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Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Hungarian Yamnaya predictions


About ten thousand ancient burial mounds still stand in the Carpathian Basin and surrounds. Many of these kurgans or tumuli show direct archeological links with the highly mobile Yamnaya culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe to the east, and may have been built by Yamnaya migrants.

The testing of ancient DNA from the remains in these burials is important, because the results are likely to be informative about the profound genetic, cultural and linguistic changes that took place in what is now Hungary and the Balkans during the Copper and Bronze Ages.

But, alas, probably to the disappointment of some readers, my great prediction is that they're not going to be overly relevant to what happened at this time in Northern and Western Europe, and won't upend the current consensus that the Corded Ware culture (CWC) was the main vector for the spread of steppe ancestry and Indo-European languages into these parts of the continent.

The important thing to understand about the Yamnaya expansion into the Carpathian Basin is that it mostly stopped at the Tisza River. It's true that some archeological cultures west of the Tisza, such as Mako and Vucedol, do show fairly strong Yamnaya influences, but they can't be regarded as part of the Yamnaya colonization of Central Europe. Below is a slightly modified map from Heyd 2011 to illustrate my point.


In fact, four early Yamnaya period samples from one of the few kurgans west of the Tisza have already been published along with the Olalde et al. 2018 paper on the Bell Beaker culture (BBC). And one of these samples, labeled I5117, even represents a male buried in a Yamnaya-like pose. But this is how three of these individuals cluster in my Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of ancient West Eurasian genetic variation.


They sit firmly among other Copper Age and Neolithic samples from west of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. In other words, they show practically zero Yamnaya-related or steppe ancestry. Moreover, both of the males belong to Y-haplogroup G2a-L91, which is yet to be found in any samples from the Copper and Bronze Age steppe.

That's not to suggest, however, that the spread of the Yamnaya culture into the Carpathian Basin was a cultural process with little or no genetic impact. It probably wasn't, because five samples labeled "Yamnaya Hungary" were featured in the Wang et al. 2018 preprint on the genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus, and judging by their PCA and ADMIXTURE results (in the figure below from the said preprint) they're not very different from most other Yamnaya samples, such as those from far to the east in Kalmykia or Samara.


But the point I'm making is that not every one of the ten thousand kurgans and tumuli in the Carpathian Basin and surrounds was built by newcomers from the steppe, and, thus, my other prediction is that a fair proportion of the Yamnaya-related burial mounds, especially west of the Tisza, might contain remains without any steppe ancestry.

As far as I know, the Y-haplogroups of the aforementioned Yamnaya Hungary samples haven't yet been reported anywhere. But there are three ancients in the Mathieson et al. 2018 paper on the genetic prehistory of southeastern Europe that are probably highly informative about what we can expect in this context, because based on their archeology and ancestry, they're likely to be closely related to the Hungarian Yamnaya population. They are:

Balkans_BronzeAge I2165: Y-hg I2a-L699 3020-2895 calBCE

Vucedol_Croatia I3499: Y-hg R1b-Z2103 2884-2666 calBCE

Yamnaya_Bulgaria Bul4: Y-hg I2a-L699 3012-2900 calBCE

That's not much to work with, you might say. Perhaps, but keep in mind that R1b-Z2103 has now been reported in Yamnaya samples from Ciscaucasia, Kalmykia, and Samara, and I2a-L699 in a Yamnaya singleton from Kalmykia. Thus, a lot of outcomes are still possible, but some are more likely than others. So I'm expecting most Hungarian Yamnaya males to belong to R1b-Z2103 and I2a-L699, or perhaps even the other way around!

However, in line with my great prediction, I don't expect to see any R1a-M417 or R1b-L51, the two most common Y-halogroups among present-day Europeans living north and west of the Balkans. And I think that if these markers do actually show up, then they'll be represented by nowadays rare or even extinct lineages that aren't very important to the peopling of Europe. Any thoughts? Feel free to share them in the comments.

See also...

Hungarian Yamnaya > Bell Beakers?

Single Grave > Bell Beakers

Dutch Beakers: like no other Beakers

240 comments:

1 – 200 of 240   Newer›   Newest»
EastPole said...

It is getting more confusing and complex. If “Corded Ware culture (CWC) was the main vector for the spread of steppe ancestry and Indo-European languages into these parts of the continent” how did it happen from linguistic and genetic point of view?

Maybe something like this:

https://i.postimg.cc/KvsCXMGt/PIEtree2.png


CWC were created by Sredny Stog II men and some West Yamnaya women plus some EEF.
Maybe BB was created by West Yamnaya men and Sredny Stog II women and some EEF?
Who was PIE then?

Тels said...

@davidski
Your post recall in my mind the archeological theory that the oldest kurgans are from Lower Danube. So, Valachia/Northern Bulgaria are the places of the origin of kurgan expansion to the steppe?

Drago said...

Very interesting, good to see you've taken my point.
The ''diversity'' of lineages south of the Carpathians & the western-most steppe suggests there a more primal process (& not referring to the faulty''diversity'' of the Y-STR days). IMO, the relations of L51 and M417 in the north amongst themselves is still to be determined, although I understand the reasoning for your view.

Davidski said...

@Tels

I've seen different theories about where the oldest kurgans have been recorded.

Apparently there were kurgans on the Don-Caspian steppe already around 4,300 BCE, so that's pretty old, and much older than that Copper Age kurgan near the Tisza.

Desdichado said...

@ EastPole "Who was PIE then?"

Why can't they all be? What's to suggest that they weren't already closely related groups speaking fairly closely related dialects? We already know from RECORDED history that the story of the steppes and the Balkans is the superimposition of one group over another over another over another, at least in terms of a ethno-linguistic identity, if not always in terms of massive genetic turnover (although that happened too.) In RECORDED history, we have the Dacians and Thracians over an area that was supposedly proto-Greek/Phrygian/Armenian (which in turn was over a group that was supposedly proto-Anatolian, which in turn was over a group that was non-Indo-European.) They were later washed over by Celts from the West, Scythians from the East, then Romans, then Huns, then Germanic Goths, then Magyars and Avars and Slavs.

If all of that happened in recorded history, we should expect the same to have happened in prehistory as well. These stories of Corded Ware spreading over native SHG, to be linguistically replaced by Bell Beakers, or whatever, are interesting points of reference, but are probably much too simplistic, because they don't match what we know happened as soon as we have written records to know about.

If nothing else, the close genome wide correspondence between proto-Yamnaya Khvalynsk and Repin on one hand and the Sredni Stog II on the other hand, in spite of their generally predictable sorting along Y-DNA lines means that there had to have been long-standing and complex interactions between the two peoples.

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski While I admire your knowledge about genetics, I do doubt that the Balto-Slavic branch is actually a DIRECT descendant of the R1a1-rich CWC or even further, Sredny Stog II.
Don't you think that you are conflating language with actual Anthropology, genetics and culture? Bear in mind, that the Balto-Slavic branch is actually rather late, dating to ~100AD-500AD? Not that I don't agree with you that the Slavic peoples are descendants of CWC etc, I just think that Balto-Slavic is a late development of a very early Eastern CWC dialect and not what they were actually speaking.

Ric Hern said...

What is interesting is that the WHG percentages doesn't seem to vary as much as the CHG in most of the Corded Ware samples...

Mouthful said...

@Andrzejewski

You seem to post a lot here but what you've wrote is complete and nonsensical horse shit. How on earth did you came up with date 100-500AD? A simple two minute google search how off the mark you are Balto-Slavic split is dated to at least 1500-1000BC . You either don't differentiate Balto-Slavic between Proto-Slavic out of which all current Slavic languages developed, but either way we don't know how many other Balto-Slavic dialects Slavic expansion replaced. And either way by your logic if Balto-Slavic appeared in 100-500AD, what archaeological cultures they appeared from? It maybe true for Slavic expansion somewhat but again, it's another story how Slavic language expanded via what means, but this doesn't make any sense at all for Baltic speakers there's a clear archaeological trail from late bronze/age iron age out of which Baltic cultures developed. Or do you suppose they landed from outer space somewhere between 100AD-500AD?

Andrzejewski said...

@Mouthful No, what I'm saying is that there were lots of language replacement events and the original languages spoken in the Baltic CWC area were extinct by the time we had written records. We don't know what languages or dialects the Poltavka Culture or Srubna Culture spoke, and it may be that Balto-Slavs are offsprings of these cultures, for example.

Andrzejewski said...

@Mouthful "there's a clear archaeological trail from late bronze/age iron age out of which Baltic cultures developed."

Archeology.

I'm talking about LANGUAGE. There was a time span of 3,000 years between the East CWC or Baltic_BA to the first attested written Church Slavonic, which is the earliest attested Slavic language. I'm talking about what PRECEDED it.

On the same vein, there's a 3,000 gap between Afanasievo and Tocharian speakers, but many scientists would presume that the latters are the direct descendants of the former, without much convincing evidence. The Tarim Basin Mummies could've come from the Scythians instead, speakers of Indo-Aryan and descendants of Sintashta/Andronovo.

Mouthful said...

@Andrzejewski No, what I'm saying is that there were lots of language replacement events and the original languages spoken in the Baltic CWC

What are those lots of language replacement events are you speaking of? Baltic BA samples already carried R1a-Z80 clades like CTS1211 and Z92 strongly associated with Balto-Slavic speakers not only that they also share a lot of genetic affinity with Balto-Slavs and there's no evidence for any archaeological contacts with Baltic area and Poltavka and Srubna culture, if you make such claims at least present some data to your theories, more over Srubna culture was heavily R1a-Z93 which has nothing to do with Balto-Slavs. Again I'm asking on what basis did you came up with such dates for Balto-Slavic branch 100AD-500AD and on what archaeological or even genetic basis?

Andrzejewski said...

@All I've been reading Hakkinen and he proposed the theory that the wide swath between the Baltic to the Ural Mountains was populated by groups who spoke Paleo-European languages which were non-IE and non-Uralic. One of those groups were supposedly the Volosovo Culture. It was hypothesized that the 1/3 of Saami vocabulary which was non-Uralic came from a related population, which also populated the North Fennoscandia archipelago. It was said that the Fatavanovo-Balanovo Culture was an eastern extension of the Corded Ware culture into Russia, and that after a relatively lengthy period of coexistence it either displaced or assimilated the Volosovo, although traces of the latter do exist as substrate within Finno-Ugric Volga peoples' speech.

How likely is it that the development of Balto-Slavic came about by R1a1 groups (Eastern Corded Ware) assimilating autochthonous non-IE non-Uralic natives such as Kunda, Narva and Volosovo, and that TRACES OF NON-IE NON-URALIC SPEECH is what turned PIE in that area into Proto-Baltic-Slavic?

Gabriel said...

@Andrzejewski

Srubnaya was likely Iranian. Balto-Slavs come from Trzciniec. Your dating is for proto-Slavic from PBS not PBS from PIE.

Andrzejewski said...

Here's my theory: some non-IE, non-Uralic (Narva, Volosovo, Kunda etc.) were widely spoken by local foragers all the way from the Volga to the Ural and back to the Baltics. When the CWC spread eastbound they assimilated these speakers. Volosovo left no recognizable substrate words in Finno-Ugric languages. My hypothesis goes even further, to assign sound change (phonology), morphological and other traceable changes from PIE -> PBS to these Paleo-European substrate. I'm quoting Hakkinen, and in this case also Asko Parpola:

https://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust264/sust264_hakkinenj.pdf

Andrzejewski said...

