C." (Page 15).
Basically she attributed every change in Eneolothic Europe to some (imaginary?) horse raiding warriors from the steppe. But anyway she did see the changes quite clearly and described the transition to a more complex society at the time (though in a bit too Manichean and simplistic way). But let's not forget that even if that article is from 1993, her hypotheses are much older than that. This is just a summary she published at that late date (one year before she passed away).
@FrankN: Baalberge has kurgan burials, that is not "unspecific" at all. These kind of burials also become more common as time passes and the culture consolidates (so internal "Kurganization" took place as well). And also Baalberge or nearby derived aDNA includes the "teal" component that can be attributed to Kurgans before Corded Ware shows up with their massive "teal" bloc. For me it all converges to Baalberge being the earliest local Kurgans in East Germany and plausibly for their Polish secondary center to have been even more intensely influenced by the steppe migrants.
"It is part of the megalithic sphere, with links especially to Michelsberg"...
Baalberge burials are not dolmenic nor collective, instead they are individual burials often in pits but sometimes in barrows (mounds, tumuli, kurgans). It's an error to speak of "Megalithism" in absence of Dolmenism (collective burial in dolmen) unless we're trying to get things confused. Individualist burial in tumulus is Kurganism. Just because they use some stone in cists and such we cannot talk of "Megalithism".
Said that, there is some clear connection with TRBK (Funnelbeaker), which seems to stem from Denmark or somewhere nearby (but where from before Denmark?) and and is clearly Dolmenic in most other cultures. So in East Germany in this transitional period we have kurgans and in West Germany and Denmark we have dolmens. And that's the divide for about 1000 years, until Corded Ware, which pushed the border westwards to the Rhine and North Sea (for another long millennium).
"... several stone cists/gallery graves - Halle seems to be their easternmost occurrence".
I'd like documentation about gallery graves IF by that you mean passage dolmens (cists are irrelevant AFAIK, just a stone-framed pit, what happens here and there with no clear cultural pattern). Notice that the key fossil of Dolmenism (sometimes called "Megalithism" a bit confusingly) is the dolmen or trilithon burial, with or without mound, with or without corridor (the more elaborate models seem to correspond to more affluent societies but the basic thing is three or more stones holding a stone ceiling - that's the basic dolmen), also burial inside is "collective" (probably reusing through many generations, pushing the old bones to a side, which acts as informal ossuary) and not individual. In some areas collective burial also happens in caves, in which case are not considered megalithic nor dolmenic but clearly follow the same general tradition, as opposed to Kurganic individualism in burial (and also later abandonment in areas of dolmenic or otherwise "collectivist" tradition, with or after Bell Beaker).
If your claim is correct, then there'd be a transitional area within Baalberge (also Baalberge-derived cultures later influence some West German cultures before Corded Ware's sudden "flattening"), but still there's a lot of Kurganism in this culture.
@Kristiina
I do not think either that proto-Turks were yDNA J folks (maybe they had J2b though). Most Turkic groups are mostly ydna R folks and that’s also why I think that Turkic and IE languages are related. Autosomally, in Turkic groups C and Q correlate quite nicely with HAN admixed ancestry and ydna N with Volga and North Siberian related ancestry.
Azerbaijanis (Oghuz) R1b 11%, R1a 7%
Turkmens (Oghuz) R1b 36.7%, R1a 6.7%
Turks (Oghuz) R1b 16.1%, R1a 6.9%
Gagauz Etulia (Oghuz) R1b 14.6%, R1a 26.8%
.
.
.
I do not think Y-DNA haplogroups such as C and Q that are minority or rare among Han Chinese can correlate with Han admixture in Turkic groups. N, C and Q should have already existed in Turkic groups before their first interaction with Han Chinese and thus during the Proto-Turkic period (the 1st millennium BC at the latest). As for R1a, it is the subclades that matter. Some of R1a subclades such as R-Z2124 probably existed in Proto-Turks. But, for instance, ascribing R1a found in Gagauz, which are European subclades of R1a, to Proto-Turks would be problematic and is refuted by the extant studies. As for R1b, some of its subclades might have existed in Proto-Turks, but probably R1b was not a major haplogroup in Proto-Turks.
@Kristiina: Sorry, I replied hastily earlier. I understand what you mean. I just don't expect J2 to have got much expansion outside of West Asia or even parts of it (which may include Caucasus, probably the Caucasus-Zagros area is its origin) before Neolithic expansion. Most of that expansion corresponds to J2b. Maybe J2a is less common because it was the Caucasus clade while J2b was the Zagros one (simplifiedly)? I can't find a clear map but maybe you do.
As for J1 I expect it to have been already in Palestine and the Nile before Neolithic, really.
@Alberto: Beaker origins is not dependent on genetics: the interpretation of the patterns and trends involved in its spread may be affected by them but the chronology depends strictly of radiocarbon dates, so "Iberia first" stands, regardless of whether there is a, say, "Netherlands second" or "Switzerland third" issue going on also.
"Are the Portuguese BB sites really the same as the Central and NW European ones? Especially the burials. Or it's just the pottery that is the same?"
Pottery and other cultural elements (conical buttons, archery, etc.) but not the burials (that also happens with NW Europe): Bell Beaker standardized burials are specific of Central Europe, of the area affected by Corded Ware or parts of it, and it partly mirrors in reverse the patterns of Corded Ware or mirrors in direct form the patterns of CW's precursor Globular Amphorae. The change of position of men and women seems to be a "statement" and one that happens only in the Indoeuropeanized areas. Elsewhere beakers and the paraphernalia associated to them (archery, golden spirals, conical buttons) seem to be continuous with previous burial traditions, typically dolmenism (but varies). That's why BB is considered a "phenomenon" (fashion, religion, guild?) and not a culture on its own right. It may well be a culture in the Eastern Province (Upper Danube and nearby areas) but not elsewhere.
"About the British Isles"...
But do we have another more up-to-date study? Is she confusing dolmenic mounds with kurgans? Is she mixing the Eastern English tradition, rooted in "individualist" LBK rather than "collectivist" Megalithism? AFAIK there's nothing of the like but I may be wrong. Notice anyhow that "middle of the 4th millenium BCE" is extremely old for the Atlantic Islands, almost the beginning of Neolithic! So I think she's mixing apples and oranges in that late article, maybe because her advanced age at the time...
@Maju
So they are probably different people. When we get samples from early Iberian Bell Beakers they will probably be genetically different from Central and NW European ones. Probably Gimbutas was following these other Bell Beakers (she mentions the burials, the horses,...)
About the early Indo-Europeans in the British Islands, she references Bley 1989:
Jones-Bley, Karlene. 1989. The earliest Indo-Europeans in Neolithic Ireland. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
I couldn't find that (it's unpublished), but I found another paper by her about IE solar mythology. Regarding these Irish "kurgans", she writes:
"The area of Leinster in southeastern Ireland has produced a small group of burials known as the Linkardstown burials. Recent radiocarbon dates have shown them to be contemporary with the great megalithic tombs (around the mid fourth millennium BC) in the Boyne Valley, but prior to radiocarbon dating these burials had been thought to date from the end of the Neolithic (somewhere in the last half of the third millennium BC). Although it has been suggested there were similarities with the megalithic tombs (Ryan 1972: 19), these Linkardstown burials have generally been treated separately from the megalithic tombs (J. Raftery 1973; Herity and Eogan 1977; Harbison 1988; O'Kelly 1989), and the author has shown them to be quite different from megalithic tombs (Jones Bley 1989; Jones-Bley 1991).
The Linkardstown burials are defined as single male inhumations, under a mound, containing as the primary grave good a horizontal necked, round bottomed pottery vessel, with all over channel decoration and a basal motif (Jones-Bley 1991)."
Reading the paper now.
Maju, please! Don't try to lecture me about North German prehistory - I won't do that either when it comes to the Basque country or Iberia as a whole. If i want to learn something about dolmen, it takes me some 20min bicycle ride from where I live (doesn't really matter which direction, they are everywhere here).
You can just start with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baalberge_group
"An early example of the Funnelbeaker culture, the Baalberge ceramic style dates between 3800 - 3400 BC and belongs to the central German funnelbeaker phases TRB-MES II (3800-3500 BC) and TRB-MES III (3500-3350 BC). It developed out of phase TRB-MES I (4100-3800 BC), innovating under the influence of southeaster and western influences (Michelsberg culture and the late Lengyel culture). (..) But other aspects of the burials are very different from burials in the east, such as the placement of the hands over the mouth in an eating gesture (which is unknown in authentic kurgan sites) and the much less marked use of red ochre. In particular, there are no signs of the steppe kurgans that characterise the Kurgan culture."
If you want some more detail, also to understand that (and why) Nordic Megalithism is more than just Dolmen, and also includes Menhirs, stone cists and passage graves, you get a good overview here:
http://www.academia.edu/1346797/Megaliths_and_Identities._The_earliest_monuments_in_Europe_-_architecture_and_social_structures_5000-3000_cal_BC_
and an extensive analysis, with lots of great maps, here:
http://www.academia.edu/1438809/Megaliths_and_Funnel_Beakers_Societies_in_Change_4100-2700_BC
The Flintbek LA3 sequence (the one with the earliest C14-dated cart tracks so far) of transition from grave mounds (around 4,000 BC) via long barrows (3,800 BC) to Dolmen (3,500 BC) and passage graves (3,300 BC) is described on p. 37ff. Dozens of more detailed descriptions of the same transition can be easily found by googling "Flintbek megalithic" or similar.
Onur, I did not propose any haplogroups that would be original Turkic haplogroups. I accept your analysis, but we really do not know the language(s) spoken by several steppe groups that later became Turkic speakers.
If Genetiker is correct, Iron Age RISE554 from Afontova Gora is N(xN1c, N1a), i.e. a line that may have gone extinct in the East. The interesting thing is that according to Davidski he is higly Siberian (58%) and Native American (12%) and carries Afanasievo (17%) and European component (7%) but completely lacks Naxi and Atayal. Afontova Gora is dated c. 800 BC.
Similarly, RISE493, from the Karasuk, 1400-900BC, according to Genetiker Q1a1b1-L712, lacks Naxi and Atayal, but both Iron Age Q ydnas (Q1a1b-M25, Q1a1b-M143) carry Naxi and Atayal. So, that admixture with Han Chinese happened during the first millennium.
In “The complex admixture history and recent southern origins of Siberian populations” (http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/suppl/2015/04/30/018770.DC1/018770-1.pdf), they have showed that Yakuts consist of three populations: European, East Asian and North Siberian. They calculated that the first admixture happened between a European and Han Chinese population c. 600 BC and the second admixture happened c. 200 AD between the previous admixed population and a North Siberian population.
Currently, my understanding is that N1c and N1b arrived during the (early) Iron Age from Volga forest area, but of course I will accept the picture that emerges from the ancient yDNA when it is available.
I am not aware of any ancient yDNA C with an autosomal analysis, but yDNA C-M217 is found in Han Chinese and is even thought to have originated on the East Coast of China so I doubt that Turkic C-M217 would have originally been without the Han component.
@Kristiina
I do not think there is any individual in the ancient autosome data currently we have who we can securely designate as Proto-Turk. RISE504 from Kytmanovo, Altai, can be securely designated as Turkic, but he is from a time (about 800 AD) well after the Proto-Turkic period, he even postdates the Gokturk period. RISE504 has a Kyrgyz/Kazakh/Altaian-like autosomal profile, so he has all the autosomal ingredients typically we find in modern Turkic groups of the Asian Steppe.
As for your speculation about Y-DNA haplogroup C2-M217, I have to strongly disagree with you. It is a very long-established haplogroup in the northern parts of East Eurasia and is even found in the Americas since at least the arrival of the Na-Dené peoples. FYI, it was found in Xiongnu-era Mongolia. Nothing of it points to a connection with a Han-like autosomal profile, it is more Siberian than anything else. It may have originated many thousands of years ago in what is now China, but what is now China is not what it used to be many thousands of years ago.
FrankN
Thanks for central German update- it is as I suspected, although frustratingly, there appears to be little literature specifically 9at least in English)about the transition to CWC there.
As touched on already, the LN seems to have been a period of endemic violence, earliest in southeastern Europe (Varna-Karanavo, etc) c. 4500 BC, then also central Europe. Culturally, the proliferation of enclosed settlements and highly regionalised typologies gives the impression of numerous antagonistic, and often warring groups.
This appears to abate somewhat after 3000 BC. Although some conflict appears to have been involved in the transition from TRB to GAC to CWC, there is less evidence of mass killings. One reason, as Ryu asked, might be change in social fabric. Indeed, the social units of the transitional Copper Age in CWC, BB and Yamnaya appear predicated on individual family/ household units dispersed widely/ thinly across the landscape, but maintain close contacts nevertheless. This ties in with the population dip which preceded the CWC horizon. But it could also have to do with - as Frank mentioned - new funerary rituals. The image of "man as warrior" codified in CWC and BB burials was perhaps some form of outlet.
So it'll be very interesting to see how the transition to CWC in central Germany panned out in greater detail, given the proliferation of multiple different groups preceding. Because in other areas, there was definitely a demic movement - eg Netherlands which appears to have been virtually depopulated, or parts of southern Scandinavia - which was movement into thinly populated hunter-gather territory.
@ Maju
I need to correct you on certain point:
- I have to agree with Frank. Not everything with a pile of dirt over it is "Kurgan". There is little pinning Baalberg with Sredni Stog/ pre -Yamnaya. And we now know from genetics it has little direct connection. Just like we now know "Remedello" wasn't Kurgan. Just because it shares some common features with it, it deons't make it derivative. Rather, the reasons appear to be indirect - i.e. a rise in social complexity and a shared repertoire of elite symbolism.
- BB origins. This remains a controversial topic. the Iberian origin has come under sustained critique, partly because of controversies in carbon dating, and possible reservoir effects which stretch out the Iberian dates. Whatever the case, even if we accept that the earliest maritime Beakers were in Iberia, it doesn't mean the entire "beaker package' originated there. Indeed many other of its apsects originated elsewhere, - such as the All Over Ornamented beakers - from Netherlands (derived from CWC Beakers), wrist guards and solitary burials (central Europe). Thus, the early Iberian phase is often seen as "proto-Beaker", with full elaboration of the BB package occurring in central Europe, before then expanding (?"conquering"? back into Iberia.
