search this blog

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Is Yamnaya overrated?


Four years after the publication of the seminal ancient DNA paper Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe by Haak et al., we're still waiting for some of its loose ends to be finally tied up with new samples. In particular...

- if the men of the Corded Ware culture (CWC) were, by and large, derived from the population of the Yamnaya culture, then where are the Yamnaya samples with R1a-M417, the main CWC Y-haplogroup?

- if the men of the Bell Beaker culture (BBC) were also, by and large, derived from the population of the Yamnaya culture, then where are the Yamnaya samples with R1b-P312, the main BBC Y-haplogroup?

- and, most crucially, if R1b-L51, which includes R1b-P312, and is nowadays by far the most important Y-haplogroup in Western Europe, arrived there from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, then why hasn't it yet appeared in any of the ancient DNA from this part of Eastern Europe or surrounds, except of course in samples that are too young to be relevant?

I'm certainly not suggesting that, in hindsight, the said paper now looks fundamentally flawed. In fact, I'd say that it has aged remarkably well, especially considering how fast things are moving in the field of ancient genomics.

But those loose ends really need tying up, one way or another. It's now time.

So someone out there, please, let us know finally if you have the relevant Yamnaya samples. And if you don't, that's OK too, just tell us what you do have. Indeed, it'd be nice know a few basic details about the thousands of samples that have been successfully sequenced in various labs and are waiting to be published. A lot of people would appreciate it.

See also...

Corded Ware as an offshoot of Hungarian Yamnaya (Anthony 2017)

Hungarian Yamnaya > Bell Beakers?

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

1,027 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   401 – 600 of 1027   Newer›   Newest»
Vladimir said...

Sample I5876 Grave 142 Derievka 5500-4800 bce- R1a

Ric Hern said...

@ Gaska

As far as I could read the dates vary between 3300 and 2600 BCE. The tail end is not significantly older than Germany samples...?

Anonymous said...

@Vladimir, you're mistaken.

Dereivka I I5876 / Grave 142 7040-6703 calBCE (7960±30 BP, PSUAMS-2811)

Gaska said...

Ric, The researchers say the dating is earlier than the German ones, so we can only wait, I guess they will have checked before publishing the paper

Vladimir said...

A renowned expert in the field of prehistoric archeology of Eastern Europe D. Ya. Telegin believed that the source of the Dnieper-Donets culture was Mesolithic in the South of Belarus.

Davidski said...

Maybe these steppe people took a plane to Switzerland? Or a flying chariot?

More likely, though, the earliest Corded Ware sites in Germany and Poland can't be found, have been destroyed, or don't contain any usable remains.

Gaska said...

@Davidski

I have been told "Pre-CWC", as you say, we will have to wait. It is also true that the dates of the CWC in Bohemia are later than those of the Baltic or Poland. From my point of view since the end of the III Millennium there had to be a core of P312 (or maybe L51 in Central Europe). When BB culture arrived they simply adopted new customs and expanded in all directions. Perhaps Sangmeister was not mistaken much.

Davidski said...

@Gaska

I have been told "Pre-CWC", as you say, we will have to wait.

I'm pretty sure it'll be Pre-CWC for R1b, but CWC for P312.

Gaska said...

@Davidski-

Surely there will be many guys analyzing Bam Files. I find it very strange that there is R1b PreCWC and P312 in the CWC, mainly because this culture is strange to Bohemia, Moravia and Switzerland, it is normal that P312 did not travel with it but was already there- We will see what type of deposits they have analyzed, because in many regions of Europe the CWC adopted customs and traditions of pre-existing cultures.

Bob Floy said...

P312 and/or L51 was always going to turn up in Corded Ware sooner or later, it was only a matter of time. I'm not sure why everyone was so determined that it wouldn't. It looks like the CWC may be our late PIE culture.

Gaska said...