From Hakinnen: "The first argument is that there is a high probability that other languages were
spoken west of the Volga-Kama fork. In the Finno-Permic vocabulary there appear words with consonant clusters consisting of a sibilant followed by a nasal,
alien to Proto-Uralic phonotactics: *šm, *śn, *šń. Further west (judging from a
narrower distribution in Finno-Mordvin or Finno-Saamic) there appear yet more
words of this kind (*šn, *šm), and words with other foreign features, such as
geminate nasals (*mm, *nn) and word-final *s (Häkkinen 2009: 37–40, 47–48).
The number of foreign phonotactic features in vocabulary grows as the
Uralic dialects advance westward from the Volga-Kama fork. This would not be
the case if only languages related to Uralic were spoken in the west. Of course
it is possible that both languages related to Uralic and unrelated languages were
spoken; after all, there were many different cultures in the same area (Volosovo,
Fatyanovo-Balanovo, Abashevo). However, as all the other cultures except the
Volosovo are connected to Indo-European-speaking groups by Parpola, and as
the words borrowed into Uralic with alien phonotactics are not of Indo-European
origin, we should leave the Volosovo culture for these unknown Palaeo-European languages."

Sounds PERFECTLY CLEAR to understand why Baltic languages as well as Polish have so many sibilants and nasal sounds :)

Matt said...

Yamnaya expansions at least genetically "stalling out" past the Hungarian Plain, actually seems on first blush to push us back a bit towards the archaeologists made statements about lack of population replacement via Yamnaya in "Old Europe", and where transformation of culture at that time and there is due to natives participating in new systems of culture to a greater extent.

Instead substantial steppe ancestry may be brought by to SE Europe (and more generally S Europe) later on by populations like Beaker and others (post CW populations) which may be relatively more sedentary offshoots of Corded Ware? Some of these including male biased migration (Iberia?) and some being more like folk migration which did not replace y haplogroups very much?
Though obviously they (some archaeologists) were still wrong about Corded Ware not being an ancestry expansion and population movement, and those who thought the same about Beaker.

Sort of on the topic of these phases of early steppe ancestry expansion to the west, there are some interesting comments in the paper Arza linked on about Globular Amphora that:

The analysis of two Late Neolithic cultures, the GAC and CWC, shows that steppe ancestry was present only among the CWC individuals analysed, and that the single GAC individual had more WHG ancestry than previous local Neolithic individuals. Similarly, an absence of steppe and high WHG ancestries in 5 GAC individuals from Kierzkowo, Poland, and 3 from Ilatka, Ukraine, was recently reported.

We note, however, that since the GAC individuals analysed both in (aforementioned papers) and here are from the early parts of the GAC period, we cannot exclude the possibility of a steppe component in later GAC populations.


GAC's from about 3000 BCE to 2300 BCE, in Poland, in their telling, and it seems the samples we know they consider early. Some of the later samples, if they can find them, might have steppe ancestry.

Together with the interesting finding of cluster of males with I2a2a in Corded Ware contexts, which seems to indicate they may have had a bit more of a incidence of admixture with EEF / HG male groups that we see in Beaker on the whole. But samples of Corded Ware are still fairly low compared to Beaker I think.

Ric Hern said...

The seeming closeness of Irish and Lithuanian Folklore makes me think that their forefathers/mothers lived close to each other at some point in time....So maybe the Volga is a bit to far for this to be a possibility...

Gabriel said...

@Ric Hern

Could still be from proto-Corded Ware in the steppes and East-Central Europe.

Andrzejewski said...

Seems as if the Thracian, Illyrian, Phrygian and other Proto-Balkanic languages arrived with the Yamnaya Hungary, whereas Corded Ware is largely responsible for the spread of NW-IE languages. Greek probably derives from Yamnaya Hungary as well.

MOCKBA said...

Today's Hungarian Puszta (Steppe, the word etymologically derived from the Slavic for "emptiness") is along the East bank of Tisza river, although there are a few much smaller Steppe enclaves to the West. Perhaps it was just ecology, unchanged since the Yamnaya age, that their livestock grazed primarily in the open-Steppe landscapes and built tumuli in the best, widest herding areas. Burying their dead in the land they loved the most, even if they lived across the whole of Pannonia

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

This new set of proposed movements is extremely difficult to reconcile with linguistic isoglosses and the various trees for PIE. In general, the satem languages and Greek form an innovative core compared to Italic, Celtic, Tocharian, Anatolian, all of which left earlier. A derivation of those which left earlier directly from Yamnaya, through the Balkans and Bell Beaker in Western Europe for Italic-Celtic and other Western IE dialects (e.g. Ligurian, Venetic) and Afanasievo into Asia for Tocharian, plus a derivation of the innovative set of Indo-Iranian, Greek and Armenian from R1a and EEF containing Corded Ware, seem to make good sense of the genetics and the linguistics. If Western IE ancestry also derives from Corded Ware, we don't have much to explain the distribution of features among the IE languages.

Any proposed set of movements have to explain the core-periphery distinction described above, plus the following features:
1. Anatolian shares a few features with Western IE languages
2. Italic and Celtic must be close to each other until they split
3. Greek is partly in the innovative group and partly in the periphery
4. Germanic is like Greek, but is close to Celtic throughout its history as well

In particular, if Celtic, Italic, Germanic, all the way to Indo-Iranian all drive from Corded Ware peoples, how can it be that Bell Beaker is responsible for a single language family, Celtic, while Corded Ware--not much older than Bell Beaker--is responsible for a huge diversity of IE branches? The temporal chronology doesn't make much sense to me.

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

@ Andrzejewski

The Balkanic languages should not be treated as a valid grouping. The Dacian and Thracian languages, for example, are demonstrably more related each other and to Baltic than they are to any other languages.

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

@ Matt
"Yamnaya expansions at least genetically "stalling out" past the Hungarian Plain, actually seems on first blush to push us back a bit towards the archaeologists made statements about lack of population replacement via Yamnaya in "Old Europe", and where transformation of culture at that time and there is due to natives participating in new systems of culture to a greater extent.

Instead substantial steppe ancestry may be brought by to SE Europe (and more generally S Europe) later on by populations like Beaker and others (post CW populations) which may be relatively more sedentary offshoots of Corded Ware? Some of these including male biased migration (Iberia?) and some being more like folk migration which did not replace y haplogroups very much?"


All very true. The Balkans are the only region of IE Europe today not dominated by late clades of R1a or R1b, and, judging from the aDNA record, did not have extreme male-biased replacement right away after contact with Steppe cultures and reached its current levels of steppe ancestry much later compared to Western, Northern or Eastern Europe. The EEF elites interred in kurgans mentioned by David are pretty indicative. The models of acculturation and integration may have more traction here than elsewhere.

Al Bundy said...

Germanic is like Greek?

Samuel Andrews said...

@About the mystery of Balkan IEs.....

If, any are of Corded Ware origin we should expect a decent chunk of WHG as well as drift with Globular/Funnel Beaker farmers. In the tiny amount of ancient DNA from IE Balkans I'm pretty sure we don't see that. For example, Bulgaria IA has 20-25% Yamnaya ancestry but 0% WHG.

Slavic admixture makes it very difficult to reconstruct what Balkan IEs were like. But we do have samples from...

Bronze age Croatia
Iron age Bulgaria.
Myceneans.
Many locals from a Lombard burial in southern Hungary.

The locals in the Lombard burial cluster close to modern Italians. None of them are identical, they don't represent a single population. A Greek-south Italian makeup makes the most sense for pre-Slavic Balkans.

Drago said...

@ Davidski
The earliest burial mound of sorts is in Gulemnitsa culture in 6th millennium, as are the hocker positions of later CWC and BB

@ Matt

“Instead substantial steppe ancestry may be brought by to SE Europe (and more generally S Europe) later on by populations like Beaker and others (post CW populations) which may be relatively more sedentary offshoots of Corded Ware? Some of these including male biased migration (Iberia?) and some being more like folk migration which did not replace y haplogroups very much?”

It seems that early steppe groups were largely restricted to steppe-like geography in SEE, hence the lack of displacement . It is here we’re EEF / steppe admixture occurred, then diffused further south

Drago said...

@ ANI Ex

“The Dacian and Thracian languages, for example, are demonstrably more related each other and to Baltic than they are to any other languages.”

If only we can be so definitive, but wa can’t
There’s simply too few attestarions of PalaeBalkan languages (outside Phrygian) ; and Baltic has been linked to virtually every IE language on accounts of its “conservativeness”.

Synome said...

@ANI EXCAVATOR

I recently believed this as well, but I changed my mind after reading Chang et al 2015.

It looks like the innovative core was the centered on the steppe area. As waves of IE cultures spread from the steppe to surrounding environments, they lost contact with the core and thus didn't share in the innovations.

In the example of the Satem isogloss, it looks like Corded Ware was originally Centum, but parts of it were Satemized later in a new wave emanating from the steppe, around the time of Sintashta. This wave of innovations spread to some areas adjacent to the steppe, like the Balkans and Eastern Europe, but cultures at the periphery of the steppe zone like proto-Germanic and proto-Greek were only partially influenced and more distant groups like Celtics, Italics, and Tocharians escaped the influence entirely.

Matt said...

@Dragos, we've discussed before about why I believe the data series in the SE probably doesn't look like long term diffusion in the kind of time scales you're talking about. You didn't convince me the first time and I doubt I convinced you. No new evidence. Not much point doing it again.

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

@ Synome
It does seem that the composition of steppe groups changed from Yamnaya-like Yamnaya, Poltavka and Catacomb groups to Corded-ware-like Sintashta, Srubna and Andronovo groups, and the later set is associated with Satem isogloss and other innovations.

Perhaps some parts of CW were centum, and that explains everything, but that basically means Corded Ware gave rise to all the languages that are part of late IE outside Anatolian and Tocharian, while BB gave rise to only Celtic, and maybe some para-celtic groups like Ligurian. How can that be when both groups are very little separated in age? Does this make sense to you?

Drago said...

@ Matt
My remarks weren’t, on this occasion about, over what time period steppe admixture occurred
; but rather geography, as it should be obvious (hence not sure why you’ve misunderstood)

Now, if you have any objections to my comments, feel free to outline those, once you’ve acquainted yourself with SEE (so we’re not discussing blindly/ philosophically; but empirically). TIA

Synome said...

If we accept what Davidski (and others) have postulated, the scenario looks something like the following if you try to correlate the Chang tree with archaeogenetic evidence:

Pre-Yamnaya>>Anatolian

Circa Yamnaya>>Tocharian

CW>>Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, (Daco-Thracian?)

Western Yamnaya>>Greek, Armenian, Albanian, (Phrygian?)

Some of these branches influenced each other after initial divergence, which would explain why there are isoglosses shared across some of these branches that remained contiguous with each other.

Matt said...

@Dragos, the bit I was trying to avoid was affirming your statement that Steppe_EMBA and Balkan ancestry mixed where steppe environments run to their limits, then slowly diffused south over time (rather than any mass movements of populations). I don't have any major problems with the statement that early steppe cultures ran into limits at the limits of steppe environments, itself.

Steven said...

Does southwest European (Iberia, southern France, Italy) Yamnaya related ancestry derive from the Bell Beakers/CWC? Does the Yamnaya related ancestry in SE Europe derive from the same source as the Slavs' Yamnaya ancestry?

Matt said...

@Sam, are you sure you're not overegging the pudding by suggesting that any of these populations in the SW have 0% WHG? Balkans_Chl should have about 8-10% HG ancestry beyond Anatolia_N/Balkans Neolithic.... Are we talking WHG in the strictest sense?

Not sure the differences in WHG% would be huge. Graphically: https://i.imgur.com/fuje3Pw.png A-C are Balkan scenarios with Yamnaya or CWG, D-E are Iberian scenarios.

Davidski said...

@ANI EXCAVATOR

It should have been obvious long ago that most Indo-European languages have their roots in the Corded Ware complex, considering how similar Sintashta was to Bell Beakers, and how different they both were from Yamnaya.

There's been way too much focus on Y-haplogroups and their phylogeny by most, resulting in some wayward assumptions being popularized.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Davidski,

I suppose a Corded Ware origin of most IE languages could explain why most IE languages share a node with each other under PIE and why Hittite is set apart from other IE languages.