- Sredni Stog: It is a very generic term, and in itself means little. I see people here, there and everywhere talking about Sredni Stog being proto-IE this, and the origin of CWC that. It's devoid of meaning, IMO
Rather, S.S. refers to an the entire Eneolithic on the western steppe (45/4200 - 33/ 3000 BC), and encapsulated numerous pre-Yamnaya cultures: Skelia, lower Mikhailovka, Dereivka, Repin, Khvalynsk, etc). We should specify which part of the steppe & what period we are talking about when formulating hypotheses.
@Romulus
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/PSM_V50_D602_World_cephalic_index_map.jpg
Interesting map although as Kristiina mentioned to me it looks more of a central/northern Eurasian thing centred around the Himalayas rather than an east vs west thing.
If there were multiple pulses of people from around that region that went coastwards and southwards then maybe something made them more doliocephalic.
(Personally I think the eurasian interior had low iodine and the locals developed - or borrowed from archaics - genes that partially compensated somehow so when people from those regions moved coastwards into high iodine regions their skulls changed.)
@Maju: Addendum on Baalberge "Kurgans":
According to u. Fischer's inventory of neolithic burials in the Elbe-Saale region (1956, but still frequently cited), the eponymous Baalberge burial mound included a stone cist with a 1.5 x 0.8 m cover plate of 5 t weight. Fischer lists 14 Baalberge mounds vs. 69 non-surmounted graves, though cautions that some mounds may have been destroyed. The majority of burials, nevertheless, were simple flat earth burials, often with the corpse just placed on a straw mat, sometimes in wooden or stone cists.
While single burials prevail, dual or multiple burials, mostly adults together with children, occur as well. A few burials in settlement pits (similar to the LBK practice) were also found as well. Baalberge burials in grave yards, together with other cultures, are quite common. This includes the samples from Karsdorf whom we owe the Baalberge aDNA.
The most impressive Baalberge burial is the Pohlsberg site, excavated in the early 20th century. A trapezoid inner chamber, with 1.72 and 1.64 m wide sandstone side plates, and a 2x1 m cover plate, was surrounded by a partly destroyed granite stone enclosure measuring at least 25 x 6 m. The covering mount had been frequently "recycled" (1 Benrburg, 2 CW, 5 "bronze-age", 3 unspecified neolitic graves, several of which with separate stone cists), so that the original size of the mount couldn't be determined anymore. The following link's photos provide an impression:
http://grosssteingraeber.de/seiten/deutschland/sachsen-anhalt/pohlsberg.php
While early social differentiation, and the classic Elbe-Saale multicultural context are wel visible, I think it requires quite some fantasy to turn Baalberge into a "Kurgan" culture.
As you asked for gallery graves - check the photos here (3,600-2,700 BC, culture unspecified, possibly Salzmünde or Bernburg):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro%C3%9Fsteingrab_Langeneichst%C3%A4dt
@Grey
Both Caucasoids and Mongoloids range from dolichocephal to brachycephal (Mongoloids have a higher percentage of brachycephals than Caucasoids, but that is another issue). The central part of Eurasia is the main zone of the Caucasoid-Mongoloid mixing. What makes that zone one of the most brachycephalic parts of the world is not the mixing itself but the fact that participants of the mixing were in general from the most brachycephalic varieties of the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races.
FrankN: If there are no dolmens, then it's less clear (or no clear at all) if the groups are affiliated with Dolmenism. The most common usage of the term passage grave refers to a dolmen with corridor (passage) but the term is ambiguous. In any case I can't find any reference to passage graves, collective burials and dolmens in Baalberge. Only your claims.
"But other aspects of the burials are very different from burials in the east, such as the placement of the hands over the mouth in an eating gesture"...
LOL, that's also uncommon in Dolmenism and in any culture I know of. Whatever it means is a unique development of Baalberge but that's how culture evolves. It seems that almost everything else is very much the same as the Kurgan burials of the East, so please allow for minimalistic cultural evolution in details such as those, thanks for your comprehension in the name of Baalberge's Kurgan People for allowing them to accumulate a minimal mutation in their funerary memes.
Wow! I thought you were more serious, really. You are actually backing my claims but pretending you are not. What feels very weird.
I'll read your link but I'm not asking for generic dissertations but about a Dolmenism yes or not answer for a very specific case such as Baalberge. The answer seems to be "no", Michelsberg, Danish TRBK are instead "yes".
Similarly I'm asking not for minor mememtic mutations in the Kurgan burials of Baalberge culture but for a yes/no answer as for their Kurgan affiliation. The answer is clearly "yes".
@Alberto: looks intriguing: mounds, horses, very early dates. I'd like to know if the pottery is comparable to anything else we know of.
@Rob: genetically Baalberge and derived sequences are the first ones in the area to have some "teal", so there is some possible connection, but only if you're willing to accept realistic complexity and low frequency (elite?, admixed sub-group?) migration.
It is unrelated (and in fact the opposite) to the Remedello case, which, as with Baden, just does not have anything Kurganish in its archaeology (Gimbutas just had that part totally wrong but she nailed it with Baalberge as far as I can discern, to Caesar what is of Caesar, both the right and the wrong). It's not because of genetics, at least not primarily so, but because of culture.
As for what you say re. BB origins, I think you'd have to elaborate much more, with references and what-not. I'm very skeptic honestly: I'm trying to understand AOC too and yet have no clear idea. Ask Bellbeakerblogger but, if I recall correctly, the last time we discussed it it seemed apparent that AOC is not older than Maritime style, that both styles appear at very early dates in the south also, etc. I know it looks shallowly weird because AOC should (should?) be related to Corded Ware but the reality is that the world is full of all kinds of very similar but unrelated corded styles in pottery decoration, so it needs some other evidence and that evidence is not coming forth.
Re. Sredny-Stog II I agree that it has low meaning because there's a wild variety of cultures or subcultures partaking of the layer. What is clear and relevant is that it included the earliest kurgans in the area and that it was an almost necessary stepping stone for developments further West such as Baalberge and Cernavoda.
"pre-Yamnaya cultures: Skelia, lower Mikhailovka, Dereivka, Repin, Khvalynsk, etc)."
You have to understand that Yamnaya is not the origin of Kurgans, Samara and Khvalynsk are. Yamnaya is already on the way to Indo-Iranians (my interpretation at least).
@Rob: "Although some conflict appears to have been involved in the transition from TRB to GAC to CWC.. Because in other areas, there was definitely a demic movement - eg Netherlands which appears to have been virtually depopulated."
You may have misunderstood me here. There was always demic movement, but rarely much conflict involved in the Central German cultural transitions, including MC->TRB (Baalberge->Bernburg)->GAC->CWC. They pretty much all lived together multiculutrally next to each other, often in the same settlements, and burying their dead on the same graveyards (The Karsdorf cemetary, right next to Nebra, e.g., has supplied aDNA from LBK throgh to Unetice).
We have quite some violence along the Rhine during the final phase of the LBK, possibly inflicted by the La Hoguette Group that later morphed into Rössen and also influenced MC. Rhinish MC had a lot of "war of the mega-sites", but the MC/Baalberge relation further east apparently worked well, with a ca. 100 km wide "mixing zone" that includes MC and Baalberge burials/ structures together. The same applies to GAC's advance from the East.
There was, however, one late 4th mBC troublemaker (or always getting into trouble) - expansionist, copper-processing, sword-loving, with horse burials: The Baden folks - Gimbutas prototypical IEs! Their preference for human sacrifice en masse, preferably on women, children, and physically disabled, has been documented from Hungary (link), and to a lesser extent also from Salzmünde.
http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/ak/article/view/18628/12442
First, they tried to expand up the Danube, quite successful by 3,400 BC. By 3,200 BC, they had to withdraw from there again (link, comp. Fig. 10/11).
http://www.aegeobalkanprehistory.net/article.php?id_art=17
While failed colonisation attempts in Suebia are archeologically documented, I am not aware of documented violence, for one exception, of course: Ötzi! A "copper man", culturally associated to the Mondsee culture (Baden offspring), with his axe originating from there (and his Sr/PB isotope values matching the North Tyrolean Mitterberg area), shot dead in a region living from processing and exporting Alpine greenstone...
The Lesser Poland case is more clear-cut - GAC cut off the Baden settlement zone around Cracow from their traditional toolstone supply.
And in Central Germany, there is ample evidence of a militarised border evolving along the line Erfurt-Halle-Potsdam-Stettin around 3,300 BC, when the Salzmünde Culture had evolved as Baden offspring. By 3,100 BC, Salzmünde was gone, the Bernburg people cut their graves through the Salzmünde burials in obvious disrespect, while in Thuringia various GAC settlements appeared on former Salzmünde sites. This explains some (though probably not all) of the violence peak around 3,000 BC.
But more importantly, it shows how utterly wrong Gimbutas has been: The horse-riding, bronze-sword swinging patriarchalic Steppe (Puszta) people were kicked ass by equally patriarchalic, but stone-axe swinging "Old Europeans"...
What else?
- Recent German conference abstracts indicate that the "quite some violence, but seldom deadly" pattern for LN seems to hold; healed injuries and weapon gifts in burials are strongly correlated, pointing at some kind of "warrior" (or "gladiator"?) caste;
- the Eulau massacre was around 2,500 BC, i.e. when BB emerged (though the likely culprit was the post-FB Schönefelder culture)
- The following paper sees CW in the Netherlands as a primqarily cultural phenomenon, linked to the emergence of supra-regional exchange networks, which involved movement of imdividuals, but was far from population replacement.
http://www.academia.edu/12858044/Corded_Ware_Coastal_Communities_Using_ceramic_analysis_to_reconstruct_third_millennium_BC_societies_in_the_Netherlands
@Rob said "The earliest “proto-Kurgan’ culture now dates to 45/ 4200 BC, centred squarely on the Dnieper, not the Volga."
Nope. Even if you would question the (almost necessary) evolution in Samara culture, Khvalynsk culture is clearly the effective origin of Kurgan expansion. From Khvalynsk we can see the four primary branches of Indoeuropean migrating in three directions (Afanesvo for Tocharian, Maykop for Anatolian, Sredny-Stog for macro-Western IE: branch to Baalberge for Western IE proper, other branches for Greek, Armenian...) or staying put for the time being (Yamna, for Indo-Iranian). You seem to be disdaining Khvalynsk and therefore overly complicating the rational interpretation of the IE ethno-linguistic phenomenon. You are not even arguing why you may reject Khvalynsk and Samara genesis, just trying to deform the genesis towards what seems to be your pet theory: Cucutenism. I'm sorry to inform you again that Cucuteni, as interesting as it is, has absolutely nothing to do with Kurgans: there's no possible connection whatsoever. Also, you need older dates than the ones you spouse to explain Afanesevo, Maykop → Kura-Araxes, Yamna, Baalberge, Cernavoda-related kurgans and in general the full Kurgan phenomenon. I'm not really sure what you're talking about in the Dniepr but you are almost certainly talking about a secondary phenomenon and phase in the Kurgan evolution.
I partly agree with what you say about weapons however: the hippy-dippy vision of "Old Europe" must be questioned very seriously. There were a lot of different cultures with distinct and unique evolutions and at least some of them clearly shows sign of hierarchy and some bellicosity. It's partly unfair to blame all this only to Kurgan invaders, as it's unfair to blame feudalism and the fall of Rome only to Germanic invaders. Said that, the IE ideology (religion) does seem to be more individualist and "pro-winner" (even if the winner cheats, what matters is winning not how), something that seems to be lacking in the Old Religion (assuming it was a single thing and that it can be related to Basque mythology).
"... there really isn’t any evidence of much horse-back warfare until the late 3rd millennium".
There's evidence of increased mobility, which seems to support horse being involved. Fighting would still be probably on foot (mounted infantry style, also wagons). Anyhow horses appear in the Khvalynsk burial sites, which are of the 5000-4500 BCE period, so quite older than Botai. They appear with other domesticates (oxen, sheep), so not treated as hunt but as cattle.
"We now know the earliest Yamnaya like monuments west of the Black Sea date to c. 3000 BC".
No. We have kurgans in the Balcans, Hungary and East Germany long before that. What you say about Cernavoda kurgans being "CT" is just all kinds of wrong, same for what you say about denying the "Kurganness" of Baalberge based on a minor detail. Cernavoda and related groups/cultures were extremely disruptive in the Eastern Balcans, where they define a before (Danubian) and after (Kurgan or Dniepr-Don like). And that "after" leads directly to Thracians and probably also Greeks, so IE.
Agreed in general terms as for your later "wrongs".
@FrankN:
"While single burials prevail, dual or multiple burials, mostly adults together with children, occur as well".
Those are just variants of the single burial style, as opposed to the "collective" (I prefer "clannic" or "sequential") characteristic of Dolmenism and other related traditions.
... "a stone cist"...
Not a characteristic type: you can't just define "Megalithism" out of the use of stones, even if you are perfectly entitled to suspect a non-defining contact influence (much more clear in the use of funnelbeaker pottery anyhow).
"The majority of burials, nevertheless, were simple flat earth burials, often with the corpse just placed on a straw mat, sometimes in wooden or stone cists".
Individual burials of either kurgan or, more likely, local Danubian substrate roots. Nothing Megalithic in them. But there are kurgan burials in Baalberge and that's a tell-tale signature of an elite that retains, with minor variations, their steppe tradition. And in the case of Baalberge is not just an accident nor something that came and went, because Baalberge is at the ultimate root of later very influential cultures, notably Corded Ware (regardless of the secondary Catacomb influence, which is real but of limited impact).
"I think it requires quite some fantasy to turn Baalberge into a "Kurgan" culture".
I think instead that it requires a good deal of imagination to reject it. I quote from Wikipedia: "The first tumulus graves in central Germany also come from this culture". But you have been more explicit yourself in a previous comment, so I think it's unnecessary. Salzmünde also uses tumuli, although there seems to be a general decline in the practice (for example Globular Amphorae) until the Corded Ware "revival" of it.
"As you asked for gallery graves - check the photos here"...
