Tuesday, May 7, 2019
The execution
Around 2,800 BCE, in what is now southern Poland, a family group of fifteen individuals associated with the Globular Amphora culture (GAC) were massacred. They were probably captured and executed, because each victim was killed with a blow to the head from the same type of weapon, possibly a stone axe, and lacked defensive wounds. The dead were mostly women and children. They were buried in a mass grave, but with great care and very likely by someone who knew them well.
This Late Neolithic mass grave is the focus of a new ancient DNA and archeological research paper at PNAS by Schroeder et al. (see here). The authors tentatively attribute the massacre to the Corded Ware culture (CWC) people, who were expanding rapidly at the time across much of Europe from their homeland on the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
The CWC people may or may not have been responsible; we'll never know for sure. The perpetrators could just as easily have been a competing GAC family group.
In any case, it's interesting to see that the GAC males belong to Y-chromosome haplogroup I2a-L801. This is today a rather uncommon subclade of I2, and almost exclusively found in Germanic-speaking populations, especially Scandinavians. To me this suggests that some Polish GAC males were incorporated into Indo-European-speaking CWC populations that ended up in Scandinavia, and their paternal lineages eventually became a part of the Proto-Germanic gene pool. Admittedly, though, that's just one of many possible scenarios.
See also...
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
Corded Ware people =/= Proto-Uralics (Tambets et al. 2018)
Inferring the linguistic affinity of long dead and non-literate peoples: a multidisciplinary approach
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249 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 249 of 249Im not so sure about how much continuity there is between Dutch SGC & BB. Frankly it seems odd that ''SGC->BB'' took 400 years to ''ponder'' before migrating further into Britain & Norway. And SGC was not all Denmark, as there was a distinct ''blank spot'' in eastern areas
And as I said, there was also a distinct additional shift Nordic Bronze Age.
Not only is the correct & demonstrable, but its far more interesting when the entire gammut of evidence is assembled
I'm seeing the genetic shift across Scandinavia that you're seeing.
I'm seeing a few samples from different locations and cultural contexts differ from each other in moderate ways, and then a homogenization process across southern Scandinavia that eventually levels out these differences.
There's no evidence in the data that, for instance, Nordic_LN:RISE98, the sample that belongs to U106, is the result of some new population wave into Scandinavia. This guy just looks like a more westerly CWC individual than the Battle-Axe samples from Sweden. If he's a migrant, then he's probably from the North Sea coast.
‘Modern Scandinavians are largely of Single Grave, TRB and GAC origin IMO. And I would need some very solid data to convince me otherwise.’
Yep and it’s exact that kind of mixture that gives me as a North Dutch the same genetic profile!
Battle-Axe groups weren't the only people in Scandinavia at the time.
Who else was there? TRB farmers, Single Grave people, PWC foragers.
So what happened when these groups mixed in various proportions? The Battle-Axe genetic structure disappeared. In other words, Yamnaya ancestry went down, and western farmer and WHG ancestry went up.
This is what formal stats show.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3yKhLMvB5uA/XFO4c9cFEWI/AAAAAAAAHhQ/X0vvYBCLf4I9zrTReuh0a0OGc_sQYVbXwCLcBGAs/s1600/BBC_vs_NW_Euro_D-stats.png
PWC were supposedly mostly EHG (56%), about 20% Yamnaya and the rest was WHG. It was also hypothesized that it’s language was neither Uralic nor-IE. So maybe the non-Uralic substrate within Saami belonged to some extinct EHG language...
@Andrzejewski
Get your abbreviations right; I don't know what you are talking about but it's not PWC = Pitted Ware culture. PWC people were SHGs with a tiny bit of EEF admixture.
But the non-Uralic substrate in Saami, or part of it, may have come from an EHG language, that is true. Or maybe it was from the Bolshoy Oleni Ostrov people.
If I remember correctly, the single grave skeletons were craniometrically like other CW samples and unlike BB.
Now it is somehow possible that a subset of SGC was different or developed the BB traits, but this is unlikely without external input.
Environmental factors wont cut it in this case, because the gap is much to big.
Are there any SGC remains going in the direction of BB crania I missed?
As for the wounds on the dead, my first guess would be Corded axes, but I'm no expert and wait for forensics to check, like in the case of Eulau.
The earliest Bell Beaker type skulls are supposed to be from the Lower Rhine region. I don't have the text handy, but I saw weure post it as a screen cap from a book about the Single Grave culture at AG a while back.