@Matt,
"are you sure you're not overegging the pudding by suggesting that any of these populations in the SW have 0% WHG? Balkans_Chl should have about 8-10% HG ancestry beyond Anatolia_N/Balkans Neolithic.... Are we talking WHG in the strictest sense?"

I typically overregge the pudding but not this time. Here, I mean WHG in the strictest sense. Balkans_IA is about 1% WHG (according to G25).

Ryan said...

My tin-foil-hat prediction is that R1b-L51 will show up in EBA Hungary in samples lacking steppe admixture. R1b seems to radiate from the headwaters of the Danube.

Al Bundy said...

@Ryan Not my idea but it seems to make sense that l51 could be found in the Carpathian-Moldavian refuge zone, R1b seems to radiate out from there.

Drago said...

Most other non-Anatolian IE derive from cwc”

Pretty sure that Balkan IEs aren’t form CWC either, but the Iranic trader in Bulgaria might account for some shared features of Greek and IA, for example.
The “western” features in Anatolian might relate to a shared Balkan origin of these groups and Italic; the Appenine culture being one strand of emergent Proto -Italic

Samuel Andrews said...

I'll do you one better. R1b L151 comes from Neanderthals who inherited R1b1a* from the dinosaurs.

Gabriel said...

@Dragos

There are Sredny Stog/CWC-like people in the Balkans by 4500 BC already, so how sure can we be that he is just an Iranic trader when he could represent a different population? Or was that early sample Iranic already? Is Indo-Iranian from 6000 BC or some tsss?

Davidski said...

The sporadic appearance of Sredny Stog-related people in the Balkans during the Copper Age might be linked to the spread of Anatolian languages, or other no longer extant Indo-European branches.

Greek may have been brought into the Balkans via the later, more sustained population movements that also took Yamnaya into the Carpathian Basin, as per the map that I posted above.

The appearance of Sintashta-like people with Z93 in the Balkans during the Middle to Late Bronze Age might be connected with the spread of the horse chariot complex, and these people may indeed have been early Iranians or even Indo-Aryans. But there is a strong view among some academics that these were the early Greeks.

So even with hundreds and thousands of ancient samples it might not be possible to work out exactly what happened, but some things will be more plausible than others, especially when analyzed along with linguistics and archeological data.

Drago said...

@ Themmeee
Your question doesn’t make sense
Try asking again without Twitter-style language & emoticons.

Gabriel said...

Maybe Greek is a Hungarian Yamnaya/CWC hybrid?

@Dragos

I didn't use any emoticons, that's just my profile picture/avatar/whatever it is.

Drago said...

@ Davidski
We can expect a significant pulse of steppe admixture as early as 3700 BC, which aligns with the Cernavoda-Cotofeni horizon. This means that steppe admixture has indeed been occurring for 1000s of years, accreting with time

Of course, even before the Varna outlier of 4500 BC, a particular group of EEF imparted cultural, ideology and genetic impacts on the steppe; since 5500 BC; reified by the “ukraine Outlier”, who’s Hg is the same as Later Bulgarian EBAs.

Btw the weapons and harnesses in Mycenaean shaft graves are not necessarily from the steppe. They could be near eastern . There’s no clear filiation

Gabriel said...

What about the MCWC? How good a candidate it is for the proto-Greeks? Maybe testing would help.

Davidski said...

@Dragos

Of course, even before the Varna outlier of 4500 BC, a particular group of EEF imparted cultural, ideology and genetic impacts on the steppe; since 5500 BC; reified by the “ukraine Outlier”, who’s Hg is the same as Later Bulgarian EBAs.

The Bulgarian EBAs with Yamnaya ancestry carry the same Y-haplogroup as this Ukrainian forager from the steppe with practically zero ancestry from the Balkans.

Ukraine_Neolithic I1738 Y-hg I2a2a1b1b 5473-5326 calBCE

The outlier sample with the farmer ancestry profile is dated to later than this and only classified as belonging to I2a2a, which might not be the same subclade and probably isn't...

Ukraine_N_o I3719 Y-hg I2a2a 4949-4799 calBCE

Ric Hern said...

@ Dragos

Weapons ?

Were the Mycenaean Swords not similar to Wietenberg and even Wessex Swords ?

Chad said...

Bulgaria EBA samples also pre-date Yamnaya being anywhere close.

Davidski said...

@Chad

I'm talking about these samples...

Balkans_BronzeAge I2165: Y-hg I2a-L699 3020-2895 calBCE

Yamnaya_Bulgaria Bul4: Y-hg I2a-L699 3012-2900 calBCE

Drago said...

@ Davidski
Yes obviously I2a2a isn't from Anatolia, but represents a mobile set of foragers existing between northern Balkans and Dnieper. Little wonder, then, that some are EEG, some WHG, some (like Ulan IV), look completely steppic (although he is obviously eastward drifting), because they site right on the interface.
However, when coverage permits, and further parsing performed, they all belong to the same lineage, which on the basis of present samples, seems to be a founder effect coincident with the Mariupol horizon. Lets note that Mesolithic Ukraine samples so far are R1a, R1b, and I2a1.
The point is -I2a2a1b had been floating around the post-Mariupol areas for yonks, and the only newcomers appear to be R1b-M269 (although we are still to find the earliest M269 itself)

@ Ric
Yes probably there were Wessex-liek weapons there too, via Carpathian basin perhaps. By 1700 BC, Bronze Age trade networks were in full swing, so its hard to base movements on swords or chariot bit-pieces; as elites accrued status symbols and weapons from far & wide just as the wheel-complex much earlier seems to have moved via already established networks.

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

It really doesn't make sense how the breakup of Bell Beaker resulted in the branches of Celtic, quite shallow, just after the breakup of Corded Ware which resulted in everything from Italic to Indo-Iranian, which are much deeper in separation than the branches of Celtic and as different late members of PIE as they go. This would require the linguistic communities descended from Corded Ware to diverge extremely quickly, after which one of the communities almost immediately afterward, the Bell Beaker, generates another set of communities that diverge extremely slowly.

I'm quite sure linguists can give us a ballpark estimate of how much longer the separation between branches of late PIE is compared to that between branches of Celtic, which should at least place some boundaries regarding what is possible. Unless we switch to seeing Celtic as a later movement than Bell Beaker, which means we just shrink the scale for all the branches simultaneously now that CW is identified as late IE.

Perhaps the autosomal points to CW input in Bell Beaker, but this is not unambiguous. It could be that Neolithic descendants were more completely wiped out in the Low Countries compared to elsewhere, so there was no chance for heterogeneity of samples to occur in the Low Countries when the new Bell Beaker population was spreading. In any case we should still look out for alternative routes from the Steppe to Western Europe that bypass the Corded Ware, simply from linguistic considerations. This minority contribution may have contributed only part of the ancestry of Bell Beaker, but most of the culture and language.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Davidski,

I2165_EBA has 30% Steppe ancestry & has the same I2a2a1b1b as Yamnaya_Bulgaria & Yamnaya_Kalmykia. But, I2175_EBA & I2176_EBA have I2a2a1b1 (maybe I2a2a1b1b) and no Steppe ancestry. Someone needs to test if I2175 & I2176 are negative for I2a2a1b1b.

1.5507"

Balkans_BA:I2175

Starcevo_Croatia_N:I4918,34.8
Balkans_N:I2533,24.4
Romania_HG,17.9
Yugo_MN:I1131,7.1
Iberia_N:I0410,6.1
Ganj_Dareh_N,5.4
CHG,4
Lepenski_Vir:I5407,0.3

Gabriel said...

@ANI EXCAVATOR

Linguistics cannot beat genetic considerations, or have to take them in account (can be the other way around of course). Many models such as the NWIE model and Chang's model take in consideration a lineage that ranges from Italic to Slavic or even Indo-Aryan as derived from a common source, one that could be Corded Ware.

Davidski said...

@ANI EXCAVATOR

The best source for Italo-Celtic in the ancient DNA record are the steppe-admixed Bell Beakers, because they're already in Western Europe around 2700 BCE, and some of them move back east to the Carpathian Basin, which I think is ideal for Italic.

And the only way to get the steppe-admixed Bell Beakers is from Single Grave. Realistically now they couldn't have come from Hungarian Yamnaya or late Yamnaya from the steppe, because that would require all sorts of crazy back and forth movements from Eastern Europe all the way to the Lower Rhine, for no reason at all. Way too convoluted and beyond belief.

Trying to get them from late Yamnaya is also problematic because that would potentially put Italo-Celtic in close contact with Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian.

Ric Hern said...

@ ANI EXCAVATOR

Did you consider that there could have been many more Celtic Branches before several unification processes after its initial formation ? Something like a repeated levelling out of Dialects...in Western and Central Europe we see wide connections since at least the Middle Bronze Age. Cultures spreading over a wide area includes Bell Beaker, Unetice, Urnfield, Hallstatt and La Tene. So many dialect levellings among Indo-European speakers could have taken place...

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

It may be that levelling processes took place, but if that were the case, we should see at least some indications of continental expansions in the genetic data that touched Ireland. Reich has given us indications of this for England, but nothing to Ireland as far as I know.

Celtic is really quite a young language family, and looks like something out of the Iron Age and not the Bronze, or at most at the late Bronze Age. Perhaps this should get us looking at later expansions of some type, and Matt's findings of increased Iberian/"Western" affinities of modern West Europeans and Britons that are difficult to reconcile with the 90% bell Beaker replacement in Britain theory are a preliminary indication of that. This may also fit in with Koch's theory of post-Bell-Beaker "Celtic from the West".

@ Davidski
"The best source for Italo-Celtic in the ancient DNA record are the steppe-admixed Bell Beakers, because they're already in Western Europe around 2700 BCE, and some of them move back east to the Carpathian Basin, which I think is ideal for Italic."

Very good point, which restores the overall plausibility of your hypothesis if historically attested Celtic is then made to be the product of some later process that overprinted some less attested branches, such as Ligurian or Venetic.

bellbeakerblogger said...

Sorry Davidski, just saw your comment. I'll try an answer tomorrow if things don't get too crazy.

I'll throw one prediction out there, possibly L51 will be found in a princely Yamnaya context, more likely in the Hungarian plain, and everyone will beat their chests that it was part of or descended from the Yamnaya milieu. Problem is that Beakers also may have intermarried well and often into Yamna terrritory, in fact, very likely so. But since I'm pessimistic, I can only envision more confusing overlap scenarios since L51 or its parent certainly originated out East more recently.

@Matt/all,
Also to dovetail on your comment about the extent of Yamnaya past the Hungarian plain, one reason I believe Beakers settled into the Csepel Island area is for its strategic importance. There aren't exactly a lot of opportunities to ford the mighty Danube for your average Mongol/Ottoman/Hunnic/Soviet villain except for a few places. If you are able to cross, as many barbarians discovered, be ready to win a lot. Also, the terrain of Budapest is a natural choke point in the landscape, but also lengthwise on the Danube. It's one reason the Third Reich invested so heavily in Budapest because its fall would leave Austria and Bavaria open to the Soviets.

IMO Beakers settled here because they were control freaks. If you think about it, the distant Beakers controlled Csepel Island, not Yamnaya or the other twenty cultures native or nearby. If you look historically at the orientation of Budapest generally, whether Romans or Germans, it's always defending the empires behind it, not a doormat for Turks and friends.

Davidski said...

@bellbeakerblogger

Yep, I posted this quote in the other thread recently from the Olalde et al. 2018 supp info, page 135...

The assemblages of the settlement and cemetery in Szigetszentmiklós-Üdülősor prove that the infiltration of the Bell Beaker Complex is a reality at the end of the EBA l/a (end of the Makó phase), and it must have preceded the development of the Nagyrév culture in the area nearby Budapest. People of the Bell Beaker Complex merged into the local inhabitants gradually. This integrating process already began in the EBA II/a – this period is contemporary with the early phase of the Nagyrév culture, with Somogyvár-Vinkovci II, Cłopice-Veselé, Nyírség and Óbéba- Pitvaros cultures.