Thank you. They do seem Dolmenic on first sight but I lament not being able to read about burial practices (collective or individualist burial?) and internal structure (dolmen yes or not?) In my next life I'll learn some German...
@ Maju
* Re: BB
-> I have no strong opinions or niche expertise. I'm just recalling current debates and issues. I agree with you in that BB was a sort of phenomenon which took hold over wide areas of central & western Europe. But it appears certain factions then grew to dominate it. The current consensus is that these were R1b, eastern Euro admixed guys from central Europe, rather than Iberia. But lets wait for more samples from western Europe. :)
* RE: Samara , Khvalynsk and "Kurgans"
"Sredny-Stog II I agree that it has low meaning because there's a wild variety of cultures or subcultures partaking of the layer. What is clear and relevant is that it included the earliest kurgans in the area and that it was an almost necessary stepping stone for developments further West such as Baalberge and Cernavoda"
That's not quite correct, because you're just lumping together everything into one category. We need to sub-classify different types of Kurgans, and treatment of body position. Somewhat different conclusiosn come to the fore.
True, low mounds and stone cairns can be found as early as Late Neolithic/ early Eneolithic areas of southern Russia and Ukraine. But there is no proof that the began in the Samara culture specifically, rather they were spread across the area, incl post-Mariupol areas of Azov, Dneper, Donets, etc. In fact, "It has been noted that the earliest “symbolic period” in the development of steppe monumental architectureis limited to a steppe zone between the Northern Caucasus and the Balkan-Carpathians (Rassamakin 2002,p. 60-63). The emergence of these constructions is infuenced by external impulses. The first one is connected to the development of the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province (Chernykh et al. 1991) and the shaping of an exchange system of prestige goods. The second one is connected to the new Pre-Maikop cultural system (settlements of Svobodnoe, Meshoko, etc.) of the Northern Caucasus. The steppe populations represented by elite burials were involved in this exchange network of prestige goods (Rassamakin 1999, p. 97-112). The emergence of individual burials with prestigious grave goods and the appearance of ritual constructions in the steppe zone between the Northern Caucasus and the Carpathian-Danube region resulted from the development of a new economic and social “world system”. They illustrate the response of a certain stratum of the early pastoral population to its first contacts with early agricultural societies. This process resulted in changes in the spiritual life
of the steppe population (initially elite groups only?) and the development of a new funerary tradition."
So Samara, Volga, etc, was peripheral to all this, as the aDNA evidence (if you've been keeping up) confirms.
(2) there is then a kurganles period on the steppe (were you aware?). 4200 - 3800 BC, burials on the steppe are only in flat pits. Probably related to the demise of the CBMP to which the steppe chiefs relied on.
(3) When they re-appear again (3800 BC), under the Kurgans were 4 different positions: 1 – extended supine position (with straight legs); 2 – supine with legs
flexed in various ways including sessile and disarticulated orientations, characteristic of flat cemeteries; 3 – flexed position on the side, with one arm bent and the other extended, or with both arms extended toward the knees; 4 – strongly flexed position on the side with bent arms and hands in front of the face
(4) By the Yamnaya period (33/3000 BC), there is a homogenization of burial treatment. Again, the major formative influences on the rites are from CT and Majkop.
What we see, after a careful, up to date analysis, is actually a very different picture to what you describe. It appears that the steppe was constantly subject to influences, if not movements from its agricultural surrounds. True, sometime c. 3000 BC these steppe groups might then have 'refluxed' back out. But that remains to be proven. In fact, I very much doubt it. By 2500 BC, Yamnaya was collapsing, and the succeeding Catacomb culture was restricted to the Dnieperian heartlands. Perhaps a stray L51 group fled westward to gain a foothold in BB territory, to 'suddenly explode' in dominance of western Europe (as the current narrative espoused by most genealogy enthusiasts would go).
@Rob, please do not make up a fake "consensus" out of your own ideas. Also I'd like to avoid conflating genetics and archaeology until the data is comprehensive enough, what is not. Otherwise we'd have to go (again?!) about which are the likely origins of the various lineages and I have already stated that R1b-S116 can only originate somewhere in France, rather towards the South. I say no (with good arguments) so there is no "consensus": I veto it (and anyone looking at all sides of the issue, really).
Maju
I clearly stated that that is the current consensus on the blogosphere. I didn't say I necessarily agree with it or we should be take it as gospel. In fact my mind is very much open on the matter, but one does have to move with the evidence prevailing
"there is then a kurganles period on the steppe (were you aware?). 4200 - 3800 BC"
Nope:
→ https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/16087
Together with archaeological and paleopedological data, 14C dating helped to clarify and, in general, to confirm the 3-stage periodization of the Pit-Grave culture [Yamna] in the Volga-Ural interfluve: the early (Repino) stage, 4000–3300 BC; the advanced (classical) stage, 3300–2600 BC, which is divided into substages A and B at 3300–2900 and 2900–2600 BC, respectively; and the late (Poltavkinsky) stage, 2600–2300 BC.
All mentioned dates are from kurgan burials.
→ http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/courses/51/Ling512011PIENeolithic.pdf
Khvalynsk Culture: 4700-3800
Khvalynsk seems to overlap with Early Yamna. Actually it seems to me that the Repino (or Repin) phase is attributed to either one depending only on author.
I agree that the issue of burial position and other details looks interesting but I do not think it overwrites the defining importance of the kurgan monument as such and the individualistic characteristic of its primary burials.
"By 2500 BC, Yamnaya was collapsing, and the succeeding Catacomb culture was restricted to the Dnieperian heartlands".
But Catacombs does not supersede Yamna in all its territory. Yamna is succeeded by Poltavka in its core area of the Volga. There seems to be surprising continuity in this core area: Khvalynsk → Yamna → Poltavka → Srubna (arguably proto-Cimmerians) and Sintashta→Andronovo (proto-Indo-Iranians). So basically we can talk of a branch leading to Indo-Iranian (regardless of whatever Western lesser influences, i.e. Abashevo, in the Sintashta genesis) that stayed put all the time in the Caspian steppe, until spilled over already in the Bronze Age.
"... the current consensus on the blogosphere"...
Can you cite a single blog supporting that idea other than this one? I doubt even Dienekes subscribes to it. Ah, maybe Razib? I stopped follwing his blog since it's like 98% ultra-conservative politics and only 2% anthropology. Or am I missing some new blogs I should follow?
Onur
"What makes that zone one of the most brachycephalic parts of the world is not the mixing itself but the fact that participants of the mixing were in general from the most brachycephalic varieties of the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races."
Yes, that's what i'm saying also - both brachycephalic there and both more doliocephalic southwards and coastwards.
@Maju: .. "a stone cist"...Not a characteristic type: you can't just define "Megalithism" out of the use of stones,
I don't have to. There is agreement between German, Danish and Swedish archeology that stone cists are part of the repertoire of Nordic Megalithism. Possibly, you are not quite aware of the cists' dimensions (in Sweden up to 14m length). Check the pictures here
https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenkiste_(ligkiste)
Wikipedia: "The first tumulus graves in central Germany also come from this culture".
I have highlighted the crucial word in that statement. If you had read the Müller papers that I had linked, you would have realised that tumulus burials in Nordic Funnelbeaker predate their rare occurence in Baalberge.
However, if you look for the first burial mound that only holds one individual, with rich grave goods marking strong social differentiation, you'll find it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Michel_tumulus
And that tells you all that needs to be known about the cultural genesis of Nordic Megalithism, and the elements found therein.
Another interesting Kurgan culture is found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture
And we even have Sioux "sunka" vs. Sanskr. "sunaka", both meaning "dog". Great, isn't it - Kurgans and Indo-European, what more does it need for a convincing archeological story...
Now, let's get serious again:
As concerns Bell Beakers: The recent Irish aDNA study has identified genetic affinity between Rathlin1 (but not anymore the subsequent samples) and the BB from Benzigerode-Heimburg, pointing at spread from Germany, most likely via Southern England, to Ireland. This is puzzling, since I am well aware of Iberian BB predating Central Europe.
However - how reliable are the Iberian C14 datings? Have they been checked for reservoir effects? To the extent we are dealing with human samples from the coast, I could imagine significant aquatic food sources. Shell-tempered beakers are even worse when it comes to resevoir effects.
[The whole story of Ertebolle pottery is just in the process of being rewritten. The oldest dating was obtained from an incrustation; unfortunately, the pot had been used for preparing fish soup. For control, they caught a trout from the nearest river, and had it C14 dated to 1400 AD. Oops..]
@ Frank
Thanks for clarifying.!
Maju
About R1b-L51. How do u see it arriving to France in the first place, and acquiring it's EHG / CHG components ?
Maju
"Nope" doesn't constitute argument. The periodization you mention doesn;t negate the very real fact -based on radiocarbon evidence from Ukraine itself - that there was a 400 year period when *there were no Kurgans built*. This is different from suggesting there was no settlement or burials at all. Please read more carefully.
.
The general consensus also dates Yamnaya is now actually dated from 33/ 3000 BC (Rassamakin, Kaiser, Heyd, Ivanova), and everything before that (Repin, Khvalysnk) is not considered part of Yamnaya sensu strictu, but is 'pre-Yamnaya", or broadly the "Sredni Stoj-Khvalysnk horizon" which is Eneolithic (4200 - 3200 BC)
Your reconstructions look like something one might encounter on Wikipedia, with arrows "exploding" from one point source. I don't think that's how it panned out .
@Grey
Yes, that's what i'm saying also - both brachycephalic there and both more doliocephalic southwards and coastwards.
True. BTW, do you explain the recent worldwide debrachycephalization trend as a result of the increasing consumption of seafood and other iodine-rich products?
Onur
"recent worldwide debrachycephalization trend"
I didn't know about that until you said as i got the idea purely from reading about the ancient stuff but if i had known i would have said so, yes.
@Frank: sorry about not having been able yet to read the Müller paper but I've been replying to the Internet for the last three hours and a half (and honestly beginning to feel quite tired). By the moment I'll take your word for it that cists are part of what you call "Nordic Megalithism", still not within the tradition if they are not "collective" burials and they are not in the case of Baalberge certainly.
So you think that tumular burials are, at least in some cases, part of some sort of peculiar package stemming from Brittany. That's an intriguing idea and I'll make an effort of chewing on it. However I find two difficulties: (1) can the dating of St. Michel mound be sustained? (5000 BCE seems way too old for such a monument and the data I can find about it seems all suspiciously old, from the 19th century, to be credible) and (2) how does it connect with the rest, unique "out of context" findings are typically regarded with justified suspicion in archaeological research and cultures are defined by more than unique findings. But I'm indeed intrigued about the possibility that non-dolmenic mounds appear in Northern Europe, so I promise I'll be a good boy and read the Müller paper when I get some time.
As for Mississipian: LOL. I guess you're trying to be sarcastic, so deserved LOL. Interesting culture in any case.
"The recent Irish aDNA study has identified genetic affinity between Rathlin1 (but not anymore the subsequent samples) and the BB from Benzigerode-Heimburg, pointing at spread from Germany"...
Well, I don't really even know where you get that from, really. The most outstanding affinity of all three Raithlin individuals is, curiously enough, KO1, an Epi-Magdalenian guy from Hungary. In the case of R1, your claimed "ascendancy" from Benzigerode-Heimburg ranks only fourth, after KO1, SHG and EHG and barely above Lochsbour. It's not at all as clear cut as you present it although there should be some origin for the "teal" element, which cannot be attributed to the various HGs mentioned.
In this issue my interest is focused on KO1 and whatever it may represent. Accidentally I just happened to go through my own forgotten notes on a craniometric study of Neolithic Europe and a notable detail is that Köros farmers from Hungary were craniometrically out of the general Neolithic pattern and instead very similar to Danish TRBK. I'm not any believer in craniometrics but I don't like to disdain a potentially good lead either. Food for thought.
"However - how reliable are the Iberian C14 datings?"
Beats me. Ask Bellbeakerblogger, he may know. It's not just Iberia anyhow but also SE France and North Italy. And the gap is quite large: three centuries!
@Rob: "The periodization you mention doesn;t negate the very real fact -based on radiocarbon evidence from Ukraine itself - that there was a 400 year period when *there weere no Kurgans built*"
I'm pointing to sources, you aren't (why should I believe your word?) Also I'm talking of the Volga and you are now talking of Ukraine (when earlier you used the term "the steppe" instead). Who is the one being sloppy here?
"everything before that (Repin, Khvalysnk) is not considered part of Yamnaya sensu strictu, but is 'pre-Yamnaya""
Whatever (I never said Khvalynsk is Yamna but a precursor (and the source of all other Kurgan cultures such as Maykop, Afanasevo and the ones to the West, in Europe proper) and I already mentioned that Repino's affiliation varies by author and may be considered transitional). What matters is: is there continuity in kurgan construction and usage? The answer as far as I can tell is a rotund "yes".
@Rob: "About R1b-L51. How do u see it arriving to France in the first place, and acquiring it's EHG / CHG components ?"
Well, first of all, a haploid lineage is distinct of whatever autosomal components that may be associated with it. For example Iranian Q and Native American Q, Finnish N1c and Altaic N1c, Irish R1b and Chadic R1b, etc. all involve different autosomal genetics, yet a clear unique common patrilineal ancestor.
So I am all the time considering just the patrilineage as such, I focus on R1b-S116/P312 because it shows a clear apparent origin, I don't care much about its ancestor R1b-L51/M412 because it only left a weak unclear trail, so S116 is definitely a distinct founder effect on its own right (as is its "brother" U106 at a separate location). If you wish to consider these two as a joint founder effect (most unclear to me but not impossible) you need to consider the distribution of their direct "father", which would be per the current knowledge P311. It is not a well studied node however, so I'll give a thought to M412 (the "grandfather") for a moment here: M412* is found at low to very low frequencies in many different parts of Europe, not much can be said about it other that it is a diffuse stage where the Western European lineage(s) get separated from its West Asian relatives (and other relatives found in the Balcans, Volga, Sardinia, Uyghuristan, Sudan, etc., all them irrelevant for the matter at hand). A possibility is that it arrived as a minor lineage within mainline Neolithic and then had one or two founder effects in the Far West. Another possibility is that it was already present in HGs and then the same happened after due admixture.