@Bob Floy-"P312 and/or L51 was always going to turn up in Corded Ware sooner or later, it was only a matter of time. I'm not sure why everyone was so determined that it wouldn't. It looks like the CWC may be our late PIE culture"

I have always admired people so sure of themselves, I would like to have things as clear as you. Perhaps we doubt because there are several tens of CWC samples analyzed and there is only R1a and a few I2a, and there is absolutely nothing of R1a on the BBC? Perhaps we doubt because archaeologically the CWC and the BBC are absolutely different? Or we may doubt because we do not know or understand when and where the CWC recruited P312?. Perhaps we doubt why the coexistence of settlements of the two cultures with different ways of cultivating the land is demonstrated? etc...

We are very far from that possibility, but obviously this new paper can clarify things for us. I doubt it.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Davidski

Putting L51 aside, ive consistently looked to Moravia as the formative region of the BB culture. I've never been impressed by the Dutch model eagerly propounded on A.G. Its clear that the Netherlands is a periphery



Davidski said...

@Mammoth_Hunter

I'm still rooting for the Dutch model, because it fits well with the genome-wide ancestry of the Dutch Beakers.

Even if P312 turns up in early Czech CWC, it won't mean that Beaker P312 lineages aren't from the Lower Rhine.

But whatever. Let's see what the ancient DNA shows.

Bob Floy said...

@Gaska

"I have always admired people so sure of themselves"

Kind of like how you're 110% sure that L51 originated in western Europe?

I've been expecting to see P312 in the CWC since 2015 because it would make sense, all things considered. Your bias doesn't allow your intuition to breathe, does it?

Gaska said...

Reading these words, I think you either have not read or have not understood the posts I have sent on this issue. I have always shown my doubts and said that it is possible to find L51 in any German or French Neolithic culture, in the Baltic Countries (due to the abundance of P297 in the Narva culture) and even in the Balkans. As you will see these possibilities include regions of Eastern Europe, so don't put words in my mouth that I haven't said.

You, however, seem absolutely certain that we will find L51 and P312 in the CWC, that only proves that you are absolutely biased and also the champion of wishful thinking. We all have doubts, and yet you are absolutely sure, which implies that you have no idea how those cultures we are talking about were. If you knew them, you would surely change your mind.

In any case I suppose you can share with us how you have reached that absolute conviction, so we can give your opinion about it.

Leron said...

P312 in CWC and Proto-Tocharian in Afanasievo follow similar reasoning. Logically there’s no other location for them to be at but we are lacking direct empirical evidence. It’s possible there were so few P312 males there that science might never find them, and that huge genetic upheavals erased the track between Afanasievo and Tocharian. We will just never know these things but there are no other better alternatives, which are often more convoluted.

Bob Floy said...

@Gaska

"I think you either have not read or have not understood the posts I have sent on this issue."

I understand that I've seen you insisting on L51 coming from western Europe over and over again. But you're right that I don't read every single one of your novel-sized comments, and I doubt that many others do.

If your mind wasn't so muddled, you would understand that P312 was always likely to have been part of the CWC. You also wouldn't call someone who dosen't agree with every thing you say a "kurganist".

Gaska said...

@Bob

Do you have any arguments to share with us or not?
What makes you so sure that P312 is in the CWC? -
Maybe you can convince me

Davidski said...

I can't speak for Bob, but I'm pretty sure there's P312 in CWC. You don't have to believe me though.

Anonymous said...


You can only believe the facts, and then not always, but until the facts do not exists believe in anything. There are no facts of appearance of L51 from CWC.

M.H. _82 said...

And some people suggest that YFull under-estimates the times by 20%, so L51 could even 7.6 kya; or over 5000 BC when it 'formed'.

Gaska said...

@Davidski

And I'm pretty sure there's P312 in Pre-CWC- You don't have to believe me though.

I bet that unlike P312 in the CWC, P132 Pre-CWC will have dating or stratigraphy problems, lack of genome coverage, discussion about SNPs etc ...

Davidski said...

@Gaska

I'm not aware of any P312 in the pre-CWC samples from Bohemia.

But if your contacts are sure that it's there, and they're not confusing it with R1b(xP312), then it'll be big news when the paper comes out, and a rather significant victory for you.