And there's more...

The observations made at Szigetszentmiklós-Üdülősor, namely the buried vessel depot of eight intact vessels from the Feature 779, the graves containing bodies in an unusual position forming a distinct cluster at the edge of the cemetery, separate from the Bell Beaker–Csepel burial ground, the grave pottery deposited with the mouth downward suggest that the individuals belonging to proto- (early) Nagyrév community were presumably treated as “enemies”. Wedged into the heartland of the proto-Nagyrév culture, the Bell Beaker-Csepel communities controlled the strategic areas on the Danube and on the eastern fringes of the Beaker distribution.

But hey, their descendants wouldn't now be living in practically every part of Central and Western Europe if they were nice guys. I guess that's obvious to us all.

Distributing those beakers was serious business back then.

Ric Hern said...

@ ANI EXCAVATOR

My question is, how precisely do you reconstruct a Proto-Language family if you do not have written proof of Older Branches of that family that went extinct ? Then there is Latin that was used as written language all over the Roman Empire yet not all those people in that area actually used it as a First Language. We see it with Dutch Bibles being used and even prayers being done in Dutch into the 1940s while the population already spoke Afrikaans for more than a 100 years...

Drago said...

You should read the articles by Enrodi , who provides the samples on BB Csepel., which are clearer and more detailed than the Supp
It is Nagyrév that pushed BB out , not vicer Versa
A large part of BB population remained (explaining why non-R1 Balkan groups still had plenty of steppe admixture)
But a good chunk fled west to the Atlantic

Sorry to pop the BB bubble

Davidski said...

It's OK Dragos, the big bad Bell Beakers won't hurt you. The ran away in a terrible panic to the Atlantic and disappeared somewhere. :)

Al Bundy said...

What about Ukraine Eneolithic for L51?

Drago said...


You can laugh it off as you please, but that’s exactly how it went - indeed L51 isn’t exactly very common in SEE.

Davidski said...

@Dragos

I have no emotional investment in the Beaker story, and I honestly don't care whether their escapades in the Carpathian Basin were a long lasting success or not.

But for now I suspect that the Hungarian Beakers didn't run away to the Atlantic, but rather that at least some of their descendants moved west and ended up in the Italian Peninsula.

Drago said...

@ David

''I have no emotional investment in the Beaker story, and I honestly don't care whether their escapades in the Carpathian Basin were a long lasting success or not.

But for now I suspect that the Hungarian Beakers didn't run away to the Atlantic, but rather that at least some of their descendants moved west and ended up in the Italian Peninsula.''

And neither do I, apart for the love of prehistory. Of course, I don't literally mean every BB -man scuttled off to the Atlantic, but rather I was referring to its status as a distinct cultral entity in the Carpathian region. But history is dynamic, people come and go, cultures rise and fall. Think about it - there are always push and pull factors. People migrate for reasons. Whether you incline to Hungary or the Rhine, there is definitely a net move toward the Atlantic- which is why BB dates later in south Iberia and UK.

And I suspect R1b reached Italy via the Rhine-Rhone axis, but lets wait and see...

Folker said...

@Dragos
If I may, David was likely referring to proto-Italic, not BBs in general.
BBs likely likely spoke at some point proto-italo-celtic, and proto-Italic is often theorized to have reached Italy from Pannonia.

Davidski said...

@All

I removed a couple of crazy comments and a response.

Please remember that one of the rules here is not to engage with mentally unstable people, although admittedly it's not always easy to tell who really is and isn't.

Drago said...

@ Folker
Yes that’s a solid link . Of course, the Polada is often linked to BA Hungary, specifically the post-Beaker period, when the old Balkan style tells make a return . On the other hand, these people moving into Italy must have been U152 rich. And here’s where the fun starts...

Folker said...

@Dragos
Not necessarily rich in U152. Urnfield culture could have been the main vector for U152 in Italy. Difficult to say at this point.

Aram said...

Davidski
II think most of Your recent predictions will be confirmed. But Your theory about Greek descending from CWC imho will be problematic.


I posted an update on Antgrogenica.
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?15533-Ancient-genomes-of-Srubnaya-Cimmerians-Scythians-and-Sarmatians(Science-2018)&p=539560&viewfull=1#post539560

So we have a late Yamna/early Catacomb era samples from Moldova. And if You compare them with much younger scy300 and scy305 (i choose them because they are not related to Scythians) from the same region You will see that not much changed since Catacomb era.
I think whatever affected Mycenean Greece was like those scy192 and scy197.

Davidski said...

@Aram

I honestly don't know what to make of those samples right now.

They don't look anything like the other Yamnaya or Catacomb genomes. I think we might have to wait for higher quality C14-dated samples from that area and time.

Synome said...

Two opinions about linguistic groups:

Proto-Greeks were most likely not directly descended from a CW group, but were heavily influenced by a Sintashta related group.

Celtic was a late bronze age/iron age expansion. It probably did overlay several other western European IE dialects that are lost today.

Grey said...

ANI EXCAVATOR
"This may also fit in with Koch's theory of post-Bell-Beaker "Celtic from the West"."

it always looked to me like the western euro branch of R1b expanded from the Atlantic

https://banner2.kisspng.com/20180604/wso/kisspng-france-gaulish-language-gauls-haplogroup-r1b-5b15afe4241d29.0087783715281479401479.jpg

which if it was originally from the steppe would require some kind of boomerang event i.e. some (initially small?) population arrived at the Atlantic coast from the east, developed a local advantage (climate? resources?) and then expanded east again for some distance until that local advantage ran out or was matched by an equally strong advantage coming the other way.

i don't know if that idea helps the linguistic puzzle or makes it worse.

Gabriel said...

But they stayed to a great degree. West Slavs have R1b-L151 in fair quantities and Germanic and Celtic populations reached as far east as the steppes and Anatolia.

AWood said...

Even looking at the I2-M223 FTDNA project, L699 has a Z2103/Yamnaya feel to it, matching similar distributions in places like Iraq, Greece, Hungary, Pakistan. Other branches of I2 like M284 are undoubtedly related to the Atlantic Neolithic. However, there are tons of European men under I2-M223 and I am not all that familiar with it at the deep level. If we can find a common link between some branches of I2-M223 that go east to west and are common in west Europeans today, there could be a similar link with L51 moving to the west from the east. Every R1b (European) will tell you they have plenty of I2-M223 relatives and there is definitely common ground here extending further back in time. It's the very specific subclade of I2-M223 that matters in order to draw a link.

Gabriel said...

@AWood

Just because there is a connection between R1b-Z2103 and I2-L699 because both are common in Yamnaya doesn't mean there is a connection between R1b-L151 and some I2 subclade. Like Davidski said there has been too many focus on haplogroups, and this comment is it, even if they do matter.

Gabriel said...

On the other hand I wonder what Fatyanovo results are going to be like...

EastPole said...

OT, maybe this will be interesting, it will start tomorrow:

“Ancient DNA: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Daniel E. Lieberman and David Reich in conversation with Tony Joseph”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRXzO8mCdyk

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

@ Ric Hern

It does not matter if there are more diverged branches; the less-diverged branches of Celtic we already know, ranging from Austria to Portugal, should already get us to reconsider the theory that a mid-Bronze-Age movement was responsible for this spread. The movements responsible for such a distribution of little-diverged languages must be later.

@ Them Meee

If anything, from now on, the focus on haplogroups will only increase, for the simple reason that they more than autosomes reveal much about political turnover and social structure of the population. The Bell Beaker phenomenon, even if it did ultimately derive from Corded Ware, must be the product of a very unusual social process to have such a small subset of the diversity of the overall culture represented in the paternal uniparentals. It may be the result of a breakaway tribe under some kind of "culture hero" that accelerated cultural change, for example. Like Niall of the nine hostages in medieval Ireland. The Beakers were also more hierarchical than the Corded peoples, who were very flat, so political innovation must have occurred as well.

Someone should deeply resequence the Dutch Beaker Y to find out how closely patrilineally related they were.

ANI EXCAVATOR said...

@ Davidski

Judging from the plots in the previous post, there are a number of Hungarian and Italian beakers that seem to need a third source of ancestry from the Middle East or Anatolia. Could you investigate them?

Gabriel said...

What could be the source of this CHG wave in Southeast Europe and the Levant?

Gabriel said...

Maybe a bit off topic but when we test medieval genomes we could try and test medieval British genomes and compare them to modern British to see how different they are eg to see the impact of the Normans.

@ANI EXCAVATOR

I said they did matter, it's just autosomes matter as much if not more.

ambron said...

If we are with the British and we are talking about BB... There is such an older study: Athanasiadis, 2016.

The British have almost 33% of the Eastern European component. Poles have almost 77%. In the study it looks like an old signal (not medieval). Can it be after BB? Maybe after Weneds or Saxons? Do you have any idea?

Davidski said...

@ambron

There's no way to check that. ADMIXTURE clusters like that are usually composites of all sorts of things anyway.

ambron said...

OK! I understand.

JuanRivera said...

There's autosomal and especially uniparental evidence for migrations of steppe peoples. Same situation for ANE. Uniparental bias as far back as Yana RHS, belonging to ANS, an ancestor population of ANE. Still, I won't dwell into phenotypes until we solve all ancient DNA problems.

Gabriel said...

@JuanRivera

Dude is banned for spreading the idea modern Europeans are depigmented Africans, so I deleted my comment and instead I'll just repeat what David said:

Please remember that one of the rules here is not to engage with mentally unstable people, although admittedly it's not always easy to tell who really is and isn't.

Gabriel said...

Also I want to ask again, since I'm curious and confused:

What is the most likely area where this Balto-Slavic drift appeared then, Belarus? Many suggest Trzciniec as having partly Polish roots.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Them mee,
"What could be the source of this CHG wave in Southeast Europe and the Levant?"

No one has a clue. IMO, the Chalcolithic/Bronze age data from Middle East shows multiple directions of gene flow.

My opinion is....

Caucasian & Levantie admixture in Chalcolithic Iran.
-All Chalcolithic Iranian samples have Caucasian ancestry from Maykop/Georgian-like people. Most also have Levantie ancestry from people similar to Levant_N.

-Caucasian/Iranian admixture in Levant after 3000 BC (same time Steppe admix entered Europe).

-Caucasian (not Iranian) admixture in Anatolia by 4000 BC, in SE Europe by 3000 BC.

I don't think "Iranian"-admix ever entered Eastern Mediterranean. Eventually, Levantie admixture did. Minoans didn't have any. But Cypriot has a lot, Greek Islanders have a lot. Other parts of Mediterranean Europe obviously have some.

Samuel Andrews said...

-Levant, Iran, Caucasus ancestry in Levant.
-Levant, Iran, Caucasus ancestry in Iran & Mesoptamia.
-Levant, Iran, Caucasus ancestry in Cypriot.
-Levant, Caucasus ancestry in East Mediterranean.

Turkey has little or no Levant-related ancestry. Caucasus has no Levant & no Iranian ancestry. BedouinB (Arabs) have little or no Caucasian ancestry. I wonder if BedouinB are the best representative of early Semetic speakers.

**

Middle East is less uniform region than Europe but it's obvious the main areas (Levant, Mesoptamia, Iran) admixed with each other in several episodes during late Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze ages.

Chad said...

That really doesn't make sense. Anatolian N is itself about 25% Levant N. Also, there is clear Levant N in excess of what's in Anatolian N in both Hajji Firuz and Armenia ChL. It shows strongly in both qpAdm and qpGraph. Their roots are ultimately from Halaf and Hassuna.

Samuel Andrews said...

The recent paper with a Mesolithic Anatolian did not detect Levant ancestry in BarcinN. So I don't know why you think 25% Levant_N is realistic.