As for the "teal" component, the most significant thing I can say is that Basques are 90% R1b-S116 and nearly zero "teal" (the less Caucasian of all Europe, very clearly), so I don't see any apparent connection. In general R1b-S116 (and R1b-L51 in general) is negatively correlated with the "teal" element, so I fail to see any relation.
@ Maju
"M412* is found at low to very low frequencies in many different parts of Europe, not much can be said about it other that it is a diffuse stage where the Western European lineage(s) get separated from its West Asian relatives (and other relatives found in the Balcans, Volga, Sardinia, Uyghuristan, Sudan, etc., all them irrelevant for the matter at hand)."
You mean groups like Z2103 and PF7563 ?
Irrelevant ? Hhhm.
Onur, as for C-217, Turkic, as well as Mongolic and Tungusic groups seem to have several haplotypes, at least C2c, C2*(xC2c), C2e and apparently even C2b. C3e is close to a Chinese line and has been found in North China (Dashanqian, Jinggouzi). I tried to google for Genghis Khan’s haplotype and I found somewhere that it would be C2b1c-F4002 or M504. It has really an interesting distribution:
C2b-F1396/L1373 a Japanese.
C2b1-F1699.
C2b1a-F3918 an American Indian.
C2b1a1a-P39 only North American Indian tribes.
C2b1a1b-F1756 or F3985, DYS448 has null value, Central Asian.
C2b1b-M48 Central Asians, some with double DYS19.
C2b1c-F4002 or M504, usually DYS388=14, Mongolians "Genghis Khan" group.
C2b1d-Z22424 Europeans.
C2b2-P48, in small numbers in Yakut-speaking Evenks and Yukaghir in Siberia.
C2b2a-M86/M77 in 70% of the western Evenks, 15% of the Yukaghirs, 12% of the Yakut-speaking Evenks, 9% of the Tuvans and some Yakuts. Is there too in Altaian Kazaks, Todjines, Tuvinians, Yakuts, Buryats, Kalmucks and Evenks.
C2b2a1 has a number of men with a double DYS19 value, is found at Altaian Kazacks, Kalmucks, Tuvinians, Mongols and Todjis.
C2b2a1/DYS448=0 in Kazackstan.
(I hope they have not changed letters! Please correct if the letters are wrong!)
C2b is surely Arctic/Siberian and the age of its STR variation is 13 kya. C2c is slightly younger and it is typical for Tungusic people and Beringian populations. C2e is young, only 5 kya. C2e looks like being close to Northern HAN.
@ Maju
I'm glad you had convinced yourself, but please note:
"The earliest kurgan-type burials appear in the Skelya cultural region. Rassamakin posits that the Early Eneolithic saw the " the emergence of a mutually beneficial system of exchange between the steppe populations and the production centers of the agricultural world" (p. 112)Ðthe closest being the Cucuteni-Tripolye and the furthest Varna. Thus, he precludes any advance of a first wave of warlike kurgan people coming from the Volga or Caspian.
Middle Eneolithic (3800 (3700) - 3500/3400 BC). Following an unexplained "Steppe Hiatus (4100 [4000] - 3800 [3700], the Middle Eneolithic emerged under the pressure of strong Cucuteni-Tripolye B2-C1 influence. However, the Cucuteni-Tripolye world had become disunited creating an eastern-western split. "
Quote taken from summary here http://www.csen.org/Articles_Reivews/Levine_Review.html
Full article, with table of C14 "- Eneolithic burial mounds in the Black Sea steppe
from the first burial symbols to monumental ritual architecture". Y Rassamakin
(avail. on line, plus other articles of his on Academia.edu)
@ FrankN
Frank, we now know some things that prior archaeologists don't; for example, we know that at least some people in the Corded Ware horizon were probably migrants from their autosomal composition, so at least some of the processes at the time was migrationist. From the identical Y-chromosome sequences in some Yamnaya sites we know that some evidence exists for patrilocality and kin-based social and political groups for males, while in the Khvalynsk genomes we have some evidence for an association of ancestry with social status.
Just wondering, have you read the supplementary information of the Allentoft and Reich papers, and their archaeological descriptions of the samples? As others have commented, the samples differ greatly in autosomal composition, some differ in Y-dna, and so on. It should be relatively easy to my mind to add this to pre-existing archaeological information. E.g. the controversy regarding whether or not household size and nuclear vs extended families decreased in Corded Ware vs Funnelbeaker and other Neolithic cultures, shouldn't this be quite easy to solve from Y-DNA of people buried close in space? Likewise whether or not social stratification existed in CW, and whether it is associated with an intrusive elite. Though this requires attention to detail and a lot of poring over letters and numbers and matching the supp info figs with the archaeological context. Just wondering if anyone has done this yet.
@ Maju
"Yamna is succeeded by Poltavka in its core area of the Volga. There seems to be surprising continuity in this core area: Khvalynsk → Yamna → Poltavka → Srubna (arguably proto-Cimmerians) and Sintashta→Andronovo (proto-Indo-Iranians). "
Maju, do you call a whole-scale replacement of Yamnaya R1b- Z2013 to Srubnaya R1a -Z93 "continuity" ?
Frank
I will further get back to you about Baden. I think its a fascinating horizon. It marks an continuity from the Copper Age to Bronze age - albeit not a linear one - otherwise lacking in southeastern Europe, outside of Cucuteni - Tripolje. Its expansion north, west and south obviously had transformative effects to adjacent cultures, possibly catalyzing the formation / emergence of GAC (?) as an oppositional entity.
Ill get back to this topic after Ive sorted and summarized several papers from compendiums on it.
Y-chromosomes of ruling elites, which is what the people buried in the Kurgans arguably were, may have changed when ruling clans were deposed by other local clans.
But in the case of the shift from Yamnaya/Poltavka to Srubnaya, it's not just a change in Y-chromosomes.
The Srubnaya people were a new, genetically more western population in the Volga area, which probably already arrived during the Poltavka period, because Poltavka outlier was of the same genetic type as Srubnaya.
They probably came from the western part or edge of the steppe or forest steppe, bringing with them R1a-Z93 and admixture from Middle Neolithic European farmers who lived west of the steppe.
I don't think Maju has looked into this. He doesn't seem to be aware of it.
@ Dave
"But in the case of the shift from Yamnaya/Poltavka to Srubnaya, it's not just a change in Y-chromosomes.
The Srubnaya people were a new, genetically more western population in the Volga area, which probably already arrived during the Poltavka period, because Poltavka outlier was of the same genetic type as Srubnaya."
Yes, that was my very point.
Long, interesting debates here. Thanks for all the comments (Rob, Maju, FrankN, etc...)
Maju: Those Irish burials are indeed interesting and might help to understand many of the things that are being debated. There was indeed some pottery, and it is remarkably similar to later one found in Bell Beaker site in Portugal. From the paper (this time correct link, I hope):
"...two of the Linkardstown vessels, the ones from Drimnagh and Ballintruer More, were specifically compared to one vessel from a Beaker site at Palmella, Portugal (Cartailhac 1886: figs. 159-16) (fig. 1.6). The resemblance is remarkable but no more so than the resemblance to the Fat'janovo motifs. It was because of this resemblance to the Iberian Beaker pottery that the date of not only the Drimnagh site but also the entire group of Linkardstown burials was dated to the late Neolithic. It was not until 1983 when the radiocarbon dates of three of the Linkardstown sites came down and centered around 3500 BC (Brindley et al. 1983), that it became clear that the Linkardstown burials were 1000-1500 years earlier than what had previously been expected. Moreover, these radiocarbon dates firmly established the appearance of a motif, which has frequently been referred to as a sun motif and which can be connected to IE culture, in Ireland long before the IE speaking Celts. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that this motif is not found on pottery from megalithic tombs or on any Irish neolithic pottery [...] The next appearance of this motif in Ireland comes on Food Vessels..."
These Food Vessels are the ones connected with the Rathlin samples, some 1500 years later. Later she says:
"I would suggest that the Linkardstown graves are an example of failed Indo-Europeanization. That is, sometime in the mid fourth millennium BC, a small group of people, who carried with them the IE burial tradition and religious beliefs, entered Ireland. I do not suggest the bearers of these early IE traditions were Celts. For a short while they survived but eventually died out without leaving their traditions, and for our purposes here solar symbolism, intact. Only around 1500 years later when IE traditions and solar symbolism were flourishing in the rest of Europe did these traditions return to Ireland. The archaeology does not tell us if these were Celtic speakers."
Cont...
And this is a quote from another work by Gimbutas ("The civilization of the Goddess", 1991) about these burials:
"The Linkardstown tombs of eastern-central Ireland are a totally different type [from the Neolithic tombs of Ireland]. These are found in stone cists under round mounds, but unlike all of the megalithic tombs they are not receptacles for communal burials but are for single burials only. The eight that are considered in the Linkardstown group, and an additional twenty-two which are considered related, all contained the unburnt remains of an adult male. These burials are indications of the primacy of males within this culture. A few contained additional remains, usually a child or a younger person, and one site contained a cremation along with the inhumation. Although there may be more than one person in the tomb, the burial rite was performed only once and then the tomb was permanently closed. There is no evidence of an ongoing ritual as is present in the megalithic tombs.
The major grave good of these burials is a highly decorated round-bottomed clay bowl with a horizontal neck. The decoration covered the entire vessel and on all but one, a cruciform or rayed pattern covered the bottom . . .
These Linkardstown tombs are extremely important because they show the earliest evidence of single burial in Ireland and a completely different approach to burial than that provided by the megalithic tradition. They represent the Kurgan (Indo-European) tradition as convincingly demonstrated by Karlene Jones-Bley in her dissertation of 1989. Solar patterns on pottery belong to an alien ideology brought by people who buried their dead in single graves under round mounds. Analogies are known across the Channel in the Rhine and Upper Danube region where the earliest solar patterns emerged in the Rössen and Aichbühl-Schwieberdingen groups dated to the period of 4300-3900 B.C. (see chap. 10)."
So basically (and simplistically, of course) I see 2 options:
- Or Gimbutas 1st wave was real and we'll find steppe types some day in those burials when we get DNA from them.
- Or what Gimbutas called Indo-Europeanization was a phenomenon completely unrelated to the steppe, which probably received this Indo-Europeanization from West Asia and Europe.
Ironically, that paper about the IE solar symbols ends up referring to the Swastika, whose name is taken from a Rig Veda hymn. The Swastika that was profusely used in the Vinca culture and Harappan civilization.
@Rob: That there is a beneficial trade (?) does not preclude that, at some point, the barbarians do not invade the civilized ones. Cucuteni lasted more than Karanovo-Gumelnita (Varna) so it's fair to consider IF there was a better relation between the Kurganites and CT or if just CT was not wealthy enough to bother plundering excepting the occasional slave raid. These are secondary considerations in any case.
"Im shocked you're unaware of a glaring half millenium gap".
In Ukraine? I have a sense of deja vu, maybe it arose in a previous discussion? However this seems to contradict what you say about the "the lesser-known (...) Skelya culture". You should not be "shocked" in any case, these are abstruse subjects and we all may be missing important but obscure details; you should be pedagogic instead: share and debate.
"Im also surprised that you had no clue that later Yamnaya kurgans share little direct typological parallels to earliest ones from the Skelya culture".
I was totally unaware until now about this Skelya culture (and actually can't find too much info on it, at least not without reading long materials first). Probably I'm used to consider it part of the Sredny-Stog II horizon (same geography, seemingly same period) but I'm intrigued about the alternative organization of the phase that Ramassakin seems to propose: one with various cultures and one that maybe is not so dependent of invasions from the Volga but a semi-autonomous development based on Dniepr-Don. Am I getting it right? This could for example explain why Corded Ware does not carry Volga type R1b nor Central Asian type R1a-Z93 but the Dniepr-centric variants of R1a. Just thinking loud but makes some sense. It can also explain why Ezero does not display Kurgan features proper but rather Dniepr-Don typology of burials (extended position with ochre) and yet it is clearly part of the wider Kurgan expansion wave(s). Etcetera.
So I'm interested indeed. It may enrich my and our understanding of the fine details of the Kurgan expansion phenomenon. Also if there is a late Dniepr-Don stepping stone, rather than having to look for specifically Kurgan elements necessarily, it may become easier to explain Kurgans in Baalberge, because Dniepr-Don derived cultures (Pitted Ware) were already moving in Northwestern direction quite earlier and the first Central European Kurgans may have partly ridden on that wave.
Surprise you or not it does make some sense to me, so I'm willing to learn more about that (but not to consider Cucuteni ancestral to Kurgans, I don't see how).
Maju
I referenced you the paper twice and it seemed like you were refusing to accept the details. Im not trying to slant a particular view, but sharing minutii. Thus to earn pedagogism, one needs to show receptism. I suggest a good starting point is "The Eneolithic of the Black Sea steppe. Dynamics of Cultural Development 4500 - 2300 BC, by Rassamakin. Just look it up on google or Academia.edu, or else 'll happily email it to you. Yes, I think he's new classification scheme is good, and after all, he is centred in Ukraine and is best familar with the material. he also covers the more eastern continuum - Repin, Khvalynsk, etc.
And no, Im not suggesting kurgan culture started from CT. Quite the contrary, im painting a picture of different funerary rituals which varied with time and space. Some of which were directly and or indirectly influenced by exchange with CT, some with Majkop, whilst others still go back to more archaic 'native' steppe forms.
What we have by 3300 BC is a number of variant kurgan cultures. Some (like Cernavoda, Usatavo) appear to have been balkano-Danubian groups adapting to steppic type burials and pastorlaism. By 3000 BC, it all homogenizes into "classic Yamnaya". Was this simply a cultural phenomenon, or was it because one specific subgroup grew to dominance over others ?
We don;t yet know, but aDNA will help. So we need aDNA from al lthese Yamnaya-esque groups west of the Don- Black Sea yamnaya, Majkop-Yamnaya, balkan Yamnaya, Hungarian Yamnaya :)
Of course, we know DOn-Volga Yamnaya was almost wholly Z2103 clan.