However, I think both you and Archi are in for some major surprises if you think that L51 won't pop up real soon in samples from Corded Ware burials from several different countries.

Gaska said...


@Davidski

That's good news, let's see what those different countries are (The Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Rusia, Ucrania, Switzerland, Baltic countries), some are in eastern Europe and others are not

M.H. _82 said...

I’m not aware of any entities as “pre-CWC”.
There’s GAC; Horgen; Jevisovice, Goldberg etc

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

It's clear to me that P312 is a pure a BB marker. It cannot be in the CWC from anybody except the assimilated BBs' themselves.

Once again I repeat now there is no any fact of presence L51 in CWC, here will appear, then we will see.

I have reasons why this will not happen, look at the CWCs' marital connections, this society is strictly exogamous and very mobile, i.e. if there were an L51 in it, it would be mixed with all the other CWs and present everywhere. But this is not the case.

Davidski said...

@Mammoth_Hunter

So which archeoloical culture do those Czech LN samples with the Narva-like admixture belong to?

I don't think it's GAC, because GAC is rather homogeneous and lacks Narva-like ancestry.

Synome said...

What's the earliest pre-CW Mesolithic through Eneolithic R1a in the record currently?

Is it this one from Mathieson 2018? : I6561, Sredny Stog II, 4045-3974 calBCE R1a1a1

Andrzejewski said...

@archi @Vladimir “The population of the Dnieper-Donetsk culture does not continue the Mesolithic population.”

WHO was the Mesolithic population then? And how did they contribute to Dnieper-Donets and/or Sredny Stog?

Desdichado said...

I'm not aware of any P312 in the pre-CWC samples from Bohemia.

What is pre-CWC? That seems to be still one of the major problems/questions here; especially if we're now suggesting that CWC formed without direct input from Yamnaya, but rather from earlier western steppe cultures (Sredni Stog II, I presume?) There's a 600 year gap between Sredni Stop and Corded Ware, and the cultures in the immediate vicinity are all non-steppe cultures like Baden and GAC. Who are these pre-CWC people, and how do we bridge the gap between steppe cultures like Sredni Stog and CWC?

I know the answer must be somewhat speculative at this point, but there's got to at least be some proposal, even if it hasn't been tested yet.

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

TMRCA estimates will never be accurate as the genetic mutation rate is not constant with respect to time.Y Full and others do their best, but could be significantly off. The only reliable way to date SNPs is through aDNA.

Davidski said...

@Desdichado

Pre-CWC means the people who lived in Central Europe before CWC got there. You're asking about Proto-CWC.

It seems to me that Proto-CWC was some post-Stog group from the North Pontic steppe. But it's difficult to be more specific for now because there's very little information about the North Pontic steppe from this period.

Anyway, I think it's pretty clear that Corded Ware and far western steppe groups like Usatovo weren't Yamnaya offshoots, but rather products of the same phenomenon on the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

Slumbery said...

@JuanRivera

"I'd add Afanasievo to that, given that it arises at roughly the same time but was geographically very distant."

Afanaisevo is virtually identical in autosomal ancestry to Yamnaya and even the YDNA matches, so it is pretty much the same population. "roughly the same time" also means within the uncertainties of dating. An on top of that, in the Repin region Yamnaya seems to be an organic continuity of Repin (in material remains), so it might not make much of a difference whether Afanasievo was an offshoot of early Yamnaya or late Repin.

zardos said...

@David: "Maybe these steppe people took a plane to Switzerland? Or a flying chariot?

More likely, though, the earliest Corded Ware sites in Germany and Poland can't be found, have been destroyed, or don't contain any usable remains."

I hope a small hint to physical anthropology is allowed if relevant, because one thing I read more than once is that the CW samples from Switzerland appeared to be physically and culturally MORE CONSERVATIVE, more classic CW than, e.g. the Western German ones. That was noted decades ago by different researchers. Can't come up with the quotes now, but the explanation I read was, that they were an early wave moving far from the centre of the CW expansion and kept more of their unique characteristics than those further North because of isolation from later gene flow and cultural developments.