Hajj is in Iran. If you read my post you'll see I said Chl Iran has Levant admix.

When I said Caucasus I really meant north Caucasus. Armenia has always been more mixed.

Chad, you've said a lot if ignorant stuff in the last year. Like Sredny stog being half ArmeniaChl. Your qpadm models are not credible.

gL said...

@Andrzejewski
Regarding current post no matter what language was used by Yamnaya in Hungary in 2500BC, as other later migrations replaced everything.


There were no different Slavic languages(this was mostly meant as response to Mouthful, but naming them Balto-Slavic dialects also IMO is not viable option - see further below why) - current modern view see Slavic to be expanded from one source somewhere south in modern Poland around 500BC.


Before 500BC there are no Slavic people. We can only speak of ancestors of Slavic people before that date, which is not the same as genes =/= linguistics and culture.

IMO Using Balto-Slavic for whole language group is only acceptable when referring to classification of modern languages - it doesn't help with more ancient times, as people tend to think, that Slavic languages are somewhat ancient...
Using name Baltic also has some problems, because modern surviving Baltic languages are not even Baltic, because they came from Volga Basin and for the most of the history Baltic region was in outskirt of where major "Baltic" languages were spoken. Main history of Baltic is centered around Belarus and western Russia - where biggest biggest archeological Baltic cities were located. Modern Baltic before arriving in Baltic seems to had history of heavily mixing with Uralics - it is not unusual that even some Uralic cultures in/around Volga basin were speaking Baltic languages.



V. V. Martynov in his book "Language in time and space. On the problem of the Slavic Glottogenesis" came to conclusion about daughter character of Slavic languages to Baltic, which is basic layer to all Slavic languages.

It seems, that Slavic before becoming Slavic, underwent similar process, that Germanic went through, which is terrible as IE language group and points to nonIE origin. Though, there are some differences - Germanic contains a huge amount(I've read of 30%) of nonIE vocabulary and Slavic doesn't differ from Baltic that much: Slavic has only simplified grammar compared to Baltic, which might be explained as influence from IE language, like Celtic. Celtic were close neighbors and lived near - Bohemia was still Celtic in 500BC.



Slavic origins are mostly centered around R1a-M458.
Main confusion usually is about expansion of Slavic languages, which occurred very late in history and mainly because of introduction of Church Slavonic. Mexicans speak mainly Spanish for the same reason, but at least no one is making fuss about Spanish origins in Americas, where it is used most.
Even modern Baltic(after they settled in Baltic) had been impacted by this Church Slavonic when it was spread there - of which there is no trace of memory left, as all those religious terms for the most of the time are applied mainly for paganic sacred places... The earliest christian(eastern) churches might have been built in Baltic in late 9th century. This is the most probable date of anyone else shifting to Slavic languages, where Christianity was spread.


Regarding Baltic linguistical expansion(which happened before Slavic) - it can mainly be tied to R1a-M558(because main share of this variant is predominant amongst R1a in observed places and in Baltic it is most highest variant of R1a) expansion in Balkans in later times and that might have left impact as Baltic linguistical substrate in Dacian, Albanian etc.


There are few words in Baltic languages that are not regarded as IE, but preIE(and preUralic by default) origin. That is what is left from previous nonIE cultures.

Samuel Andrews said...

Kurgan/Steppe/PIE didn't have Maykop ancestry or anything resembling Maykop. Period. Wang 2018 resolved this issue.

Davidski said...

@gL

It seems rather unlikely that present-day Balts derive from the Volga Basin, considering their extreme genetic affinity to the Baltic Corded Ware and Bronze Age populations, and obviously direct genetic relationship that they share with them via uniparental markers.

See here...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02825-9

Gabriel said...

So where did Balto-Slavs originate? The east Baltic, Poland or Belarus and the Dnieper basin?

Folker said...

@gL
Slavic expansion predates conversion to Christianism. Remember that Slavs were already the Eastern neighbors of Carolingians, which raided them for slaves (mainly sold to Muslims). That is why the word « mancipi » was replaced by « esclavi » (Slavs), as most slaves were captured Slavs.

Drago said...

R1a lineages in the Balkans are mostly Z280-> CTS1211, therefor linking Slavs solely with M458 is erroneous

Gabriel said...

And Slavic origins do not center around R1a-M458. They had a variety of haplogroups including subclades of R1a-Z282 which dominates, R1a-Z93, all sorts of R1b-M269, I2a-Din, etc.

Andrzejewski said...

@gL "Germanic contains a huge amount(I've read of 30%) of nonIE vocabulary"

A theory made obsolete by modern linguists.

Drago said...

Z93 isn’t very common at all, which is rather surprising given the proximity of late scythians and sarmatians to Slavic

R1b isn’t a marker of Slavic expansion, but something absorbed along the frontiers (L51 West; Z2103 Balkans). But some L51 is undoubtably the result of (modern, Rhine-descended) Germanic expansion back east

ambron said...

Them meee, PCA does not support Eastern Slavs as a source of expansion. The Western Slavs are genetically located between the Eastern and Southern Slavs. Expansion started somewhere from here. I think so...

Gabriel said...

@Dragos

Z2103 is found in Northeastern Europe. Is it Illyrian there?

@ambron

I was asking where did Balto-Slavs and their "drift" originate. Using modern populations to deduce where Slavs expanded from is erroneous.

ambron said...

Them meee, David wrote earlier that one of the sources of the flow of Balto-Slavic genes to the Western Slavs was Trzciniec. Look for the beginning there.

Mouthful said...

@gL you don't make any sense and those theories are a bit off. While it's true some of the East Balts were located East their fate was that they were absorbed into Slavs by one mean or another f.e see Russian chronicles writing about campaigning against Galindians in 12th century near Oka. What happened before Christianization before writing was widespread is speculation. There's loads of Baltic hydronyms and archaelogical cultures usually attributed to Balts. For example Russian archaeologist Valentin Sedov and in Long Barrow Cultures of Kriviches Eastern Slavic tribe clearly sees a Baltic substrate, Eugene Schmidt also writing about Smolensk Kriviches holds the view that they were Balts in origin and were assimilated by Slavs in 7-8th century and etc, what led to this process as I've mentioned is not known. Also Brushed Pottery culture which is attributed to ancestors Lithuanians and Latvians pretty much encompassed most of today's Latvia and Lithuania and they were some local offshoot of Corded Ware. Moreover there's not a slightest evidence of Western Balts who were living on Baltic coast migrating somewhere out of Belarus or let alone somewhere further East. Also what's your point about religious terms like church, cross or baptism borrowed from Eastern Slavs? It's not rocket science that Kievan Rus were the first people who were Christianized who they came in contact with and thus borrowing these terms.

Also as David said look at Baltic_BA genomes they show clear affinity and share Y-DNA markers.

Matt said...

@Samuel, if history is any guide, I'm sure Chad's reply to your reasonable objection re: Mesolithic Anatolia will be "Sorry, can't explain now, will put a post up on my blog explaining, just wait" ;)

EastPole said...

People shouldn’t be so categorical in their opinions about Slavs because a lot may change very soon. Be more open minded.

Recently I was listening to a podcast at Brown Pundits. The conversation was between Brown Pundits’ contributors Razib, Zach and Slapstik on the evolution of Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan more generally within the Indian subcontinent:

https://www.brownpundits.com/category/podcast/

Slapstik who knows a lot about languages recommended a book on Indo-Aryan linguistics:
“The Indo-Aryan Languages”by Danesh Jain, George Cardona
The book is about Indo-Aryan languages and only mention of an Indo-European group outside Indo-Iranian appears in the following passage:

“The most definitively established and accepted subgroup within Indo-European is Indo-Iranian, a subgroup adjacent to Slavic – with which it shares the retraction of s after i u r […] and velars …” (p. 20).

https://goo.gl/2YBc17

Linguists who specialize in Indo-Iranian languages are aware of the closeness between Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages.

I have already written about T. Burrow “The Sanskrit Language”:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/04/on-doorstep-of-india.html?showComment=1523740548383#c6191530895381495941

https://goo.gl/mBeFD8

EastPole said...

Here is another example: "Cognate words in Sanskrit and Russian" by Indu Lekha, on Slavic and Sanskrit closeness from ‘Conclusion’ chapter:
“Lingustic data of Sanskrit and Slavic languages clearly indicate deep-rooted links between these languages.”

“In grammar too a fair number of common features can be enumerated, which are expressible in a set of systematic correspondences. For instance, both have preserved not only the old distribution of nouns into classes on the basis of stem, vocalic or consonantal- but also the old system of declension of nouns, pronouns and adjectives in three genders and in seven (if Sanskrit eight) cases. As in Sanskrit, in Russian too verbs an divided into classes on the basis of their infix and suffix and although, many ancient conjugational forms have not survived or are available only partially in Russian, its Present Tense forms show a remarkable closeness to those of Sanskrit. Beside this, both the languages maintain a highly developed multifunctional usage of suffixes and prefixes. Similarities can also be seen not only in the word-building suffixes but also in a considerable number of words, belonging to the early epochs of their history. such as. numerals and words for close family relationships, the meanings of which have remained virtually constant for thousands of years.”

“The historical -comparative analysis of Sanskrit and Russian proves without any doubt that both the languages share quite a similar phonological , morphological and grammatical system and have a considerable number of cognate words, as confirmed by the etymological explanations. Interestingly. even the ancient pagan religion of Slavs , of which only scanty written records are known to have survived, shows some common traits with the ancient Indian religion.”

Prof. Lakha then writes about similarities in culture and religion, and notices that even personal names are similar in Sanskrit and Slavic.
And then she proposes an explanation of this many similarities:

“Thus, in view of the linguistic affinities, existent in most of the ancient Indo-European languages, it seems quite a plausible explanation that in the very remote past, huge groups of some Northwest Indian tribes, for whatever the reason, adventure or trade, draught or economic compulsion, population expansion or connection by marriage migrated to far-off places in Asia and Europe.”

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9w3e5u55htbh5qq/Indu_Lekha.pdf?dl=0

http://www.vedamsbooks.com/no55377/cognate-words-sanskrit-russian-indu-lekha

So her explanation is: Slavs came from India.

We have three possibilities which can explain all this similarities IMO:

1. Slavs came from India.
2. Slavs and Indo-Iranians came from common homeland in Central Asia
3. Slavs went to India from Europe.

Which one is true we hope to find out soon with the help of genetics.

Razib Khan writes at Brown Pundits:

“Within the next year I believe that the Reich lab will publish results which will falsify the beliefs of a substantial number of Indians about the nature of the origins of the native peoples of the region. This will shatter world-views, undermine mythologies, and rock peoples’ worlds. There will be sophists who live in denial, but the truth will be plain to those who see.”

https://www.brownpundits.com/2019/01/18/the-hammer-of-the-all-father/

So something will happen soon, new theories will be needed. But in case third possibility is proven then Corded Ware was Slavic or Balto-Slavic and there is no easy way around it:

https://i.postimg.cc/KvsCXMGt/PIEtree2.png

https://i.postimg.cc/4dvb9yfW/screenshot-388.png

Drago said...

I think it depends what period we're talking about. Compared to Boncuklu, Tepecik, Barcin & Mentese are Levant shifted by ~ 20% (west) - 30% (south-central Anatolia). This was noted in the original paper.
It increased to up to 40% during the Bronze Age, but co-occurs with folk movements of groups rich in CHG/ Iran.

Mouthful said...

@EastPole

"So something will happen soon, new theories will be needed. But in case third possibility is proven then Corded Ware was Slavic or Balto-Slavic and there is no easy way around it"

Now this is fan fiction tier, Slavic or Balto-Slavic surely wasn't spoken when Corded Ware was around.

EastPole said...

@Mouthful
“Now this is fan fiction tier, Slavic or Balto-Slavic surely wasn't spoken when Corded Ware was around.”