FrankN
I have began to construct maps of the Copper- Bronze transitions in central Europe. Admittedly, blots on a map oversimplify, but can you tak a look at this ?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0vOMPuFTfjwODRqZm9YcHp0dTQ/view?usp=sharing
That's c. 3800 BC (rough first draft)
I'll aim to make other ones for 3300 BC, 3000 BC, 2500 BC, etc.
@Rob, Davidski:
Rob asked: "Maju, do you call a whole-scale replacement of Yamnaya R1b- Z2013 to Srubnaya R1a -Z93 "continuity" ?"
I was talking archaeology.
Anyhow, AFAIK both lineages exist in the area today, so no replacement took place (what is quite a feat considering how many peoples have come and gone through the steppe, really). Another thing would be considering if the "rise" of Z93 in the social class (visible burials) is a local endogenous phenomenon (change in leading clan structure?) or rather indicates EASTERN influences such as from Sintashta-Andronovo.
Surprised that Davidski also got that idea on his own: "Y-chromosomes of ruling elites, which is what the people buried in the Kurgans arguably were, may have changed when ruling clans were deposed by other local clans". Great minds think alike... only sometimes.
But then he says (according to his pet model of European origin of R1a1a1): "The Srubnaya people were a new, genetically more western population in the Volga area"...
Instead I'd rather imagine, following the trail of R1a-Z93 lineages in the Samara oblast and some archaeological indications, that the new elites (not necessarily the working masses) may have arrived from the EAST, i.e. from Sintashta & Andronovo. Other than Poltavka, I cannot find any possible origin to Sintashta, so it's still a sibling Eastern branch of the same culture that gave rise to Srubna.
"I don't think Maju has looked into this. He doesn't seem to be aware of it".
Well, you know that for me those are just the "barbarians from the steppe" (LOL, now I can't take off my mind an image of Conan riding a broken old nag in the middle of nowhere, a vulture perched on a totally inconsistent Arizona cactus) and I don't pay as much attention as you do to what peculiar lineages they had - unless the discussion brings me to it, because I do not think they had such a major genetic impact as you do, certainly not in such a simplistic way.
But now that you raise the issue, I notice that Sintashta and more so Andronovo did have some R1a, not always well defined as for subclade, but that could well be at the origins of Srubna R1a-Z93 and the modern Samara oblast lineages of the same haplogroup. I'd interpret this as a growing assimilation of Central Asian peoples into the proto-IA population rather than as the mysterious Western influx you talk of but that makes no sense phylogenetically.
Now, you certainly do have a point re. the Poltavka outlier and Srubnaya autosomal DNA but then again Sintashta-Andronovo also look comparatively more Westerner in autosomal genetics than their Poltavka ancestor in the PCA. Is this truly owed to Central Europe or is it something owed to Central Asia? How can it be related at all with R1a-Z93?
I do not know for sure but having to choose between a PCA and Y-DNA phylogeny and geographical structure... I still lean heavily for the latter. Maybe they just raided Corded Ware offshoots often enough to get lots of concubines from there (wild ad hoc speculation but you know: autosomal DNA is not Y-DNA at all) or maybe the PCA is not telling us the whole story. PCAs are too simple and often cause illusory impressions, for example the outlier's position can equaly be produced by the sum of Caucasus+WHG/SHG or by that of Volga-Ural+Basque or by Italy+EHG or various other combos (don't need to be 50-50) that are not synonym. I wish we had some Botai aDNA for this debate really but anyhow maybe other analytical approaches, more fine-detailed than PCA can help. F3 anyone?
Alberto: thank you. Will read it depth. Anyhow I don't think it's so easy to lump all those motifs together into "solar" imagery (the cross and cross in circle traditionally represent Earth: four cardinal points, matter...) nor it can be considered strictly IE (some of those motifs appear in the earliest West Asian pottery: some draw crosses in circles, others draw swastikas made up of "prancing goats").
PS- Notice that swastikas are rather non-IE (and sometimes as remote as Native American) in their distribution. These symbols are very old and of unclear meaning. Curiously I'll mention that in the archaeology museum here in Bilbao you don't find Neolithic swastikas or lauburuak but TRISKELS!
@Rob: I can't find the paper on Google.
No results found for "The Neolithic of the Black Sea steppe. Dynamics of Cultural Development 4500 - 2300 BC".
Try providing a direct link. :(
@Maju,
This getting stupid. Nothing you're saying makes sense.
We've known for over half a year that Sintashta/Andronovo/Timber Grave/etc. had roughly 25-40% MN(Middle Neolithic)-European admixture. This PCA Davidski throw out isn't the only piece of evidence/prove we have.
They didn't just have "some" R1a-Z93, 100% so far have R1a-Z93!! The only example of non-Z93 comes from person of Siberian-decent who had Y DNA C and was buried with Andronovo.
The significant MN admixture points towards Europe, not Central Asia or Iran. There could have been EEF in Iran(prob. not) but there was no WHG, and R1a-Z93 groups clearly have WHG. Saying they got their MN admixture by raiding Corded Ware is ridiculous because that'd make them 100% Corded Ware(Corded Ware was also roughly 1/3 or 1/4 MN-Euro).
"Anyhow, AFAIK both lineages exist in the area today, so no replacement took place (what is quite a feat considering how many peoples have come and gone through the steppe, really). "
Are you kidding me? Forget about modern Y DNA!! Z93 and Z2103 existing in the Volga today doesn't mean they were both there in 3000 BC. Z93 didn't just rise because of a new royal class, it rose because of migration. West of the Volga in Europe was a population who had 80%+ R1a-M417 and identical autosomal makeup to the R1a-Z93 folk. Clearly they migrated east and for the most part replaced the earlier population.
"I do not know for sure but having to choose between a PCA and Y-DNA phylogeny and geographical structure... I still lean heavily for the latte"
What?!! Y DNA phlogeny and geographical structure over 4,000 years later??!! You trust that more than autsomal DNA from ancient remains? Austosomal DNA tells us the new R1a-Z93 people came from the West. Corded Ware with M417* is a prove their Y DNA also originated deep in Europe.
@Kristiina
It is great to see that we are now in agreement. As you now realize, the Siberian/Mongolian/Central Asian subclades of C2-M217 are quite distinct from the Chinese subclades of C2-M217, their divergence is very old.
@Maju
"I don't think it's so easy to lump all those motifs together into "solar" imagery (the cross and cross in circle traditionally represent Earth: four cardinal points, matter...) nor it can be considered strictly IE"
I obviously agree. And that's the point and the irony about those Irish "kurgans" from 3500 BC.
@Krefter
"Austosomal DNA tells us the new R1a-Z93 people came from the West. Corded Ware with M417* is a prove their Y DNA also originated deep in Europe."
This was the most obvious explanation when Allentoft et al. was published. The paper itself proposed this (IIRC). But then for some strange reason, Mathieson et al. downplays this option in favour of a more speculative one about a more eastern origin of Sintashta/Srubnaya, saying that probably they don't have much Central European ancestry. And then for some reason, they also choose to model Sintashta as Yamnaya + Anatolia Neolithic (instead of Europe MN, which seems the obvious choice).
I don't think they just got confused. I think they had their reasons (based on yet unpublished samples). So I wouldn't bet that Sintashta descends from Corded Ware. Soon enough we'll find out.
@Alberto,
"I don't think they just got confused. I think they had their reasons (based on yet unpublished samples). So I wouldn't bet that Sintashta descends from Corded Ware. Soon enough we'll find out."
It is totally possible Sintashta formed independently of Corded Ware from a similar admixture event. There isn't good reason to believe or disbelieve it.
@Rob: Your mapping project is laudable. i'll try to be as much of a help as I can, but my expertise is more towards the northern plaims than towards the Carpathian Basin, even Southern Germany.
Some notes:
1. Generally, there havn't been much settlement finds retrieved from the Bavariam Forest-Fichtelgebirge-Ore Mountains-Sudetes. These mountains typically seperated (sub-)cultures. However, it might make sense to display trade relations, which often were intensive, by arrows. This concerns of course the Elbe and Oder rivers, but also the neolithic "flint road" (Kelheim mines-Regensburg-Plzen-Prague), and, to a lesser extent, the Main-Ohre/Eger axis, (both of wich continued into Silesia).
IOW: Have Upper Franconia (Nuremberg region), Lower Bavaria (Kehlheim/Regensburg), Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia generally showing up as seperate regions. The following publication may be of some help, at least as concerns the maps, though it seems to stop around the time when your mapping commences:
http://www.academia.edu/10614646/The_Archaeology_of_Bohemia_2_Neolithic
2. When it comes to the Elbe-Saale region, the focus (at least in the southern part which shows up on your maps) was always more on the Saale (better soils, salt springs, north-south link via the Thuringian Forest to the Upper Main and down to Kelheim/Regensburg on the Danube, with onward connection into Tyrolia-brenner-NE Italy). There regularly used to be a settlement chamber around Dresden, but otherwise, most settlement stopped a bit SE of Leipzig.
IOW: Baalberge is placed a bit too south-eastern; and the FB "westward bay" should be more northern, covering the middle instead of the upper Saale. The following two maps might help. The first is Late FB (Wartburg, Bernburg, Cham, Rivac etc.), the second one is GAC (including GAC-influenced).
http://www.beier-beran.de/cover/v04/GV04_01.jpg
http://www.museum-digital.de/nat/singleimage.php?imagenr=78782&inwi=1&w=1024&h=610
3. Altheim: Danubian basin between the Lech and Inn rivers. I.e., your map has them too far eastward, also reaching too far to the north, the western border looks fine, though. Their trade base was Amphibolit from the mines near Kelheim, which linked them to Mondsee, Michelsberg and Bohemian FB. They were somehow inbetween them all, but different, so maybe use another colour to show their distinctiveness.
In 3,500 BC, Altheim will make way to the Cham Culture, which spreads out more into the uplands (Bavarian Forest, Alps foothills etc.)
4. Pfyn Culture should be located west of Altheim, in a somewhat similar colouring (or with overlap). There have been a few other, minor groups, in Suebia, but for convenience sake, you might take the upper Danube as Pfyn-Michelsberg border.
5. Michelsberg: See linked map.
http://www.museum-digital.de/nat/singleimage.php?imagenr=77871&inwi=1&w=1024&h=610
6. I think that by 3,800 BC (Epi-)Lengyel should still have been around in Moravia and Silesia, probably also Upper/Lower Austria.
7. Bodrogkeresztúr culture is missing in the Tisza Basin. Here is the best I could find about them
http://donau-archaeologie.de/doku.php/kulturen/bodrogkeresztur_english_version
http://www.regeszet.org.hu/images/angol/a_005.pdf
They are occassionally combined with the Gornesti Culture in Transsylvania, which, however, has remained completely obscure to me.
@Maju
"Cucuteni lasted more than Karanovo-Gumelnita (Varna) so it's fair to consider IF there was a better relation between the Kurganites and CT or if just CT was not wealthy enough to bother plundering excepting the occasional slave raid."
Or the kurganites weren't strong enough at first.
If you imagine the neolithic landscape and then add copper workers expanding along the pre-existing networks (for this it doesn't matter where they were from originally) then you'd imagine they might upset the local balance of power anywhere they settled which had a source of copper
- some military advantage
- more wealth and trade
- also negatively possibly creating a target
so it would be interesting to see a map of early copper mines overlaid over the neolithic cultures - might explain a lot of the expansions and contractions.
Even more so the sites of arsenic copper and later early tin bronze sites. I'd imagine the first to get bronze weapons would have a very distinct advantage even if only temporary.
@Maju
But then again Sintashta-Andronovo also look comparatively more Westerner in autosomal genetics than their Poltavka ancestor in the PCA.
Please give it a rest with the creative interpretations.
Poltavka outlier looks more European than Andronovo and Sintashta (marked red here), which appear to be a lot like Poltavka outlier, but with minor extra admixtures from the east and south.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQZ09iY0VESWRPR2s/view?usp=sharing
I'd interpret this as a growing assimilation of Central Asian peoples into the proto-IA population rather than as the mysterious Western influx you talk of but that makes no sense phylogenetically.
Hilariously wrong.
@Rob: Some amendments:
1. Mondsee: I obviously was wrong in ascribing it to Baden. Prevailing perspective is to assigm its copper mining part to late Vinca (~Lasinja?) influence (in fact, some early copper exploration in North Tirol has been dated to the late 6h millennium), the pile-dwelling to Pfyn, the pottery to FB, and the remaining material culture to Altheim. So, to simplify things, you may use one color for the whole Pfyn-Altheim-Mondsee continuum, indicate the sub-cultures in italics, and add some arrows from FB and Lasinja to Mondsee. The Salzburg area and Tirol should be part of this zone. Strong Altheim influence is apparent in the Trentino.
http://www.academia.edu/10241415/A._Pedrotti_Bev%C3%96lkerungs-und_Besiedlungsbild_des_Sp%C3%A4tneolithikums_im_Trentino_S%C3%BCdtirol_in_People_and_their_Enviroment_during_the_Neolithic_and_Bronze_Age_in_Central_Europe_Rahden_Westf._Marie_Leidorf_GmbH_2001_p._105-118
By 3,500 BC, Pfyn changes to Horgen, Altheim to Cham, Mondsee remains.
2. In Northern Italy, we have the Lagozza Culture (3,900-3,400 BC acc.to German WP) in Liguria, Lombardy and the Emilia, with offshoots to Pisa and on the Apulian coast (Molfetta-Bari). As a pile-dwelling culture with manyfold linkages to Swiss cultures (Courtalloid), for simplification sake, a similar colouring as Pfyn-Altheim-Mondsee may be envisaged. In fact, around the Alps there seems to be a dualism of aquatic-oriented pile dwellers with some farming, and transhumating hilltop-settling pastoralists, with the latter being represented by Altheim.
It is not fully clear to me whether Remedello directly follows Lagozza, or there is an intermediate stage. In any case, simultaneously with Remedello, the Tamins-Carasso group forms in Trentino and Tirol.
3. I have come across the following links for the NE Carpathians:
https://vanaland.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/polen_neolithik.jpg
http://www.jungsteinsite.uni-kiel.de/2010_MSG/Kadrow_MSG_2010_high.pdf
If I have understood the study (link 2) correct, from the epi-Lengyel sites displayed in brownish on the map (link 2), Jordanow should have given way to FB by 3,800 BC, but the Lublin-Volhynia culture lasted until 3,600 BC.