So probably they were indeed a group which, for unknown reasons, moved very quick and very far without stopping (and mixing) for too long anywhere, almost straight to nowadays Switzerland. It was a thought I had years ago already, when first reading about the samples character.

You saw it with the paper about Polish CW: eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/06/genetic-continuity-across-millennia-in.html

They created a very specific regional mixture, which is hard to see as an ancestral form of some of the Western CW branches because of the specific genetic and cultural profile they created by assimilating a group high in WHG ancestry. Similar decisions were made in othe regions, unite and mix with other people or not, with whom and with whom not and probalby the "Swiss clans" decided to move on, until they left something behind or reached their preferred destination.
Would be interesting to see if the physical examination was right and they show a peculiar genetic profile too.

The BB might have similarly moved over mountain paths or by sea in a so far unknown, completely undocumented way. They too are so peculiar and one wave after the next was coming from an unknown centre, creating a network of largely endogamous elite members of the BB steppe-influenced culture. They could keep their uniqueness even though they mixed - so where was the centre from which new typical BB followed the first wave?
I believe a CW origin only if its really proven, but I too doubt it. We deal with a different branch which split off earlier from CW and they just met again when competing for Central-Northern Europe. Since they took CW wives on the way, they might have become more similar genetically than they were when starting. But I might be wrong and they came from the North, but even then a core group might have moved there in an unknown way, but rather not inside of the CW movement, but rather bypassing it.

Desdichado said...

It seems somewhat funny that as wrong as he is about so many other things, Carlos Quiles can at the very least accurately say that he's been beating the drum of Corded Ware descended from Sredni Stog without Yamnaya for quite some time. He's probably encouraged at this development.

Anonymous said...

@Desdichado

What does Carlos Quiles have to do with anything? This was understood by everyone who understood archeology and looked at the data of Y-haplogroups non biased enough without yielding to Haak's et al. suggestion.

pnuadha said...

Yamnaya as a source for West European L51 poses problems, we havent found any of it despite looking. But why on earth are people talking about CWC or Narva culture as if that is any better? It isn't; its much worse!!!

Thus far we have found only very distantly related r1b in meso/neo western Europe to the point of irrelevance, somewhat related r1b (P297) related r1b in the meso baltic, a SINGLE r1b in corded ware, and loads of highly related r1b (Z2103 and L23*) in the yamanaya. Yamnaya is the best candidate of what we have seen thus far.

Keep in mind, yamnaya do have some diversity of L23 r1b and L23 emerged in a time that was close to the yamnaya.

Can somebody point me to a good map showing all the samples we have and what gaps may be present?

I guess it may have been obvious to some, but to me it started off as an anomaly that has recently grown into a major problem, and now needs to be resolved in some way, before yet another big paper comes out claiming that Yamnaya basically explains everything in this context.

Corded Ware is a step backwards. Why is L51 hiding in a sea of R1a but not in a sea of L23* and Z2103? Which is more likely? Your actual ancestor carrying r1a has almost certainly not been found and probably never will be but we can assume he was probably among his highly related brothers in the CW. See how that works?

Vladimir said...

The role of a link between Sredniy Stog and CWC may well be claimed by the Middle Dnieper culture and its late Belarusian version of the Dnieper-Desninsk culture 3200-2300 BC, which, incidentally, had bell-shaped ceramics

pnuadha said...

Is there a consensus on when the "steppe component", shared by both CW and Yamnaya, formed? As I recall it developed in a rather limited area of the steppe from around 6000 to 4000 bc? What were the boundaries of this early formation? I know to the south there was the distinct Mayokop, to the West there was the Ukrainian Mesolithic with too high a portion of WHG. What other "boundaries" are there for the potential formation of "steppe"?

On the topic of tocharian, keep in mind that Tocharians need not have been prominent in the Tarim Basin. Tocharian writing was discovered there but the Tarim Basin as an important place of trade. I still think that Afanasievo is the best candidate for pre Tocharian. And Afanasievo is basically a clone to yamnaya. We will see.