You mean this one from Kurt Gerhardt (Swiss Anthroplogist) he describes the proces of the BB skull development here:
https://www.mupload.nl/img/i7cdl3wjin.jpg
Main 'BB stigma' is the planocciput. Gerhardt believed that planocciput had a religious kind of status, obviously prefered by the BB (so a kind of natural selection?).
There must have been an external input. Now if a fitting source population is nearby, thats fine. Otherwise you have to look elsewhere.
It is not the planocciput alone if comparing CWC with BB btw.
Why not local input from the Lower Rhine? Something like Blatterhohle_MN.
Possible, but needs to be investigated and would be important to note if it can be proven.
Blätterhöhle itself is a difficult thing.
@AWood "On the other hand R1b-U106 probably arrived a little bit later from central Europe but is far more widespread than L238 which is why I do not think they are linked to the same time."
There is literally nothing to suggest that R1b-U106 arrived in NW Europe from Central Europe. A Northern Bell Beaker/Single Grave Culture origin is more plausible at the moment.
This last paper confirms what we already knew from previous papers on GAC people- They appeared to have more in common with other Middle Neolithic samples (in particular from Hungary, Iberia and Sweden, than with geographically closer samples) and obviously there is no genetic link to Yamnaya culture. Considering the duration of this culture (3,400-2,800 BC), the territory it occupied, and the absence of genetic links with the CWC, it is clear that migrants from the East probably exterminated a large part of the GAC farmers. The high percentage of steppe ancestry in CWC shows that this mixture was not very large.
Gimbutas was wrong in many things, one of them was the role played by the GAC as a bridge between the Yamnaya culture, the CWC, and the BB culture. However, the view that the GAC people represented an intermediate phase in this large scale migration finds no support in bi-dimensional representations of genome diversity. Another important conclusion is that according to the genetic data (GAC) a migration from the Pontic steppes BEFORE the ONSET of the GAC found VERY LIMITED SUPPORT, because those migrations should have been REFLECTED AT LEAST in the AUTOSOMAL component of the GAC
The migrations had to take place directly between the cultures of the steppes and Central-Europe (3,000-2,800 BC), and a later mixture between CWC and the German Neolithic cultures gave place to the central and oriental sector of the BBculture. If R1bL51 / P312 had come directly from the east the percentage of steppe ancestry in the BB culture would be even higher than in the CWC. For me it is clear that we are talking about western markers- Lower Rhine/Blatterhole...
The other possibility is that these haplogroups appear in some subculture of the CWC, but do not forget that for example Kromsdorf is R1b-M343 and it is an absolutely Bell Beaker site and with a sufficient age to discard an origin in CWC.
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-ancient-dna-northern-europeans-languages.html
The full paper is here:
The Arrival of Siberian Ancestry Connecting the Eastern Baltic to Uralic Speakers further East
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30424-5
Almost all R1a, some N3a3a and one relatively recent J2b2
Certainly some points of interest in that paper, both regarding the points that confirm what we expect and maybe a couple that don't. Will await Davidski blogging about it of course.
“ It also indicates an influx of people from regions with strong Western hunter-gatherer characteristics in the Bronze Age, including many traits we now associate with modern Northern Europeans, like pale skins, blue eyes, and lactose tolerance.
"The Bronze Age individuals from the Eastern Baltic show an increase in hunter-gatherer ancestry compared to Late Neolithic people and also in the frequency of light eyes, hair, and skin and lactose tolerance," Tambets says, noting that those characteristics continue amongst present-day Northern Europeans.”
So the increase in WHG ancestry is responsible for the direct correlation of increase in blond or red hair, blue eyes and light skin now?
@Romulus said...
Is Catacomb descended from GAC?
No. The Catacomb Culture samples we have are pretty much straight descendants of Yamnaya (notwithstanding some gene flow from around).
@capra - Revenge for what though? They didn't kill the fathers it seems, and didn't have to kill the mothers. Again, sounds like a vendetta, no?
It seems to me these people were executed 'with authority'. Raiders would have killed where they found them. But these ones were rounded up and then killed by a blow on the head, one by one. Not a trace of a defensive injury. Subsequently all victims got a not altogether disrespectful burial. It seems inescapable: the executioners also did the burying! There is no hit and run signature here.
What it means is not anybody's guess. Were they hostages? Were they sent after their sires? Whatever the scenario, there's a strong suspicion of patrilocality here. Ordering things here as well as in the hereafter.
@Jaap,
I guess it is a Stone age version of gun shot to the head. Very sick that they whipped out the entire families even the babies.
Remains of people killed in raids/war don't get preserved. Only, if the dead are buried is there a good chance archaeologist will find them. To me, this is a reminder that even archaeology will probably not find remains of victims from prehistoric wars.