4. Moravia/Austria/Transdanubia/Croatia: This seems to be quite a mess, or - put differently - another multicultural region. There seems to be aggreement that epi-Lengyel was over by 3,800 BC. There also seems to be mostly aggreement that this phase is still markedly different from Baden-Boleraz, so "pre-Boleraz" is probably not the most adequate term. But otherwise, I have come across three chronologies that seem to differ in their assignment of sub-groups to major cultures:
- The Slovakian one (p.18) has Retz (Upper Austria)- Bajc (Slovakia) as Baalberge offsprings, which mix with Furchenstich
http://www.academia.edu/17852543/Das_Epilengyel_Lengyel_IV_als_kulturhistorische_Einheit
- The Austrian one (p 132) is similar, but even appears to subsume Furchenstich under Baalberge
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Peter.Stadler/Stadler/StadlerP_2007a.pdf
- The Croatian one (p. 335), OTOH, sees Retz-Gajary leading into Vocedol. Furchenstich isn't an issue here, but Bodrokeresztur shows up as quite distinct, and stretching into NE Croatia. Lasinja-Balaton is having a much wider geographical scope with them than on your map.
http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf38/38_26.pdf
No idea how this can be sorted out (well, I thought it was time to make things complicated for your after all the previous help..)
Anyway, the Lasinja area extends into Styria (link 1), which you seem to have already reflected in your map, and also Carinthia (link 2).
http://www.hengist-archaeologie.at/images/pdf/ausgrabungen/Gratkorn-Kanzel-FOE50-03-Artner.pdf
https://books.google.de/books?id=E_9-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=retz+gajary&source=bl&ots=Xx1B6NPPfd&sig=qH1FgCBwlclHG74ISrdzGDeb4Mc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT74-wqbTKAhUHKA4KHfgfC1w4ChDoAQgwMAM#v=onepage&q=retz%20gajary&f=false
@Maju said...
" I'm always ready to consider a good alternative explanation and consider the details, as long as it based on facts and not molecular-clock-o-logic abracadabra.........
Notice that I'm not discussing the issue of Z2110 particularly but just using your sentence as example of how much things can go wrong when we found our judgment only on the molecular clock conjecture, and very particular (tendentious, biased, horribly calibrated, never properly explained...) versions of it particularly."
Okay fair enough, if you prefer we can use no molecular clock conjecture. Let's look at the variance in ancient/modern samples. If we can establish continuity. So far possible 3 snp's have been in same region,M73/KMS75/15080170, with different populations.
http://www.kumbarov.com/ht35/aDNA_02_11_30_2015.pdf
http://www.yfull.com/tree/R1b/
Khvalynsk R1b is M343+/L754+/[P297-] 6k_7kYBP+/-
Samara R1b is M343+/P297+/M73+/Y13872+.Modern day Bashkirs M73+
Yamnaya R1b I0231 downstream P297+>Z2103+>Z2109+>KMS17146508+ 5K+/- found in modern day Bashkirs. While R1b-SK2087 Also found in modern day Pathans.
Yamnaya-Kalmykia Rise550 R1b>P297+>Z2103+>15080170(C/T)found in modern Avar population.
R1b branches that exist in same regions but have not been found in Kurgans.
R1b-L277+Volga Cossack
R1b-L584+Khaketian possible Ossetian settlements.
R1b-L584+ Bashkir
R1b>2110-9219+Digor Ossetians/Jász-Jászság?
@ Maju
I just emailed the papers to the email listed on your blog.
FrankN
Thanks immensely for the suggestions and map links
A couple of points;
* The GAC will have to feature in a later map, as it did not yet appear in 3800 BC (certainly not in its SW extension).
* " I think that by 3,800 BC (Epi-)Lengyel should still have been around in Moravia and Silesia, probably also Upper/Lower Austria"
-> Tunde lists these as sites of the type 'Balaton-Lasinja/Ludanice" - which I also used on the map, to which I included Mondsee as generically part of.
* ' There seems to be aggreement that epi-Lengyel was over by 3,800 BC. There also seems to be mostly agreement that this phase is still markedly different from Baden-Boleraz, so "pre-Boleraz" is probably not the most adequate term"
-> pre-Beloraz is just a term I invented for the various cultures prior to classic Boleraz. It doesn't imply a direct trajectory to Boleraz. But perhaps I shold get rid of it.
* RE: Bodrokeresztur. My main source for the Carpathian area (Tunde Horvath) does not list it as one of the complexes in Hungary c. 38-3700 BC. Indeed, in 'Trajectories of Continuity and Change between the Late Neolithic and the Copper Age in Eastern Hungary" (Raczky et al), the list it a short chronological horizon c. 3900 - 3800 BC which is succeeded by sites of the Hunyadi-Halom type (listed in my map).
* Maybe I should extend the map to include more of Germany and Poland.
Perhaps even north Italy. But my knowledge of Italy is very generic, and I'd imagine it'll introduce a world of complexity with which Im already struggling :)
@Kristiina
"There is an accumulation of J2b-M12 and J2b-M205 (under M12) in Russia. J2b-M205 has an interesting distribution as this clade looks like concentrated in Western Turkey and southern Russia."
Where exactly in southern Russia? Could this be a Circassian marker? A lot of Circassians fled to Turkey in the 19th century. Enough to have an impact on the overall demographics.
Also, a side question for you, relating to a side discussion Maju and I have been having on some of FrankN's previous comments on Hungary since you seem to have the best handle on linguistics here. Illyrian - do you see this as grouped with Daco-Thracian, or with Italo-Celtic, German, or some other branch of IE? It has to do with speculating at where the late Bronze Age admixture came from in Hungary.
Also to everyone's point re: where this western admixture came from in Sintashta-Andronovo - remember that if we're talking about a complex of nomadic pastoralists, I would think intuitively the genetics/culture/language will be better described by a wave model than a tree model. So it shouldn't be surprising that as IE expanded, the core IE took on some of the characteristics of the areas IE expanded into, since the core would be mixing with its fringes, no?
So say if IE expanded into Corded Ware territory, then the IE core would become more Corded Ware-like too.
Someone earlier said "while in the Khvalynsk genomes we have some evidence for an association of ancestry with social status. "
Interesting to look at, I agree.
Dave did his autosomal analysis https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQVDdXdFJSVk1CQnM/view
The R1a chap was most EHG, whilst the Q1a was most 'south/ east shifted' (lack of better word. Was formal stats done for him ?)
The R1b (# 10122) chap fell in between. The description in the suppl . info was "Male (confirmed genetically), age 20-30, positioned on his back with raised knees, with 293 copper artifacts, mostly beads, amounting to 80% of the copper objects in the combined cemeteries of Khvalynsk I and II. Probably a high-status individual, his Y-chromosome haplotype, R1b1, also characterized the high-status individuals buried under kurgans in later Yamnaya graves in this region, so he could be regarded as a founder of an elite group of patrilineally related families. His MtDNA haplotype H2a1 is unique in the Samara series."
The R1b Male was "age 30-35, positioned on his back with raised knees, with a
copper ring and a copper bead. His R1a1 haplotype shows that this haplotype was present in the region, although it is not represented later in high-status Yamnaya graves. His U5a1i MtDNA haplotype is part of a U5a1 group well documented in the Samara series."
And Q1a: "10434 / SVP47 (grave 17) Male (confirmed genetically), age 45-55, positioned contracted on his side, with 4 pathological wounds on his skull, one of which probably was fatal. No grave gifts or animal sacrifices accompanied the burial. His Q1a Y-chromosome haplotype is unique in the Samara steppe series, but his U4a2 or U4d MtDNA haplotype are not unusual."
We need to be cautious about inferring status directly from funerary goods, but there's little point in denying that 101233 was a chief of high status. His (presumably pure) Copper accompaniments must have come form the Balkano-Carpathian metallurgical zone (as per Chernykh).
A mere 3 samples precludes any definitive analysis, as does the problematic dating of the samples. Initially thought to be 5000 - 4200 BC, the Khvalynsk culture should be revised down to after 4700 BC (as the Mathieson paper agrees with), in line with the general Eneolithic period further west in Ukraine (4500 - 33/ 3000 BC). This still leaves a broad time period. According to Rassamakin, the Khvalynsk culture extinguishes c. 3800 BC. After an difficult to define 'hiatus', in its former area rises the "Repin culture" - indeed the Morgunova paper maju linked suggests so.
As a very tentative conclusion, can we postulate that several clans lived in the late "Neolithic" / early Eneolithic Volga steppe (5000 - 4000 BC). An R1b subset grew to dominance, but this was short lived. With the demise of the Balkan Copper Centres on which they relied, their 'big man' status was questioned. Ultimately, they must have been replaced, as its looking like the Eneolithic Samara R1b man was not ancestral to the Z2013 groups which later dominated there.
@ Ryan
' Illyrian - do you see this as grouped with Daco-Thracian, or with Italo-Celtic, German, or some other branch of IE? It has to do with speculating at where the late Bronze Age admixture came from in Hungary."
Illyrian does not group with Thracian. They're differ phyla. The problem is, we know very little about Illyrian, apart from its centum status.
Moreover, the roblem most people (even scholars) don't realize is - we can't make definitive 'trees" based on languags which survived to this day, or at least Roman times, because many more intermediate forms dies out. Thus we area left with many family-less languages like Illyrian, Thracian, Armenian, Greek - which interestingly cluster in the south of the IE area, probably because in the north, later expansions of Germanic, Celtic and Slavic created broad language zones.
So, to make a tree on modern/ surviving/ attested languages is like trying to predict prehistory solely on modern DNA.
* " I would think intuitively the genetics/culture/language will be better described by a wave model than a tree model. "
Culture - yes. Language - its more complex. PIE was definitely a "genetic family". The origin of PIE can't be ascribed to just diffusions of words and forms between unrelated languages. But related, already IE dialects could 'fuse' and converge.
@Blogger Rob said...
"The R1b (# 10122) chap fell in between. The description in the suppl . info was "Male (confirmed genetically), age 20-30, positioned on his back with raised knees, with 293 copper artifacts, mostly beads, amounting to 80% of the copper objects in the combined cemeteries of Khvalynsk I and II. Probably a high-status individual, his Y-chromosome haplotype, R1b1, also characterized the high-status individuals buried under kurgans in later Yamnaya graves in this region, so he could be regarded as a founder of an elite group of patrilineally related families. His MtDNA haplotype H2a1 is unique in the Samara series."
The R1b Male was "age 30-35, positioned on his back with raised knees, with a
copper ring and a copper bead. His R1a1 haplotype shows that this haplotype was present in the region, although it is not represented later in high-status Yamnaya graves. His U5a1i MtDNA haplotype is part of a U5a1 group well documented in the Samara series."
We need to be cautious about inferring status directly from funerary goods, but there's little point in denying that 101233 was a chief of high status. His (presumably pure) Copper accompaniments must have come form the Balkano-Carpathian metallurgical zone (as per Chernykh).
A mere 3 samples precludes any definitive analysis, as does the problematic dating of the samples. Initially thought to be 5000 - 4200 BC, the Khvalynsk culture should be revised down to after 4700 BC (as the Mathieson paper agrees with), in line with the general Eneolithic period further west in Ukraine (4500 - 33/ 3000 BC). This still leaves a broad time period. According to Rassamakin, the Khvalynsk culture extinguishes c. 3800 BC. After an difficult to define 'hiatus', in its former area rises the "Repin culture" - indeed the Morgunova paper maju linked suggests so.
As a very tentative conclusion, can we postulate that several clans lived in the late "Neolithic" / early Eneolithic Volga steppe (5000 - 4000 BC). An R1b subset grew to dominance, but this was short lived. With the demise of the Balkan Copper Centres on which they relied, their 'big man' status was questioned. Ultimately, they must have been replaced, as its looking like the Eneolithic Samara R1b man was not ancestral to the Z2013 groups which later dominated there."[r1b-Z2103}
The question then comes up. If the R1b-I0122{M73/Y13872] - Eneolithic sample 6YBP-7KYBP had a custom of using Balkan copper in burial; then how do we explain a different branch of R1b-Z2103-KMS75 Yamnaya I0444 also using a blunt mace in burial of Balkan copper ? These are two different cultures, or are they somehow related?
"Yamnaya in Russia: Kutuluk
Kutuluk kurgan cemetery I, located 60 km east of the city of Samara, contained:
SVP58/I0444 (central grave 1, kurgan 4, 3335-2881 calBCE, AA12570)
The remains are of male aged 25-35 years (Fig. S3.2), estimated height 176 cm, with no
obvious injury or disease, and buried with the largest metal object found in a Yamnaya grave
anywhere26. The object was a blunt mace 48 cm long, 767 g in weight, cast/annealed and"
made of pure copper, like most Yamnaya metal objects.
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/02/10/013433
Blogger "a"
"R1b-I0122{M73/Y13872] "
Ok I did not know that, so he was along the line of M73, like the Samara HG ? Interesting, thanks
"The question then comes up. If the R1b-I0122{M73/Y13872] - Eneolithic sample 6YBP-7KYBP had a custom of using Balkan copper in burial; then how do we explain a different branch of R1b-Z2103-KMS75 Yamnaya I0444 also using a blunt mace in burial of Balkan copper ? These are two different cultures, or are they somehow related?"
I cannot claim to know all the complex details of archaeometallurgy, but 'pure Copper' - especially from the later (ie Yamnaya) period- needn't come from 'the Balkans', but could be from the more northern regions - Carpathian basin, CT, or indeed locally made on the steppe. But one thing we do see is the rise of Caucasian centres - which began making new, Arsenic-Copper alloys, eclipsing former Balkan centres. However, they do not appear to have penetrated further west to great degree. Indeed, CWC, much of Yamnaya continued to use older, pure Copper forms.
I think there is quite a bit of ‘water under the bridge’ between the Eneolithic guy, and this specific (& later) Yamnaya sample. The later Volga steppe dudes appear to have come from Repin. It emerged in the southern aspect of the Don forest-steppe, c. 3800 BC, replacing Khvalynsk. Toward the latter M4, it appears to have become a prominent group, spreading toward the Volga, lower Don, and Dnieper. The origins of its cultural components are difficult to define, but might derive primarily from the old Skelya culture directly as it spread east up the Don and toward the Volga +/- additional possible input from lower Don groups – which had connections with the Kuban/ Majkop area.