Anonymous said...

Vladimir said...
" The role of a link between Sredniy Stog and CWC may well be claimed by the Middle Dnieper culture and its late Belarusian version of the Dnieper-Desninsk culture 3200-2300 BC, which, incidentally, had bell-shaped ceramics"

can't do that. These cultures are obvious derivatives of the Central European cultures of the CWC. Between them and the Sredniy Stog was still a lot of time and cultures. However, because of the depressing state of affairs in the Ukrainian archeology, we will not know soon about them, in the Ukraine from archeology remained one name from the beginning of the 90's, the only thing that still lives is Trypollye archaeology.

Gaska said...

The CWC was a very heterogeneous culture, with diverse sub-cultures, each with its own characteristics, that where it arrived it was mixed with native populations. Therefore, although so far only R1a and a little of I2a have been found, it would not be strange to find any case of P312 in it (especially in Czechoslovakia where it seems that there is a continuity and strong relationship between CWC, BBc and Unetice). It would be a matter of studying dating, deposits and burials to see how that hypothetical P312 got there. Keep in mind that there is R1b-M343 in Germany very old and prior to the arrival of the CWC in that region, then it would not be surprising that some men joined that culture (it would also be strange because it has been verified exogamy, but who knows?).

On the other hand, I think (If I remember well) that the dates of the CWC in that region are not before 2,650 / 2,600 BC and those of the BBC not before 2,500 BC, so if Davidski says there is a case of R1b-P312 in Bohemia related to the BB culture would undoubtedly have an easy explanation.

It is much more difficult to explain why if R1a and P312 coexist in the CWC only this last lineage passed to the BBc. This somehow means that these populations never mixed completely. Regarding Davidski's warning that there are L51 in several regions of the CWC, well, we'll see, of course it would be very strange for me (not so much if for example it appeared in the Baltic CWC)

Anonymous said...


I will simply remind that speech after all not only about an origin R-P312, but also about an origin R-U106, R-Z2118, in general, all subclades R-L151 and R-L51, they all are connected with West Europeans and BB.

epoch said...

Aren't the Yamnaya burials and Corded Ware (and later steppe related burials in Western Europe) highly similar, but not like Sredny Stog? Barrows, crouched burials, but even more importantly: Burrows creating line or road like features pop up in the Netherlands and among Yamnaya.

How did Usotovo bury its dead?

Anonymous said...

@epoch

There is not much in common between the Yamnayas and CWC burials, it is the presence of mounds (which may be absent and organized differently), the use of ochre, the lack of stratification, everything else is different. In Usatovo the same, we can say that the Usatovo cemeteries are closer to the CWC, but there is stratification and use stone.

zardos said...

@epoch: Aren't the Yamnaya burials and Corded Ware (and later steppe related burials in Western Europe) highly similar, but not like Sredny Stog? Barrows, crouched burials, but even more importantly: Burrows creating line or road like features pop up in the Netherlands and among Yamnaya.

You could find those features in various North Pontic cultures burials. What is even more important is that they used single graves, which were used in e.g. Dereivka too.

I think the origin of all those cultures might be the Lower Don Culture, which is the best candidate I could find, but probably Archi has a different opinion? Its a pity we have no DNA from those remains so far, because they could harbour, in theory, a wide variation and their geographical position would be perfect for the position between EHG and CHG too.
If that's correct, they would have split and those which moved North-West became Sredny Stog associated groups, those staying or moving further East Yamnaya. That would make Yamnaya part of the same cultural sphere, but still not the direct ancestor, but a dead end branch from the same tree.

I see no reason why CW could not stem directly from Dereivka or a closely related group in the wider Sredny Stog sphere.