So, when we see see large scale migration in ancient DNA we can't rule out conquest even if there's no evidence in archaeology. The dead bodies may have not been preserved because they were not buried.
There was a pig burial by this mass human burial. I wonder if the pigs were owned by the murdered families????
@Jaap
"It seems inescapable: the executioners also did the burying!"
Exactly.
@ Davidski
''There's no evidence in the data that, for instance, Nordic_LN:RISE98, the sample that belongs to U106, is the result of some new population wave into Scandinavia. ''
Well I outlined his immediate source is Denmark
As to prior to that, I'm not sure. But if L51 had moved from the steppe north of the Carpathians, then we should find M269 in the East Baltic too, or BAx, or Polish CWC, but we don't.
But if L51 had moved from the steppe north of the Carpathians, then we should find M269 in the East Baltic too, or BAx, or Polish CWC, but we don't.
There's no rule like that. Maybe we'll find it, maybe we won't, but either way this doesn't preclude a northern route.
Maybe they had plague and were put out of their misery?
When looking at the Map of where Ancient Samples came from I see huge open spaces between the Dnieper and Elbe Rivers...still a lot to look forward to...
See:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/ancient-human-dna_41837#4/49.98/24.25
Even France is basically a blank sheet....That is why I do not yet jump on the Train of R1b West = Non-Indo European.
I suspect that both the percentage of forager populations across the continent and their role in lightening up the pigmentation is way undervalued and underestimated
I don't expect to see L51 in the Bronze Age East Baltic, in Swedish Battle-Axe, or even in Polish Corded Ware. Although it might pop up in Polish Corded Ware.
I expect to see it in Danish, Dutch and German Single Grave. I have some good reasons for this, such as the genetic structure of the Dutch Beakers and RISE98.
And if this pans out, then it won't be too difficult to link Proto-Germanic to Single Grave.
Well, we know that SOME R1b population from France or Belgium might be ancestral to the Basques, based on a recent blog post here
@ Davidski
''I expect to see it in Danish, Dutch and German Single Grave. I have some good reasons for this, such as the genetic structure of the Dutch Beakers and RISE98.
And if this pans out, then it won't be too difficult to link Proto-Germanic to Single Grave.''
There might be L51 in SGC.
However, I'm rather weary about SGC = Germanic model, because the more reasonable link to pre-proto-Germanic is the Nordic BA, which is few hundred years later; and is the horizon which links in with Myceneans, Sintastha, BA Hungary.
Also, keep in mind, any model for northern Europe has to be consistent with central & southern Europe. In that regard, its virtually impossible to link CWC/ SGC to any southern IE languages.
Somehow the Movie of Rob Roy rings a bell. Dept made, Dept not repaid due to circumstances and vengeful acts by the Deptor. ? Wonder if this could have been something common among the GAC. Maybe this explains how GAC women ended up among the Corded Ware. Escape from persecution by Deptcollectors ?
Maybe something like, Pre-Proto-Germanic in Denmark, Pre-Proto-Celtic in the Netherlands and Pre-Proto-Italic along the Middle to Upper Rhine ?
@All
As far as I know, Basques don´t have any trace of CHG. They don´t share vocabulary with Georgians or some other people from Caucasus. Only the "ergative" form of the verb,as an idea, but not the words.
Besides, from the genetic point of view, they are mostly Neolithic anatolian and WHG, with a very reduced steppe influence, in spite the notorious R1b F27.
So the Neolithic proto basques could have been one of the members of the Cardial Culture that arrived through the Mediterranean 6000 years BCE and mixed with the WHG creating a new culture and new languages appeared in Iberia and France with this mixture. They built megalithos all over the place from Iberia to Denmark. From this fact we have to conclude that they had a complex language, a great organization and were great sailors and engineers. According to data this people was mostly I2a1b- I2a1b1a1-I2a2a1a1a. The language could have be a Pre Proto Vasconic full of dialects.
In the meantime, other anatolian agricultures, moved to central and east Europe, mixing with EHG and took the Danubius way. By the time the BB appeared, 2500 years after, there were all kind of mixtures in central Europe and the mediterranean countries with more or less steppe influence.
Given the small steppe influence in the total Iberian genetic, in contrast with the overall appearence of the R1b, the BB involved, if they brought the haplogroup, should have been a mixture with a diluted steppe influence too in the case the R1b came from the steppe or R1b is a more western product, let us say Balkans, Germany or France.
This reminds me the case of the Ostrogoths that kept the name and the language that had become lingua franca in the steppe, but the genomas were mostly balkans.
That famous suposition that anyone having a steppe haplogroup should be patriarcal and the languages are transmited through the fathers, is just a suposition.