This is not an argument. You certainly don’t know what languages were spoken when Corded Ware was around.
Explain the link between Slavic and Sanskrit.

Mouthful said...

@EastPole

"You certainly don’t know what languages were spoken when Corded Ware was around.
Explain the link between Slavic and Sanskrit"


Neither do you, there's also plenty of links and cognates between Baltic and Sanskrit for example Lith wheel ratas, Skt rathas(carriage) Lith antras Skt. Antaras second, the other Lith senis old man Skt sanas old, Lith gentys Skt jantis tribes and Lith vyras and skt vīras meaning man. And Baltic weren't spoken anywhere near Indo-Iranians, what we know is that Slavic languages experienced some degree of Indo-Iranian influence as evidenced by loanwords like the name for God Bog, what is likely that Corded Ware spoke some dialect that didn't differentiate yet into Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian those links are due to shared Corded Ware ancestry later vectored eastwards via Steppe_MLBA populations who share a lot of ancestry with Corded Ware thus explaining linguistic links.

EastPole said...

@Mouthful
“what we know is that Slavic languages experienced some degree of Indo-Iranian influence as evidenced by loanwords like the name for God Bog”

No, it is not true. Read the books I linked earlier, like Burrow:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/04/on-doorstep-of-india.html?showComment=1523740548383#c6191530895381495941

As Indu Lekha noticed there are common names in Slavic and Sanskrit. The best explanation of this is that Slavic names were already present in Corded Ware.

Mouthful said...

Moreover we know that Proto-Slavic was spoken relatively late and borrowings into Proto-Slavic seems to be Iranianisms meaning they're after Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan whichever term you prefer Indo-Iranian split into to two different branches meaning they were acquired from Scythians,Sarmatians or Alans. So again not surprising that Baltic and Slavic shares some features with Indo-Iranian as they're closely related.

EastPole said...

@Mouthful
"Moreover we know that..."

You know nothing. Read the books I linked.

Mouthful said...

@EastPole
"You know nothing. Read the books I linked."

It's general consensus that Proto-Slavic was spoken during late bronze age or early iron age moreover Slavic languages first identifiable dialectal distinctions among Slavic languages start to appear around 600-800AD. If you're arguing that Corded Ware which encompassed such a vast amount of territory was Slavic and didn't experience any differentiation for almost 3 thousand years, I mean sorry but this seems laughable.

EastPole said...

@Mouthful
“It's general consensus that Proto-Slavic was spoken during late bronze age or early iron age moreover Slavic languages first identifiable dialectal distinctions among Slavic languages start to appear around 600-800AD. If you're arguing that Corded Ware which encompassed such a vast amount of territory was Slavic and didn't experience any differentiation for almost 3 thousand years, I mean sorry but this seems laughable”


“General consensus” based on what? On glottochronology. But glottochronology is pseudoscience. So your “general consensus” is pseudoscientific.

We have to wait for aDNA results. If the separation of Indo-Iranian R1a-Z93 and Balto-Slavic R1a-Z283 occurred around 3000 BC then Oleg Trubachyov was right. According to him 3000 BC is the time when most likely proto-Slavic originated. He also stresses uninterrupted origin of Slavic (which excludes mixing and development outside PIE homeland):

“Currently, there is an objective tendency to deepen the dating of ancient Indo-European dialects. This also applies to Slavonic as one of the Indo-European dialects. However, the question now is not that the history of Slavonic may be measured by the scale of the II to III millenniums B.C. but that we can hardly date the ‘emergence’ or ‘separation’ of proto-Slavonic or proto-Slavonic dialects from Indo-European dialects because of the proper uninterrupted Indo-European origin of Slavonic.
The latter belief is in line with the Meillet’s indication that Slavic is an Indo-European language of archaic type, vocabulary and grammar of which has not experienced shocks in contrast to, for example, the Greek (vocabulary)”

Trubačёv, O. N. 2003. Ėtnogenez i kul’tura drevnejščix slavjan: Lingvističeskie issledovanija.
Moskva: “Nauka”.

3000 BC fits Corded Ware. For me your theories are laughable because they don’t explain Slavic-Sanskrit link which is very old according to linguists.

Mouthful said...

@EastPole

Okay whatever, I see no point in trying to make sense with you and you choose purposely ignore points about differentiation of Slavic dialects you can believe in fringe theories that Corded Ware was Slavic speaking for all I care.

Peace.

EastPole said...

@Mouthful
Please read the books I linked and think about it. Look at genetics. Drop pseudoscientific arguments from past century based on glottochronology or PIE reconstructions. Try to explain Slavic-Sanskrit links without assuming that Slavs came from India or Iran, because according to genetics it is not true.

Mouthful said...

@EastPole


https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?6522-Early-Medieval-aDNA-from-Poland-coming-soon/page32

Your points were already addressed almost three years ago and whoever tries to talk some sense into you ignore it because it doesn't fit your narrative because you still seem to be posting the same thing over and over again for years.

Anyways this is my last post to you, since this blog post is about Hungarian Yamna and Beakers and we're getting off-topic and I don't want to shit up comment section further up since we're getting nowhere.

Matt said...

@Mouthful, that's the most compressed version of the way these discussions with EastPole go that I think I've ever seen on here.

@Davidski, noticed there was a new population "Saltovo-Mayaki" in the G25 averages datasheet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltovo-Mayaki). The average (not looked at individuals) seems to be very rich in affinity to CHG (beyond Caucasus populations in some dimensions). Any post in the works on this?

epoch said...

Short notice, slightly off topic: A while ago I mentioned some skeletons from the Single Grave Culture found near Schokland. I emailed around to see if DNA is sampled from these. It turned out that, with a few exceptions, the material wasn't suitable for DNA extractions and the exceptions weren't currently being sampled.

Draft Dozen said...

@Folker

“That is why the word « mancipi » was replaced by « esclavi » (Slavs), as most slaves were captured Slavs.”

According to another version, the word σκλάβος “slave” in the middle Greek language comes from the Greek verb σκυλεύο - meaning, “to get military trophies”, first-person singular looks like σκυλάο. According to this version, the self-name of the Slavs and the Greek “slave” coincided phonetically purely by accident.
From the Greek comes the Late Latin word sclavus “slave”, which through medieval Latin spreads into many Western European languages, forming German Sklave, Italian schiavo (and further - interjection ciao, Portuguese escravo, French esclave, English slave, etc.
F. Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. 2002, siehe Sklave
Köbler, Gerhard, Deutsches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1995. Siehe Sklave: «…zu gr. skyleuein, skylan, V. zu gr. skylon».

@Mouthful

Baltic substrate had not only those tribes which you mentioned. According to ukrainian antropologist Tatyana Rudych: “Baltic component in massive groups of ancient Volhynian and Drevlyan lands is also detected… Massive dolichocephalic and mezocranic relatively wide-faced morphotypes, which have a somewhat archaic form, characteristic for the Drevlian and Volhynian populations… The first combination of traits brought together a series of the most massive Eastern Slavic populations. This population of Volhynian, Drevlian and certain degree Tivertsi lands. For the anthropologists, it is important, that it is presented mainly by the population of the rural groups called areas, which is better represent a more ancient population… The first combination of traits of the East Slavic groups morphologically rather close to the Baltic anthropological array. Skull with small cranial index (dolichocranic), high skull, a relatively wide face, sharply profiled in the horizontal plane, low orbits, narrow well protruding nose, characterizing the Eastern population of the Balts 1 — early 2 millennium: Latgalians, Aukštaitians, Yotvingians (Alekseev, 1990; Chesnes, 1990). This morphotype, were presented in the area of Eastern Baltic, from the times of the Corded Ware culture, it is detected in Juchnovo culture and Brushed pottery culture. Massive cranial forms were not widely spread among West Slavs (with the exception of Masovians), and South Slavs”

Ric Hern said...

At least we can trace our Forefathers and Foremothers with DNA doesn't matter which language they spoke...

When looking at how many dialects we see just within the Netherlands, with some pulling towards German, others towards English and others towards Frence etc. it is really hard to think that something similar did not exist throughout the PIE territories....

Mouthful said...

@Jailed Twice

Yes, I know. I just took Kriviches as an example. Also there are many cultures which are usually attributed to Balts like you've mentioned Juchnovo/Tushemlya/Dnieper Dvina/Moshinskaya which usually had characteristic of building hillfort setlements, but many of them also practiced cremation and in general aDNA from that area is non existent and will probably will take years to get something published. Also there's quite a big distance between Baltic and those that lived further East near Oka or Dnieper for example so I don't except them to be very similar genome wise, but it would be interesting to see their Y-DNA.

EastPole said...

@Mouthful
“Your points were already addressed almost three years ago and whoever tries to talk some sense into you ignore it because it doesn't fit your narrative because you still seem to be posting the same thing over and over again for years.”

My points seem to be supported by more and more facts and reasonings. What I am saying is related to this blog post because David suggested here that Corded Ware culture (CWC) was the main vector for the spread Indo-European languages into Northern and Western Europe. I don’t understand how it is possible.

My argument is very simple. Around 3000 BC CWC was formed in Poland and it expanded east:

https://i.postimg.cc/sfSYBFDx/east-european-fatyanovocwc-1.jpg

That eastern expansion ended in India and Iran:

https://i.postimg.cc/JzbF91GF/screenshot-470.png

People who migrated east mixed in Central Asia and developed Indo-Iranian languages. They never came back.
People who were genetically related to those who migrated east but stayed in Central-Eastern Europe became Balts and Slavs.
Now you can read in many books, some linked above, that there exist great similarity in languages, cultures and religions between people in India and Iran and those who stayed in Central-Eastern Europe i.e. Balts and Slavs, especially Slavs.

What is the explanation for this?

In my opinion things common to Indo-Iranians and Balto-Slavs were already present in Corded Ware Culture.
Theory that CWC was PIE and two different populations derived from this PIE being far away from each other in India and Poland developed similar languages, cultures and religions by chance just doesn’t hold water.
Now languages when separated diverge, the change is greater when people mix. It follows that Indo-Iranians diverged more from CWC language than Slavs who stayed in CWC homeland and didn’t mix much. Therefore we can hypothesize that CWC was Proto-Slavic.

ambron said...

EastPole, this map from Der Spiegel (authorized by Kristiansen and Willerslev) gives food for thought.

Gabriel said...

@ambron

Yes but where did Trzciniec and Balto-Slavic drift come from? And all Balto-Slavs come from Trzciniec, not only West Slavs.

Ric Hern said...

EastPole it is not always the case that a Language that stays in the Motherland changes the least. If a population splits from the Motherland and encounters a lot of resistance, that population most probably have a greater need to preserve their heritage and or language. The unknown tend to cluster together that what is known...

ambron said...

Them mee

We have Gustorzyn (PL N17) from early Trzciniec, who is located in the main CWC camp. Later, however, Trzciniec should look like Turlojiske (if I understand Dawid correctly), i.e. like Baltic BA. And so CWC plus excess HG. HG probably after Baltic MN CCC. And probably Baltic BA David regards it as a Balto-Slavic drift.

West Slavs is Baltic BA plus Dutch BB plus EEF supplement. EEF probably from Hungarian BA (Br2). Eastern Slavs are probably the later (Roman period, Middle Ages) overlay of Western Slavs to Balts. (We skip North-East Russians because it's a different story.) This is what PCA looks like. It is consistent with the historical message.

David, if I'm wrong, please correct me.

EastPole said...

Pdf from John T. Koch’s presentation at Genes, Isotopes and Artefacts Conference #GIA18 at OREA Vienna

“Formation of the Indo-European Branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution”

https://i.postimg.cc/qvwzt2bq/screenshot-475.png

https://www.academia.edu/38220415/Formation_of_the_Indo-European_Branches_in_the_light_of_the_Archaeogenetic_Revolution

Drago said...