We know of related steppe groups moving directly West and South, like Cernavoda/Usatovo, so there are lot of possibilities for other populations to form in CEE. And what do we have from more than 100.000 people moving South in historically proven migrations like those of Cimbri and Teutons? Nothing if they didn't stop and settle down for some years in a region. Its sheer luck to find something from the provisional camps they used.
So if a people wanted to reach a specific destination, they could even have made deals with the people in between, to let them pass peacefully. I see no reason why, especially pastoralist people, couldn't "jump" from one region to another without leaving behind little to no traces. If you think about how difficult it sometimes is to find valuable remains from a widespread, long existing culture in some regions, a group, even a fairly large one, just passing through will leave more often than not nothing behind.
Especially in a time of turmoil we shouldn't be surprised to find remains of a people scattered in different, geographically quite distant regions and other cultural groups in between. Even after their appearance BB continue that pattern, if looking at the remains found. They definitely used the Sea for large scale transports and they were not afraid of the mountains, higher altitudes.

Anonymous said...

@zardos "I think the origin of all those cultures might be the Lower Don Culture, which is the best candidate I could find, but probably Archi has a different opinion?"

The Lower Don culture is connected with the Sredniy Stog culture, but it cannot be associated with Indo-Europeans yet. The fact is that there are no any of the three IE markers - Corded Ware Pottery, Battle Axes, Kurgans. Corded Ware Pottery appears later from the northeast (where R1a and EHG undoubtedly concentrated), Kurgans from the east. It is difficult to talk about who is a Proto-Indo-European there without proper markers in those complex correlation of cultures, influences and migrations. But for example, burials with dogs (wolves) (some IE marker), red ochre and scepters appear on South Oleniy Ostrov and the Veretye culture.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Davidski

“So which archeoloical culture do those Czech LN samples with the Narva-like admixture belong to?

I don't think it's GAC, because GAC is rather homogeneous and lacks Narva-like ancestry.”

I’m not sure what culture these samples actually belong to.
But the groups which existed just before CWC were GAC & Rivnac
https://www.academia.edu/1516639/On_the_studies_of_the_SW_peripheries_of_the_Globular_Amphora_culture

One of the samples I have noted from CWC _DEU_outlier plots with Ukraine eneolithic; and then further along a cline to Baltic / Narva; but has more MNE / steppe-like ancestry . Why don’t you have a look at that?

Gabriel said...

I have two questions:

-What do you all think happened to Usatovo?

-What happened to the steppe component in Armenia? Why is Metal Ages Armenia almost consistently high in steppe starting with the Lchasen people, but it is lacking in modern Armenians?

Bob Floy said...

@Gaska

"Regarding Davidski's warning that there are L51 in several regions of the CWC, well, we'll see"

Of course there will be.

Davidski said...

@epoch & pnuadha

Populations with Yamnaya-like genetic structure already existed well before 4,000 BCE.

Vonyuchka_En:VJ1001 4332-4238 calBCE
Progress_En:PG2001 4336-4178 calBCE
Progress_En:PG2004 4233-4047 calBCE


It's likely that populations with Corded Ware-like genetic structure did also.

Sredny_Stog_II_En:I6561 4045-3974 calBCE
Varna_En3:ANI163 4711-4542 calBCE


And groups using battle axes, bronze daggers and kurgan burials were already moving around on the western edge of the steppe well before 3,000 BCE, probably before Yamnaya proper got going.

The Usatovo culture, 3500—3000 BC, is an archaeological culture facing the Black Sea between the mouths of the Bug River and the Danube in present-day Romania, Moldavia, and southern Ukraine.

It is seen as a hybrid, with roots in both the Cernavodă and the Tripolye cultures, overlain by an intrusive steppe-derived element of the presumably Indo-European-speaking Kurgan culture.

Metal artefacts are connected to contacts with the distant Caucasus.

It is seen as part of the "Balkan-Danubian complex" that stretched from Troy, the Danube valley up into the Elbe.


Usatovo culture

So it really depends what ancient DNA shows about these early western steppe groups. If they can be linked to Corded Ware and the expansions of R1a-M417 and R1b-L51, and maybe several other important Y-haplogroups, then Yamnaya will be largely out of the picture.