@Rob:
- Ladanice: The Hung. Bronze Age paper from my first comment block describes it as "direct descendents of the local Lengyel culture". For its specific distribution, just along the Danube around Budapest, it might be displayed separately, with the same colour as Lublin-Wolhynia (and other Lengyel offsprings, should they show up)
- On Balaton-Lasinja, OTOH: "Although the archaeological record
does not suggest a complete population change, the appearance of southern, especially Balkanic cultural traditions as opposed to the Central European traditions of the Lengyel culture, indicates deeper changes than in eastern Hungary.
Not sure if Mondsee really belongs here - copper says "yes", but everything else "no". It seems to resist Badenisation (unlike Altheim/ Cham), and it may be better placed together with the other pile-dwelling cultures around the Alps (they all, interestingly, are seen as Rössen-derived, while the non-farming part of the food assembly is similar to late Ertebolle - hazelnut, goosefoot, water chestnut, crab apple, pig/ goose breeding etc.).
- "The Bodrogkeresztúr period marks the real floruit of the Copper Age with its golden symbols of power and the heavy copper axes. (..) The Hunyadihalom culture that succeeded the Bodrogkeresztúr culture (..) emerged as a result of the arrival of various eastern and southeastern population groups. The number of settlements declined conspicuously in this period, most likely the result of a significant population decrease."
Hmm - this would actually need an intermediate time slice to be displayed properly. There have been hints in some texts that Bodrokeeresztur (or Polgar, as it continued the Tiszapolgar culture)didn't disappear, but actually moved northward through the Carpathians to later become part of GAC. And as Hunyadihalom evolves into Proto-Boleraz, the deep and long-lasting fiendship between GAC and Baden may have commenced here..
- Stroke-ornamented pottery (Strichbandkeramik) seems to be that mid 5thM LBK spin-off, originally from Central Bohemia, which somehow found its way through Moravia into the western Carpathian basin. It appears together with Balaton-Lasinja, and infiltrates it, as it itself is appqrently infiltrated by Austro-Moravian Baalberge further north. It is regarded as the second constituting force of the Baden phenomenon, aside from Hunyadihalom.
The best that can be done here is probably working with hatching. Maybe also a solution for Hunyadihalom, to visualise their expansion into Hunyadihalom territory..
"Maybe I should extend the map to include more of Germany and Poland."Well, that's where the action is (or better: where we already have good maps on the regional action). A northern cut-off somewhere along the Flensburg-Kaliningrad-Smolensk line would be ideal, and allow to also incorporate some forest cultures. Bremen-Bydgosz would at least get Kujawia on the map.
The western cutoff looks o.k., as long as you don't intend to continue the mapping into La Tene.
"Perhaps even north Italy. But my knowledge of Italy is very generic, and I'd imagine it'll introduce a world of complexity"
North Italy is alredy on the map! From what I have read so far, it all seems to run under Remedello from 3,400-2,400 BC, and afterwards its Bell Beaker. In any case, should we be missing something, there will most likely be knowledgeable Italians around here helping to fill the gaps.
What software are you using? If it is .svg-based, I could take over some of the mapping, I am a trained geographer.
FrankN
OK, lets include Italy and northern Europe more.
I was using inkscape or Paint.NET, using sepia-ized maps of Europe (which include rivers and mountains, which I think are important). I can email you them. I also not wholly decided whether to use 'colour-blot' or patterns (zig-zags, dots, etc) to depict different areas , not sure what would look more presentable or professional
I think we'd need to go a period earlier - eg 4000 / 3900 BC to include the final stage of the Middle Copper Age, and down to 23/ 2000 BC, for current purposes of the LN/ Copper - Bronze transition. I think important slices might be 4000 BC, 3800 BC, 3400 BC, 3000 BC, 2500 BC, 2000 BC.
I don't think it has really been done, and would be good to put it out for anyone to use.
Time -wise
@ Rob
Rob, thank you for your efforts. If you could keep the maps relatively free of clutter, we can also add markings for aDNA findings, indicating Autosomal and Y-DNA, should you wish.
@ Rob @ FrankN
Have you taken a look at the individual descriptions in the supplementary information systematically? What do you think they suggest for some of the sociological scenarios envisioned by archaeologists? E.g. what does the homogeneity of Y-DNA in the LNBA cultures, in such contrast to the diversity found in the late Iron Age steppe, or some of the diversity in Neolithic samples, suggest to you? Surely some archaeologists should have become aware of these genetic results and their implications for their social models by this time.
@ R.K.
* we can map different versions of maps - some more detailed site -wise, some more 'zoomed out' to add other details, eg aDNA data
* "Have you taken a look at the individual descriptions in the supplementary information systematically". No. not for all papers published so far. What exactly are you asking ?
* " What do you think they suggest for some of the sociological scenarios envisioned by archaeologists?"
Its still early days, and would be variable. And this boom in aDNA studies came post the peak of the 'immobilist' perspectives in Anglophone literature - where inreasingly changes were ascribed to 'internal evolution', etc.
But some archaeologists simply do not follow DNA studies- I saw a paper recently still arguing for a 'native European' origin of agriculture, through cultural borrowing. The same can be argued for the Copper Age collapse in the Balkans. Some still argue for internal transformations. However, from archaeology alone - we can see actualy a sudden, precipitous demographic collapse (c. 4200 BC), with much of the Neolithic heartland abandoned for 600 years (!) Sure, the odd site is found here and there during these 'Dark Ages', but a migration from other areas which subsequently filled in this void cannot be difficult to imagine (from multiple sources, quite likely).
Others actively take part in it (eg tope , aDNA studides), but make sober conclusions. eg Volker Heyd on Yamnaya ""The new subsistence economy was such a successful invention that is is still widely practiced today in parts of Eurasia. Moreover, the set of innovations also seems to stand as the backbone of a population exchange between east and west still recognizable nowadays, some 5000 years after these events, in the gene-pool of Europeans³⁸². However one has to say that the base of Yamnaya aDNA analyses is still faible so that it remains a matter of belief whether one give credibility to sentences like “documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery“, or sees this kind of messages as rather premature"
Or you can look to Andrew Fitzpatrick's chapter on bell Beakers in Britain who envisage mobile networks of household units moving vast distances but still maintaining contacts, 'which could be linked to dispersal of languages'.
*"E.g. what does the homogeneity of Y-DNA in the LNBA cultures,..{mean}"
Well, lets look at CWC. The Y haplogroup homogeneity is not surprising. Archaeologists have long seen it - from the obvious material evidence - as a mobile culture consisting of small family units/ households, maintaining contacts over a dispersed landscape, after somewhat of a population decline. However, other contemporary north European cultures have not been sampled - such as late TRB, GAC, or much of LN east-central Europe, or southeastern Europe. So it'll be interesting to what these results bring in, in forming final conclusions.
But to conclude, I thought I had already touched on this earlier. There is marked social change in LN/ EBA - a shift from more fixed, aggregated villages/ tells to smaller units, more mobile, more 'free' household units, maintaining internal links but cultural differentiation to other unit networks. Also mentioned earlier is that it appears the tensions and social conflicts peaked prior to the advent of CWC horizon.
I have lots to read (thank you, Rob) and do, so I can't really continue the discussion (feel free to insist if you think I left some important part of the discussion unfinished). I'm anyhow perplex by what "a" said: I must say I really don't understand what he/she means (there's no thesis nor conclusion attached to that listing of lineages).
@ Rob
Rob, there is a lot of variance in autosomal ancestry in the cultures at this time. Looking at these, matching them with archaeological context and burial goods, and also Y-dna patterns, should be quite productive, no?
A question that naturally follows is, why would a culture of small household units have homogeneous Y-DNA patterns, indicating recent common patrilineage? Some people have been talking about elite dominance as an explanation for Y-DNA homogeneity. Indeed, for the period from LN to IA, the Y-DNA to mtDNA inheritance rates ranged from 1:17 to 1:5-4; and we also see there is a homogenisation of Y-DNA as we move from the neolithic to the present.* However, how can this be reconciled with elite dominance in a society, if the society at the time is comprised of mobile nuclear households with no social complexity?
On the other hand, for Yamnaya, we can postulate patrilineage clans, as they were rather mobile with some social complexity and stratification seen in elite burials, which we can see in context with the extremely homogeneous Y-DNA patterns, as well as obvious signs of intergroup violence. This is harder to do for Corded Ware based on current interpretations, no? Are there any signs of large structures on the scale of the Michelsburg enclosures in the Corded Ware, fortifications, or any signs of engineering requiring the input of a large number of man-hours requiring cooperation between groups of more than 100 people, such as the movement of heavy stones?
* such a large imbalance between the Y-DNA and mtDNA inheritance rates has to be explained; it cannot be the result of men dying earlier, or bottlenecks in the population, or any other process that affects both sexes equally.
Ryan, I cannot give you any comprehensive opinion because I know so little about Illyrian, but I have previously made an interesting comparison between words meaning 'red' and 'iron', which might be of interest in this context as metal working is considered an important part of Bronze Age and Iron Age yDNA changes.
Word for 'red" is similar in many European languages: Irish 'ruad', Icelandic 'raudur', German 'rot', Lithuanian 'raudà', Slovenian rdèč, Russian 'ryži' reddish, Lithuanian 'rusvas', 'rudas', 'rùdskis, brown, Finnish 'ruskea', brown;
This root in the same meaning is also found in Gaulish glossary, roudo- (red, rust); Umbrian glossary, rofu, rufru (red); Oscan glossary, rufru (red, rust); Thracian glossary, rudas (red).
This root is widespread also in the meaning of 'iron': Finnish 'rauta', Estonian 'raud', Saame ruovdi', iron, Icelandic 'rauði' limonite, Russian/Slavic languages 'ruda', Lithuanian/Latvian 'rūda' ore, Latin 'raudŭs', bronze object; a similar word is even found in Sumerian: 'urudu', metal.
The Illyrian word for 'iron' is 'eisarnon' having cognates in Germanic and Celtic: OHG 'isarn' and Gothic 'eisarn', Gaul GN isarnodurum, all of which look like connected with another widespread root for metal in Eurasian languages, e.g. Sanskrit 'asi' sword, knife, O Indian 'áyas', metal, Latin 'aes' copper, Gothic 'aiz', Icelandic 'eir' brass, P-IE *heyos-; cfr. Abkhaz 'ajxá' iron, Kabardian '?aśa' tool. This root is similar to pan-Uralic construction 'waśke' metal.
To sum up, Thracian, Italo-Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic and Finnic languages all share the same root which means either 'red' or 'iron'. The other root which is seen in Illyrian is more wide-spread and less compact and probably older. On the basis of this root I would understand that Illyrian has a special connection with Celtic and Germanic. However, we should compare more than just one word to see if it is a frequent pattern between Illyrian and Celtic/Germanic languages. A big problem surely is that we do not know the Thracian/Illyrian lexicon well enough. In any case, this word has strategic importance for semantic reasons.
Latin word for iron is 'ferrum' and it has a completely different etymology, cfr. Sumerian barzil, Phoenician barzel, Classical Syriac ܦܪܙܠܐ (parzlā), iron. This word may have entered Latin through Etruscan. The Albanian language shares several roots with few Illyrian words that are known to us but the Albanian word for iron is 'hekur' and it is of obscure etymology. So, it looks like there were different words used in the Mediterrranean area before (in addition to) the IE roots *heyos and *h₁rowdʰós.
@rob: I am using Inkscape as well, so we would not have any problems exchanging data. Hatching is obviously a bit more difficult with Inkscape, but otherwise filling etc. can be easiliy changed. We can also test combinations of outlines and shaded fills to see what best conveys the idea of the processes that took place from one period to the next.
I am not yet sure if your time slicing is ideal. The best solution might actually be taking the C14 wiggle areas, as they pre-determine time resolution - as you know, e.g., C14 dating can't tell 3,300 BC from 3,100 BC. I haven't checked the 4,000 BC period in that respect, but I have noted quite a variance for dating the Ertebolle-Funnelbeaker transition, sometime 4,100, sometimes 3,900 BC, so we might have a C14 plateau there as well.
Hence, I thimk it will be important for each time slice to pre-define the C14 range associated to it. But otherwise, once the basic mapping parameters have been set, its always possible to add another time slice in-between.
I also think we need to pre-define the colours, even though they can easily be changed afterwards. My - incomplete - line of thinking goes towards the following "families"
- Atlantic-Baltic: MC, FB, GAC, CW(?)
- Post-EEF: Epi-/post Lengyel etc., also CT?
- Alpine pile-dwelling
- Expanding southern Balkans - the whole Baden-related stuff
- Steppe/ "Kurgan" (including forest cultures?)
plus of course invidual colouring for specific phenomena, e.g. Balaton-Lasinja.
These, of course, will not be set in stone. The mapping process is geared to get a better understanding of underlying patterns, and
discussing the "right" colouring of a specific culture is an important part of deepening that understanding.
I leave it to you to define the basic parameters - its your project after all. Once you have the starting point (base map, starting time slice) defined, I can help with mapping. You taking over Balkans and the Steppe, and I doing the CE stuff could be a workable division of labour.
@Krstiina: FYI Basque "burdin" (iron) also seems to be derived from the same Phoenician root. It makes all sense as the Phoenicians were the ones introducing the metal (as used in metallurgy, mostly as steel) in the West Mediterranean. As for Alb. 'hekur' I'd tentatively associate it with pre-IE metal terms such as Basque "urre", Lat. "aurum" and Greek oûros (all them meaning "gold"). It may have gone through an evolution by analogy much as Basque "urrezko" (copper, lit. "made of gold"), by addition of other particles ("hek-", whatever it means).
@Kristina: Jaeger's automated lexical analysis has an interesting grouping popping up in the "unfiltered" modus, i.e. still including "rogue taxa":
Albanian and Goidelic form a common branch, which constitutes the earliest split out of European IE, before it diverges further into Balto-Slavic and Germano-Italic (Bryhonic languages become part of the Italic branch, clustering with French).