Living in a country with european inmigration, I have seen that the original language is fastly lost, and only is kept if the mothers speak it too. Besides humans learn how to speak with their mothers, in the kitchen. The first language is always the maternal.
The events that caused the reduction of the I1a1 and related haplogroups, didn´t affect the languages spoken in Iberia and SW France.
Surely the new cultures flowed bringing new words from the new indoeuropean languages, but in Iberia, the lost of the non IE languages was due mostly to the Roman Empire.
And the actual vasconic speaking euskera, are just the living testimony that in human matters, nothing is fixed, specially when women are involved. As you may know, Basque culture is rather "mother" centered,inside of the house and in the family.
No joke, when basques talk about their mothers, they never say "my mother", She is THE MOTHER, as if there were a sort of collective mother with a super authority, though father is very much respected too.
By the way, has somebody an idea about the blood groups of the samples involved in all these speculations?
Bloodgroup O-negative is interesting. Apparently it has got something to do with Pathogens that cats carry around...I can imagine with elevated rodents populations spreading plague, cat populations would have also escalated...?
Toxoplasma apparently affects people with Rhesus Negative Blood much more severely. Domesticated Cats, apparently were restricted to warmer climates back then. This could point to more Northern origin of people with O-Negative more common in Western Europe today...
@Olga-Basically I agree with you,I suppose you are Basque. Saludos
I see the Basques as a kind of Iberians reconcentrated in the mountains due to historical circumstances, hence we have more percentage of Df27 than the rest of Spaniards, but genetically we are very similar. We still have to find out where L51 came from because the Kurganists are not going to find it in the steppes, on the other hand, P312 is absolutely western (Franco-Cantabrian region) and its antiquity in Iberia (Burgos- aprox 2.500 BC) makes us suspects that it may have a longer antiquity in the peninsula.
Regarding the matter of languages at the moment everything is open. The new discoveries (for example the coincidence in the numerals between Iberian and Basque) have made the most prestigious linguists now support Vasco-Iberism seamlessly. On the other hand, the evident genetic continuity of the Iberian and Turdetani peoples of the Mediterranean, Catalonia and Andalusia between the BB culture and the Iron Age supports the thesis that neither P312 nor the BB spoke IE. However, this genetic continuity is also evident in the western region of the peninsula because the Lusitanians, Galicians, Astures, Cantabros, Vetones etc spoke Western-IE-Lusitanian, and their genetic and archaeological continuity is also evident. Better to leave the door open to different possibilities
SGC hotspots in the Netherlands (Beckerman, 2015)
https://www.mupload.nl/img/dlajsx.png
Transition Phase SGC>BB (Fokkens 2012)
https://www.mupload.nl/img/wb02n7.png
Definitive BB:Veluwe and NE Dutch (Fokkens 2012).
https://www.mupload.nl/img/wdl1dc7kv0.png
So genetical close and from the same hotspots!!!
@olga I am sure that @Gaska will not agree with me, but CHG have got not much to do with Georgians because the latter came to the scene with Kura Araxes complex as are the Armenians, Hurrian and Kurds. And KA was 55% Anatolian Farmers. Therefore, it’s much more likely that words such as “Djubashvili” evolved from some Anatolian speech than from Kotias or Satsublia -like one.
djugashvili
@Ric
Blood group has been an issue in my family. I am 0 Negative and one son and one daughter are the same. My other son is A (2) positive.
According to an old Europe Map of blood types,there was a cline between Iberia and the steppe in group B (1)from almost none in Iberia to 20% or 35% in the eastern populations, suggesting the eastern origin of this group. Germany was something of the middle point were A, B and 0 were evenly distributed and a minority of AB and B was growing to the East.
Rh (-) jumped up to the 35% in the basques staying always as something like the 4-8% in the rest of Europe, except in the Carpathian Mountains were there was a small spot above this cipher.
Blood groups are related to the inmune system and that is much more important than hair or skin colour, because is a matter of live or die in the short range.And also says something about the breeding success of different populations that get together.
@ olga
Yes I am also O-Negative.
@Ric Hern
Congratulations, colleague!!!
Mention has been made of the absence of adult males between 20 and 40 years old (there should be about 3 of them present), but another age group is missing: females under 12 years old. There should be about 3-4 of them in the mass grave, but there are none.
I assume that the 20-40 year old males were away at the time of the massacre, and returned in time to gather the bodies and perform the funeral rites, and that the female infants and children were abducted by the raiders.
Mongo said...
well spotted
Maybe Cucuteni-Tripillia progeny was wiped off by some disease?
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