Ambron

Slavs expanded from east of the Vistula, after 500
West Slavs simply have recent Germanic admixture
Nothing to do with Dutch BB. You’re reading PCAs wrong

EastPole said...

@ambron
If I remember correctly from history books the most likely model for Poland and West Slavs will be like this:

Corded Ware (proto-Slavs) +Danubian culteres–>Unetice+ Trzciniec–>Lusatian (West Slavs)

We need more aDNA to sort it out.

Drago said...

@ East Pole
Nonsense
That’s not what history books write

Drago said...

Just revising about the Anatolia debate (Chad, Samuel). If we use Levant N, then Chads figures are correct. However there’s increasing overlap during the Neolithic (due to miscegenation during the Neolithic sphere).
However, in terms of extra raw Natufian admixture after the aceramic stage, it’s only 5-10%, slowly rising to only 15% by the Bronze Age.

So they’re both right, it depends on perspective
The important thing however is understanding that epipaleolithic Anatolia was sparsely populated, so migration must have occurred from northern Levant

Open Genomes said...

FYI, I5118 was in Y haplogroup G2a2a1a2a1a-L166, the same Y clade as the exactly contemporary Otzi the Iceman from Bolzano Italy, who shows no sign of Steppe ancestry.

ambron said...

Dragos

Return to the previous article by David. For my conversation with David. There is about the Dutch BB of the Western Slavs.

We accept your version. OK! We need to explain how the Eastern Slavs were formed without the flow of genes from the west.

ambron said...

EastPole

David thinks that the Lusatian culture has not completed this process. It was long and ended in the Middle Ages. It is true! In the Roman period, Vandals and Goths assimilated the Slavs and the Balts. In the Middle Ages, the Poles assimilated the Prussians and Yotvingians.

Lusatian culture was important, however! This is also true. Look at the warriors from Welzin. You will see their Y-DNA soon.

ambron said...

All

Genetic West Slavs do not equal cultural Slavs.

EastPole said...

@ambron
“In the Roman period, Vandals and Goths assimilated the Slavs and the Balts”

I have heard only about Lombard’s aDNA in Italy and Hungary.
Do we have any aDNA of true Vandals or Goths or you are just fantasizing?

ambron said...

EastPole

We already have four Goths. Genetically: 1 Eastern Slav, 1 Western Slav, 1 South Slav and 1 Greek. Three of Jarve's poster. I do not remember the fourth.

Suevi said...

https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Publications/Display/f3781a92-d972-4875-8fdc-3266a18e45d8

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/03/first-real-foray-into-migration-period.html?m=1

A said...

Totally non-politically-motivated reconstruction of a neolithic woman in britain, apparently:

https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/brighton/exhibitions-displays/the-elaine-evans-archaeology-gallery/

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

The majority of Neolithic Europeans were light skinned.

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2017/11/29/pigmentation-of-neolithic-europeans/

Drago said...

@ ambron
The Lusatian culture is very interesting, however it ended by 500 BC. After that, the Pomoranian culture expanded from the south Baltic through the entirity of the Vistula -Oder region in M4 and M3 BC. This was a very different culture.
Then La Tene influences impacted southern Poland, which along with Jastorf contacts, facilitated the emergence of the Przeworsk culture emerge from a Pomoranian base. Further East, Scandinavian contacts catalysed the emergence of the Wielbark culture from Oksywie. These groups end c. 450 AD, although some sites in Greater Poland continue into the 6th century. Finally, the Prague culture expands in southern Poland c. 600 AD, and the Sukow-Dziedzice across the north.

The western affinities of west Slavs have to do with the Germanic groups which were absorbed by Slavs on their western expansions. So i know Dutch Beakers seem to be the fascination of the month, they have little directly to do with west Slavs. Similarly, there is a 1000 year gap between Lausits and West Slavs, and whilst Lausits might have spoken an ancient cousin to Balto-Slavic, calling it west Slavic is simply based on nationalism.

Samuel Andrews said...

Lol. British Beaker has gotten good press. However I wonder if they'll connect it to modern British the way they do cheddar man & this inaccuratly dark skinned neolithic woman both of which represent extinct British pops who did not survive till "the Saxon era" as that article suggests.

Gabriel said...

@Dragos

What do you think of this:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/10/tollense-valley-bronze-age-warriors.html?m=1

Gabriel said...

And don't modern British have extra Urnfield and Germanic admixtuere too, that's like 30-80% of their ancestry depending on the population, on top of the Beaker stuff?

Samuel Andrews said...

Beaker derived R1b L21 is still the most common haploggroup just about everywhere in Britain & Ireland. Anglo Saxon y dna may be popular in England cuz of sex bias admixture.

Most importantly Beaker are first 'northern European' people in Britain very similar to modern British. All later people who came to Britain had the same northern background (Kurgan+TRB/GAC). Beaker represents a change that stuck.

Davidski said...

@All

I've made some significant changes to the labels in the Global25 datasheets. They affect most of the Beaker populations as well as Czech_EBA and Globular Amphora.

Same links as always.

A said...

@Romulus

Thanks. How does Genetiker get his results? He just seems to post them with no explanation.

A said...

@ Samuel Andrews

here's some more information: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/01/facial-reconstruction-history-england-uk/

They're claiming that model is an accurate depiction of a neolithic woman in Britain.

Gabriel said...

@Samuel Andrews

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2014/10/analysis-of-hinxton3-ers389797.html?m=1

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-hallstatt-effect.html?m=1

@All

How similar are modern day British to Bell Beakers, and how much of their ancestry can be derived from them? Which subpopulation has the most?

Gabriel said...

And I specify British Beakers, because obviously the British are either mostly Beaker-derived or have ancestry that is closely related to that of the Beakers, in the case of Germanic ancestry.

Drago said...

@ Them meee
Hopefully final version has good coverage. Despite my views outlined above, I am open minded that such a study and other samplings might shed further clues & surprises about Slavic ethnogenesis.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Them mee,

What is for sure is the Irish have the most British/Irish Beaker ancestry. 70-80% carry R1b L21.

Northern Scotland (Gealic) & Wales are second. A study on British DNA showed the Welsh are fairly 'inbred.'

The Bretons in Britanny France certainly have a lot of British Beaker ancestry. Over 50% carry R1b L21.

Overall, Iron age Britons need like 15% farmer ancestry on top of what British Beaker had. Some is certainly from British farmers, some is probably from continental people who came to Britain after the Beaker period. Welsh & Irish more or less cluster with Iron age Britons. English have a little more 'southern/farmer' ancestry. Who knows why.

ambron said...

Dragos

Do not think about me badly. The name "West Slavs" is not nationalism. I use it because I can not find a better one. I mean people genetically like today's West Slavs. This is not synonymous with the cultural and linguistic Slavs. We can call them the ancestors of the West Slavs. Well?

Matt said...

Semi off topic, but for anyone thinking about the time series in ancient samples in Iberia so far, I thought the following might be interesting: https://imgur.com/a/QtTU6pb

Some graphics I put together to try and understand what samples we have and when and where they're from.

Grey said...

Philippe said...
"They're claiming that model is an accurate depiction of a neolithic woman in Britain."

the thing about that particular media narrative is if Europeans used to be a lot darker, especially Cheddar Man darker, then it implies the European phenotype was created by Europe itself i.e the population were physically transformed by the conditions and climate which would make Europeans ultra-indigenous.

ambron said...

David, have you tried to locate the Dutch BB on the Celtic-Germanic PCA?

George said...

Hi,

OT on Hungarian Beakers but follows some of the comments

The following is a good background on pigmentation genetics:
Global skin colour prediction from DNA
Hum Genet. 2017; 136(7): 847–863. S. Walsh, et al.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5487854/

The challenge is that in many cases ancient DNA is missing alleles used for prediction so they are modelled as in the case of Cheddar Man and La Brana vs Loschbour. However, WHGs and Neolithic Europeans were all noticeably darker than British today whose pigmentation change was jump started by the Beaker Invasion.

Please look at Ditchling Road Man in the previously mentioned National Geographic Article. Oh, ignore his hat. It is interesting to compare his appearance to "Ava" whose reconstruction was noticeably changed in Dec. 2018 as well as pushing her age back to 4250 BP. They are both Rhenish Beakers.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/no-wait-real-ava-bronze-age-woman-scottish-highlands-180970950/.

Gabriel said...

One thing's for sure and that is that even if she was dark pigmented, her population (or Neolithic Britain in general) was likely varied in pigmentation or at least was autosomally and putatively of Euro/Near Eastern origin just like modern Europeans. Populations like hers were often light pigmented so either lighter pigmented WHGs lived in continental and especially Eastern Europe or continental Europe had more extreme pigmentation selection and population turnover.
So we shouldn't connect her to Africans, just like we don't think of Negritos as African. If she had to make any conversation it would be about Near Easterners and their impact on modern Europeans, including pigmentation-wise because they either lightened up much of Europe or continental/Eastern European WHGs were simply lighter already.

Or both, because either way the Middle East and Eastern Europe are the main source of Western Europeans' ancestry.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Them mee,

Agreed. "If someone has slightly brown skin, uh, they're completely unconnected to modern Europeans." That's a conclusion some people will make about WHG & Neolithic farmers.

But, who informed the artists on the skin color of that Neolithic woman? Lol, It looks like they smirred her with brown paint. It doesn't look right.

The skin color on Ava woman is also wrong.

Gabriel said...

Ironically that makes it seem like there was 100% population replacement during the Bronze Age, presumably by steppe groups. 75-80% is the highest I'd go for, depending on whether or not these groups were like Sredny Stog II, but obviously there wasn't complete replacement at least from east of the Dnieper.

That or what Grey said.

Davidski said...

Some of you guys get too easily riled up about the nonsense that appears in the mass and mainstream scientific media, and even in scientific literature, nowadays.

Obviously, what's happening at the moment is that a lot of the people in charge of the type of content that comes out are going out of their way to make things more diverse and inclusive and to help reverse centuries of what they consider to have been Eurocentric propaganda.

They do often go too far and stretch the truth to the point where their content looks like some sort of parody of itself. You know this, I know this, and they know it. But I wouldn't worry about it too much.

The hoi polloi isn't as stupid as it's often made out to be, especially in this day and age of mass communication. Eventually, they'll turn away from this sort of nonsense, and the people propagating it will lose most of their audience and business.

It's just a matter of time.

Gabriel said...

By the way, how similar are the Irish to British Beakers?

Davidski said...

@Them meee

By the way, how similar are the Irish to British Beakers?

I've got a new post coming tomorrow with some comparisons like this.

J.S. said...

David, can you also post something about French Beakers(Southern and Central Europe from Alsace/Moselle). Where are they exactly located on a PCA with modern French samples?

How are they, compare to Swiss Beakers from Petit Chasseur/Sion I guess ?

Samuel Andrews said...

@JS,

The Swiss Beakers as well as Two French Beakers had similar amounts of Steppe ancestry as modern French (35-40%). But most French Beakers had 50-55% Steppe ancestry. They look like Beaker Netherlands, Beaker Britain.

Eastern French Beakers all carry R1b U152. Over 50% of modern French carry R1b P312 but a about half of it isn't U152. It might be mostly DF27.

So Bbasically, the bulk of modern French are significant more farmer-admixed than French Bell Beaker. Also, a someof this southern/farmer ancestry is low in WHG indicating some Mediterranean ancestry. That's why I included southern Italy in the model.

Most French samples are in cluster1.


1.5881"

FrenchCluster1

Yamnaya_Samara,34.5
Globular_Amphora:I2441,22.1
Globular_Amphora:ILK002, 003,19.4
Tisza_LN,17.4
Italian_South,6.4
Czech_MN,0.2

2.2858"

FrenchCluster2

Yamnaya_Samara,40.8
Globular_Amphora:ILK002, 003,27.4
Globular_Amphora:I2441,18.3
Beaker_Northern_Italy_no_steppe,11.1
Beaker_Hungary_no_steppe,2.4

weure said...