The relation between Illyrian and Venetic is unclear, but toponymy and onomastics point at some relation at least. In that context, the linked analysis of Venetic may be of interest to you. It points out to
a.) the Venetic lexicon, while substantially Italic, having several parallels to OHG
b.) the Venetic grammar being mor Celtic than Italic
c.) Venetic phonology showing strong parallels with Insular Celtic and West Slavic
http://www.jolr.ru/files/(83)jlr2012-7(33-46).pdf
My working hypothesis is proto-Venetic (Veneto-Illyrian?) being the dominating Hallstatt language. The other "Veneti" (Vistula Veneti, Armorican Veneti, Welsh Gwynedd) constitute remains of a Hallstatt-period expansion. In the case of the Vistula Veneti ("Wenden"), the archeological trace is provided by the Pomeranian face-urn culture, with by the 4th cent.BC relocated towards the upper Vistula, and was further replaced south-eastwards by incoming Goths.
The ethnonym Veneti is transparent. The prefix "Ven-" can be linked to Irish fianna "brotherhood". The second part is usually hydronymic - the Venetkens (original name of the Adriatic Veneti) as people from the Adige/Etsch, the Vennones in Val di Non, the Vindelici on the Lech (licus), etc. Other antique "Ven-" ethnonyms include the Venicones in Scotland, and the Vinciani in Asturia.
ADDENDUM on Venetic: I had in another context mentionned the difference between the Celtic *brig "hill, hilltop settlement" and the East Alpine, possibly Venetic, toponyms Virgl, Wörgl. Interestingly, Czech has vrch "hill, peak" in addition to the common Slavic hora.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9o3EYTdM8lQVDdXdFJSVk1CQnM/view
Is it possible to resolve the grey xs that say SC asia further ? Its a very large bracket with many sub regions. Are any peninsular indian populations in this plot?
Frank, the Finnish word for Russia is 'Venäjä' (in the meaning of Polish (?) Slavs), and it is related to OHG Winida, so this Finnish word and Vistula Veneti ("Wenden"), you mentioned, match pretty well with your working hypothesis and the Pomeranian face-urn culture.
Frank, on a more private level, I have also Inkscape in my computer for linguistic research purposes, but I am not at all good at using it and I have not yet really started to do what I want to do. I would be happy to ask you a few questions about Inkscape if you do not mind. My address is sanava@pp.inet.fi.
@ R.K.:
I think we need to be aware of the general limitations of aDNA. Not all cultures buried their dead uncremated. And even for some of those that did, e.g. LBK, there is huge misproportion between the settlement finds and the number of recovered graves. So, whatever reaches us as aDNA comes from non-randomly stratified contexts and is not representative (still, its better than having nothing at all).
So, a question that needs to be asked (but often lackis in the aDNA studies) is, why those people's aDNA survived at all. Possible reasons include:
- Outcasts/ criminals/ sacrifices, e.g. the Motala heads mounted on stockpiles, Nordic bog burials, possibly Salzmünde burials;
- War, violence, epidemics - mass graves such as CWC Eulau, but maybe other contexts as well
- Territorial dispute: For their relative rareness, Rhinish LBK graves have been interpreted as "territorial markers". For Nordic grave mounds/dolmen, the territorial marking function is obvious (though here rather relating to deliminating exploitation spheres than to actual dispute). Kurgans may have fulfilled a s similar function.
- Cultural bias: In a multicultural setting, a part of the population uses earth burial, other populations other means, which we often hardly know anything about (e.g. "Viking type" cremation on sea, elevated platforms as on Sulaweisi, ossuaries).
A specifically problematic case to me is what I would term "migraqting professionals". That's first of all artisans, well documented into the early 20th century (knife-sharpeners e.g.), from the Grimm Brother's fairy tail collection, and commonly assumed for Iron Age metalworking in the North European plains. The spread of nordic megaliths is commonly linked to construction teams ("Bautrupp" in German literature), which would provide the expertise, tools, strong ropes etc. required. Migrating potters are the most parsimonous explanation for the homogenity of ceramics - pot building/ tempering/ decorating/ burning is too complicated (and pottery too durable) to allow for a plausible mother-to-daughter transfer of knowledge. Timberman are still migrating today in Germany - why not also in the Neolithic?
If we accept migrating artisans as part of Neolithic, in Eretbolle Mesolithic, way of life - what happened when such artisans died? Would they be given the same burial as locals, or some special treatment? They should have been appreciated for their specialist, rare knowledge and skills, and provided with a respectful burial, but possibly individualised, outside the family dolmen, settlement graveyard, or whichever other burial traditions prevailed.
The same question may be asked for mobile traders, and, so they existed, LN "warriors" (caravan guards? law enforcement?). Trade at the heart of many cultures is quite obvious: Michelsberg was on salt and precious stones (Jadeite, Chalcedon from Bonn, toolmaking flint etc.). GAC added Baltic amber, with amber discs acting as diagnostic grave gift in multicultural settings outside the GAC core (e.g. Bohemia, Southern Germany). The amber, also stone axe tradition was continued by CWC.
In summary: We should anticipate the possibility that what appears to be a quite homogenous and widespread burial custom is in fact reflecting nothing more than a trading and/or artisanal diaspora, whose aDNA has survived as they were buried different from their host community. This may also hold true for a lot of Steppe aDNA - it might not reflect the pastoralists themselves, but the people that set up trading outposts to do business with them. One such outpost, a GAC exclave on the Upper Volga near Smolensk, is archeologically well documented.
I had checked the Allentoft paper's Supp.Mat. for any discussion on this possibility, but there is nothing in it. Actually, the whole "Archeological Context" part is a disaster, e.g. claiming kurgan burials for CWC, when half of the study's CWC samples stem from village cemetaries. Apparently, Sup.Mat. are not peer-reviewed.
Postneo,
The SC Asians on that plot are Tajiks and Pashtuns from Afghanistan.
Indians generally have too much ASI to be included in a West Eurasian PCA like this.
1) "Rob, there is a lot of variance in autosomal ancestry in the cultures at this time. Looking at these, matching them with archaeological context and burial goods, and also Y-dna patterns, should be quite productive, no?"
-> Yes. But I think we have already a fairly decent idea, but deeper look is always warranted.
2) "A question that naturally follows is, why would a culture of small household units have homogeneous Y-DNA patterns, indicating recent common patrilineage?"
Isn't that consistent with small family units led by patriarchs, expanding broadly but thinly from an original core locale - say for arguements sake, CWC expanded from NW Pontic region ?
"Some people have been talking about elite dominance as an explanation for Y-DNA homogeneity."
I think most people brandish terms around without really knowing what they might be meaning.
In fact, "elite dominance' is an overused cliche. What is 'elite dominance' ? The best example would be the Norman conquest of England, where a few thousand Norman knights conquered England, kept a tight -knit & separated core, and ruled from behind their castles over the general peasantry. CWC is not a 'elite dominant' culture in that sense, neither is BB, neither is Yamnaya.
"However, how can this be reconciled with elite dominance in a society, if the society at the time is comprised of mobile nuclear households with no social complexity?"
Of course there was some social complexity. It just operated differently. But the crux of CWC society is: migratory, family bands, cattle herding, lowland ecological niche. Is there something in this which might be inconsistent with what you've read ?
(https://www.academia.edu/11604167/Identities_Differentiation_and_Interactions_on_the_Central_European_Plain_in_the_3rd_millennium_BC)
The 'elite' in this society were men, codified as the 'male hero' with a "CWC funerary set' in the only markers we have for CWC - the funerary mound (occasional fleeting dwelling structures). Not all men - but specially chosen men. *Amongst* this group - they were equal; i.e. no one CWC patriarch was more important than another. Given that we now know that these men were virtually all R1a-M417, it must have had a biological basis - patrilines, filial heirs, etc.
Contemporary to CWC in the Polish lowlands were the GAC communities, as well as TRB cultures - both of which lingered until 2000 and 2500 BC, resp. We have no real aDNA from them, so are in the dark for, say ~ 66% of the population in our case study area. In the above quoted paper, the GAC group was also studied. The enduring collective identity of internal coherence and opposition to CWC cultural templates speaks of different identities, even ethnicities. Their economy was different - primarily agriculture (vs mobile pastoralism), community was composed of several families, rather than single households, more permanent (but not 'fixed') settlement patterns, etc, etc
It is tempting to link GAC more to descendants of MN groups, given they appear 'native' to Poland, arising earlier (3600 vs 2900 BC). So will the upcoming aDNA study reveal them to be mostly haplogroup G2 ?
Are they the losers of a war vs CWC ? Maybe. But possibly not. Were they even necessarily in perpetual conflict ? - or did they simply coexist in different niches? The GAC lasted as long as CWC, and both groups became extinct, or 'transformed' c. 24/2200 BC, due to other, new, external impulses- BB and groups from the Carpathian basin (Unetice). Given that M417* doesn't exist in Poland today, CWC and GAC were likely both 'losers', that is to say, were yet another statistic in the series of population turnovers seen in northern Europe.
(continued....)
(3) "On the other hand, for Yamnaya, we can postulate patrilineage clans, as they were rather mobile with some social complexity and stratification seen in elite burials, which we can see in context with the extremely homogeneous Y-DNA patterns, as well as obvious signs of intergroup violence. "
Yamnaya isn't too different, to CWC, actually, but there is more differentiation amongst Yamnaya groups, and it has a slightly broader distribution area. I can't dwell too long on this, but people again make simplistic conclusions about 'royal kurgans'. For a start, I've mentioned previously, and will continue to do so, the only 'Royal Kurgans' were in the Majkop culture, not Yamnaya (which looks like a poor emulator in comparison).
Within Yamnaya, the most well equipped kurgans are toward the Kuban - i.e. next to the majkop culture. Here, 1 in 4 kurgans have wagons (amongst other goods). Whatever the exact nature of interaction, this must have been a central zone (Majkop <-> lower Don Yamnaya). Next, we have the Yamnaya kurgans on the approaches of the Urals. Not surprising, perhaps because these were the metallurgists (simply put). The Yamnaya kurgans toward the balkans were rather austere. By contrast, the 'settled' communities (eg Mako, Vucedol) appear to have been the big chiefs, with elaborate funerary gifts. Given that Yamnaya occupied specifically the lowland, steppe-like zones of the Balkans, it is difficult to imagine them ruling anyone apart from their own territories. Their tenure on these lands was also rather brief, ending c. 2500 BC. So it'll be interesting to see their genetic impact - were they indeed the sources of west European L51, were they also Z2103, or some other, now uncommon M269 lineage. ?
Another interesting factoid worth mentioning is that the earliest Yamnaya horizon (3300-300 BC) shows a diversity of funerary treatments, whislt later (2800-2500 BC), there was a standardization of what was expected. Was this because one clan won out over the entire Yamnaya territory, or was it due to a shared system of 'non-uniform institutional complexity " (M Frachetti) ?
ADD:
* "This is harder to do for Corded Ware based on current interpretations, no? Are there any signs of large structures on the scale of the Michelsburg enclosures in the Corded Ware, fortifications, or any signs of engineering requiring the input of a large number of man-hours requiring cooperation between groups of more than 100 people, such as the movement of heavy stones?"
-> I can't see any evidence for this. Maybe Frank can elaborat
@FrankN @Kristiina @Rob
We can leave out an Illyrian-Venetic group. From what we know of Illyrian grammar it groups with Thracian (the Indo-European voiced aspirates /bʰ/, /dʰ/, /gʰ/ became voiced consonants /b/, /d/, /g/). That is a fundamental difference from Venetic which is part of Italic group and we know that in Italic group all of them (Italic languages) have voiceless fricatives (f- or h-) as reflexes of the voiced aspirates in initial position (eg: * bʰer- > fero - Eng iron)
Also in Illyrian Satem examples far outweigh Centum examples (actually if we leave Venetic samples out only the name Genti can be used as example)
On the other hand we find in South Italy adn eastern shore of Italian peninsula different Illyrian tribes eg: Messapic tribe usually linked with Illyrian. How this falls in a general picture I don't know.
David: Any comments on
http://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/the-major-ychromosome-haplotype-xi--haplogroup-r1a-in-eurasia-2161-1041-1000150.pdf
They propose a TMRCA of 15.5kya for Z93 and 12.5kya for Z280 !
It's outdated. Their estimates are way off because...
Evolutionary time estimates were calculated according to Zhivotovsky et al. [15] and STR mutation rate was assumed to be 6.9 × 10 -4 per 25 years.
This is the latest on South Asian R1a using full Y-chromosome sequences.
We estimate that several lineages within the European R1b, sub-Saharan African E1b, and South Asian R1a haplogroups experienced growth rates of at least 20-60% per generation at the onset of their massive expansions, some 3-5 thousand years ago. These high growth rates are comparable to those experienced by human populations during the 20th century. However, we find that most observed genealogies are unlikely to be the result of whole population expansion or of natural selection.
https://ep70.eventpilotadmin.com/web/page.php?page=IntHtml&project=ASHG15&id=150122628
Mate,
Can you give me any data regarding the modern R1a-Z93 distribution in Ukraine?, i need it .
No idea...???
But basal forms of Z93 are found in Poland and western Russia.
@Davidski: what do you mean by "basal"? Because there is ill characterized Z93* that is mostly non-basal but actually highly derived in the haplotype tree, just that the corresponding sub-haplogroup(s) has/have not yet been described. Are you talking of that or is there actually something to your claim?
Also source, please.
Dave,
Damn it!, anyway, about Poland and W Russia , what is the frequency of Z-93? around 5%? or much less?.
And in Poland, your ethnic country , is there any pattern regarding the distribution?, i mean can the mutation ( Z-93 ) be specified to any particular group of people in Poland as dominant?.
My mtDNA lineage,H6a1a, follows Indo-European R1a & R1b migrations. Hopefully, someday I will find out if H6a is was born in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe or south of the Steppes. H6a has a strong presence in Central Asia today. I'm looking at pre-Yamnaya Cultures that could have brought the lineage into the Yamnaya and then into Central Europe. Wondering if the Elshanka Culture, 6500 BCE, first pottery producing Culture in Europe, brought H6a into the Caspian Steppes. There, H6a, mated with R1a & R1b men in the pre-Yamnaya Cultures. JV
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