@Sam

“Beaker derived R1b L21 is still the most common haploggroup just about everywhere in Britain & Ireland. Anglo Saxon y dna may be popular in England cuz of sex bias admixture.

Most importantly Beaker are first 'northern European' people in Britain very similar to modern British. All later people who came to Britain had the same northern background (Kurgan+TRB/GAC). Beaker represents a change that stuck.”

Even more....because the heartlmd of the Anglo Saxons lies in NW German and that were the same kind of Northern BBs as the Dutch BB. So Britons and Anglo Saxons have a common ground in the Northern Beakers.



J.S. said...

@ Samuel Andrews

Merci!

alobrix said...

nMonte of several Beakers groups in the modelling of Galicia, Southwestern Europe:

What do you think? Why Bavaria?

[1] "distance%=1.1046" Galiza Beaker_Bavaria,72.3 Portugal_LNCA,22.5 Iberomaurusian,5.2

[1] "distance%=1.4219" Galiza Beaker_France,59.8 Portugal_LNCA,34.6 Iberomaurusian,5.6

[1] "distance%=1.4872" Galiza Beaker_France_South,91.4 Iberomaurusian,5.1 Portugal_LNCA,3.5

[1] "distance%=1.5734" Galiza Beaker_Switzerland,83.6 Portugal_LNCA,12.5 Iberomaurusian,3.9

[1] "distance%=1.6182" Galiza Beaker_Mittelelbe-Saale,67.9 Portugal_LNCA,26.8 Iberomaurusian,5.3

[1] "distance%=1.6279" Galiza Beaker_The_Netherlands,57 Portugal_LNCA,38.1 Iberomaurusian,4.9

[1] "distance%=1.6635" Galiza Beaker_Britain,59.1 Portugal_LNCA,35.7 Iberomaurusian,5.2

[1] "distance%=1.7147" Galiza Beaker_Italy_North,91.6 Iberomaurusian,8.4 Portugal_LNCA,0

[1] "distance%=1.8661" Galiza Beaker_Rhineland,56 Portugal_LNCA,38.2 Iberomaurusian,5.8

[1] "distance%=2.3102" Galiza Beaker_Iberia,94.4 Iberomaurusian,5.6 Portugal_LNCA,0

Gabriel said...

@alobrix

Urnfield/Hallstatt?

Bogdan said...

Let’s all make sure to consider and understand the likely hydrography / geography of the Pannonian (Carpathian) basin during the BA. It perhaps deserves at least a footnote in the discussions:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonian_Basin#/media/File%3AHydrography_of_the_Pannonian_basin_before_the_river_and_lake_regulations_in_the_19th_century.jpg

Bogdan said...

Don’t confuse all the blue with standing water, more fen-like.. Here you have the most productive, agriculturally rich soil (planting and grazing) in all of Europe, through many millennia. Combine with the regional ore sources and river routes, this is the most natural, logical and obvious major intersection / meeting point of cultures between east and west Europe during the BA.

Ric Hern said...

I still wonder if Yamnaya expansion pushed out or caused some other population presured by them to push out Suvorovo like people from Transylvania into Southern Poland....

Bogdan said...

Ric:

Yamnaya are primarily just moving pastures over natural good lands. If you need to club your neighbors into submission and steal their land, wives and other property to accomplish that goal then so be it. It’s too often associated as being ‘warlike’, but is really just complete natural human behavior, before laws and borders kept it in check.

Ric Hern said...

Yes but I was thinking along the lines of where the R1bs in Corded Ware came from. Maybe pushed from the Transylvanian Plateau towards the North into Southern Poland and up the Wisla River into North Central/Northern Poland where they contributed to the formation of Corded Ware....Just a thought.

Davidski said...

The ancestors of the Rhenish Beakers moved out of the steppe and into Northwestern Europe via the North European Plain, because they have a lot of Globular Amphora ancestry. That much is certain.

So R1b-L51 probably also moved this way, and both R1b-P312 and R1b-U106 might be native to the North European Plain.

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

So can they be connected to Neolithic Ukraine or Eneolithic Ukraine in any way ? Or were they West or Northwest of these groups ? The MtDNA tells me somewhere between Neolithic Ukraine and Northeastern Poland maybe along the Northern Dnieper....

Davidski said...

@Ric

They're from wherever Corded Ware was from.

My guess is, the Sredny Stog II/Khvalynsk contact zone > post-Stog groups/western Yamnaya.

But that's pure speculation until we see many more samples from the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe, especially from the Don and North Pontic regions.

Bogdan said...

By the way, that large blank ‘vulva’ area between Tisza and Dunube north bend in the original post example pic, seemingly devoid of Yamnaya type tumuli burials can be due to other factors no one is discussing. Be careful when drawing ‘red lines’....

In the BA, large scale unnatural movements across major river grains / flows of Europe did not happen, because you were very much dead before you got there....

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

Do you think that the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka Group fits into the Post Stog groups ?

Davidski said...

I don't think so.

Ric Hern said...

I do agree about migration from the Lower Don. It is just a question of "when ?". My view on this is very early +-5000 BCE maybe in three directions. One towards the Caucasus, another up the Volga and yet another to Dereivka. What happened after that between Dereivka and Samara is a bit fussy....

Bogdan said...

Notice how in addition to dominating the most productive land, the West Yamnaya-like grave areas neatly form a virtual ring around the most productive mineral deposit mountain area of the Carpathians. Coincidence? Probably. Likely movement is natural geography, but can’t rule out premeditated understanding and control of major mineral sources area during BA either.....

It is a misnomer to think these BA cultures were somehow not intelligent, calculated, shrewed in their dealings with more expert knowledge of lands, geography and pay dirt, before maps and surveys....

Helgenes50 said...

@Samuel Andrews,

As you know, the French are not really homogeneous.
By susing the same populations as for the first cluster
Here’s what I get for 3 Norman from NW Normandy and for 4 Breton
All from NW France and the South Italian component is not present

Norman1

Globular_Amphora_ILK002,42.2
Yamnaya_Samara,39.4
Globular_Amphora_I2441,17.8
Tisza_LN,0.6

Nornan2

Globular_Amphora_I2441,45.8
Yamnaya_Samara,45
Globular_Amphora_ILK002,9.2

Norman3

Yamnaya_Samara,41.8
Globular_Amphora_I2441,39.2
Globular_Amphora_ILK002,17.6
Czech_MN,1.4


Breton1

Globular_Amphora_I2441,48.2
Yamnaya_Samara,44
Globular_Amphora_ILK002,7.6
Czech_MN,0.2

Breton2

Globular_Amphora_I2441,56.6
Yamnaya_Samara,43.4

Breton3

Yamnaya_Samara,42
Globular_Amphora_ILK002,34.4
Globular_Amphora_I2441,23.6


Breton4

Globular_Amphora_I2441,54.4
Yamnaya_Samara,45.6

J.S. said...


@Helgeness50
Neither Normandy nor Brittany seems to be homogeneous, at least based on 4 and 3 samples. I wonder if it says a lot about the French core population.

Helgenes50 said...

@JS

I agree. Even in these two regions vey close, we can see a lot of differences. Now you can imagine on a scale of a country like France.
It's exactly what I meant with these results

Gabriel said...

@Helgenes50

How much Germanic and Celtic ancestry can these samples be said to have?

Gabriel said...

By the way, Funnelbeaker extended all the way to the Netherlands. If GAC was like TRB then this could have influenced the Dutch Beakers...

a said...

Blogger Bogdan said...
Notice how in addition to dominating the most productive land, the West Yamnaya-like grave areas neatly form a virtual ring around the most productive mineral deposit mountain area of the Carpathians. Coincidence? Pro

bably. Likely movement is natural geography, but can’t rule out premeditated understanding and control of major mineral sources area during BA either.....

It is a misnomer to think these BA cultures were somehow not intelligent, calculated, shrewed in their dealings with more expert knowledge of lands, geography and pay dirt, before maps and surveys.... "

Couple of points.
It is interesting that R1a/b & Q were found at Khvalynsk and again in Northern Caucasus sphere under different circumstances-burial rites. Northern Steppe/Maykop Q -one of the oldest wagon burials to date[53200YBP+/-Wang al] Q with healed and unhealed potential animal-human incurred injuries- buried with carbon dated C14 wagon. Yamnaya and or related groups like Novotitorovka and Catacombe- invested energy in wheel wagon mobility to take advantage of the Steppe grassland over a potential period from 3000-2200BCE-ûntil Arkaim Sintashta tribal complex fixed fortress and chariots. This was done while EEf groups like Uruk-and or relate Sumerian type tribes-who also developed-wagons-written language-numeric system,were trying to push-expand into the Steppe from the South of the Caucasus, with the Caucasus-Steppe experiencing potential climate change and-or random systematic bouts of plague.

Helgenes50 said...

@ Them meee

100 men of my region ( Cotentin peninsula) have been tested.
What we know, our paternal lines are less homogeneous than our Breton neighbors
We don't know the subclades, but we have roughly 14 % of I-M253, what is my case ( L813, a subclade of L22).
The conclusion of the university of Leicester, our paternal lines are very similar to the English. But difficult to know if these clades are NOrdic or Germanic, like Saxon for example.
What is sure compared to the Bretons our paternal lines are more Germanic.

M222 a marker very Irish has been detected for 3 % of us.

A link very interesting, but this time in french about our Iron age history.

http://secher.bernard.free.fr/blog/index.php?post/2018/12/10/ADN-mitochondrial-ancien-dans-un-groupe-Celte-de-Normandie

Gabriel said...

How similar are modern-day Normans to the English? I'm not surprised the Normans have more Germanic ancestry than the Bretons, it is congruent with the linguistic and ethnic history of the region.

If anyone can models these samples as Germanic + Celtic or Germanic vs Irish and Hallstatt or something else, I'd appreciate it.

Since I also wonder if Normans or the Conquest had an impact on the English and/or Norman population, I wonder if we can estimate how much, if any, Norman ancestry the British have. Maybe we would need more medieval British samples? Maybe they are tol similar to discern any ancestry? If we can detect Urnfield/Hallstatt admixture in the British given how they are similar to the Beakers maybe we can do the same with the Normans? Given that it is generally assumed that the Normans had a negligible impact on the English it would be interesting to test this out at the very least.

Helgenes50 said...


@ Them meee

On the David's PCA, Celtic vs Germanic, my mother and I cluster between Halstatt and England IA, but closer to the latters. We are of 4 Norman grandparents
Conversely to the English who cluster between the old Germanic peoples and the old Britons.
On this PCA Bretons and Norman are very close.
YDNA an Autosomal DNA tell us a different history

weure said...

@Davidski "The ancestors of the Rhenish Beakers moved out of the steppe and into Northwestern Europe via the North European Plain, because they have a lot of Globular Amphora ancestry. That much is certain.

So R1b-L51 probably also moved this way, and both R1b-P312 and R1b-U106 might be native to the North European Plain."

R1b-U106 came, based on the Oostwoud sample, just after the BB to NW Europe (about 1800 BC). It's connected with the Tumulus culture (Hoogkarspel/ Sögel-Wohlde) so possibly more connected to Central Europe.

J.S. said...

@Helgenes50
I just hope some academic studies will finally get published. With a bit of luck, Samatha Brunel's thesis, soon, will be on line.

Davidski said...

@weure

R1b-U106 came, based on the Oostwoud sample, just after the BB to NW Europe (about 1800 BC). It's connected with the Tumulus culture (Hoogkarspel/ Sögel-Wohlde) so possibly more connected to Central Europe.

Nordic_LN RISE98, which belongs to U106 doesn't show any obvious Central European links, but does show a lot of Scandinavian Funnel Beaker ancestry.

This sample is dated to 2275-2032 calBCE, but considering the Scandinavian farmer ancestry, it seems like his ancestors were already in that area around 3000 BCE.

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