But of course this doesn't mean that we can totally forget about it, because like I said, it's clearly part of the same steppe phenomenon and there were also some strong cultural and maybe genetic contacts between Corded Ware and Yamnaya in and around western Ukraine.

a said...

No population before Yamnaya proper R1b-z2209+ was able to mix mobile metallurgy and nomadic/husbandry and pastoralism on the steppe without the use of permanent settlements.

M.H. _82 said...

Zhivotilovka -Volchansk horizon

Matt said...

Thinking about those new Swiss samples that apparently show steppe ancestry earlier than Middle-Elbe (Corded_Ware_Germany - Esperstedt?), be useful to see if they model better Beakers in Britain and Netherlands than Yamnaya / Corded Ware.

There's a big gap in the series in Britain and nothing before a earliest Beaker - followed by a big gap - in the Netherlands, so we don't actually know how and when steppe related ancestry entered. A point made by archaeologicst Thomas Booth, in his (positively inclined) summary for archaeologists of adna revolution impact in GB - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334097302_A_stranger_in_a_strange_land_a_perspective_on_archaeological_responses_to_the_palaeogenetic_revolution_from_an_archaeologist_working_amongst_palaeogeneticists.

Specific excerpt: https://imgur.com/a/q2huNpp , although I would add to his comment that the latest English Neolithic is not only about ten generations before the earliest Beaker sample, but that it is one sample in England standing alone in the early 3rd millennium, with only two samples in Orkney as near contemporaries. There is space for steppe ancestry to have made an earlier impact and with more local absorption than in Olalde sets as the limit (2500 BCE), if there is a source relatively early within Western Europe and our sampling in the early 3rd millennium is largely empty (and we also see some samples in the earliest in the Beaker Britain set who have more steppe ancestry than the (later) Dutch Beaker max).

On the Usatovo topic, it will be for sure interesting to see what happens with that - I would note that when you compare them to Yamnaya or Corded Ware, whatever was in Ukraine before them does not seem like such a big demic block, as you have the GAC going into Ukraine after 3000 BCE, and then a lot of Yamnaya moving into Ukraine, and I don't think they lead to indications of changes in SE Europe. Though the samples we have of Yamnaya in Ukraine are either rather eastern spatially or they are the odd Ozera outlier who happens to be the westmost Yamnaya, and also we have that Z2103 sample Ukraine_Eneo I5884 at 2793 BCE, who is quite admixed in autosome.

Davidski said...

@Matt

I'm actually expecting those early Swiss CWC samples to show a rather high cut of steppe ancestry and the males to belong to R1a-L664. I'd say for now that R1b-L51 arrived in Western Europe via the CWC somewhat later. I'm speculating, of course, but I have some good reasons for these assumptions which we can hopefully discuss here soon.

By the way, I found a paper today about an Usatovo dagger in a Funnel Beaker culture burial in north-central Poland, where, as far as I know, the CWC burials are among the oldest anywhere. Interesting...

Eneolithic metal objects hoard from Kałdus, Chełmno commune, kujawsko-pomorskie voivodeship

Gabriel said...

Wait, didn’t the isotopes suggest a Swiss origin for British Beakers?

Davidski said...

British Beakers definitely came from the Lower Rhine, that's why they're actually called Rhenish Beakers, same as their Dutch counterparts.

However, isotopic data suggest that some of the later British Beakers may have been migrants from near the Alps.

Anonymous said...

Don't exaggerate the role of the GAC, at first CWs assimilated by the TRB and the LBK, and they destroyed the GAC later, when the BBs appeared. The GAC was present in the Western Ukraine (in Tripolye zone) and this already applies to the late times, and there was little GAC there, in particular, there were no GAC settlements at all.

Gaska said...

@Davidski said-I'd say for now that R1b-L51 arrived in Western Europe via the CWC somewhat later. I'm speculating, of course, but I have some good reasons for these assumptions which we can hopefully discuss here soon.

And I guess you'll also know where the CWC picked up those L51 right? Because we all know that neither come from Yamnaya.

Davidski said...

@Gaska

And I guess you'll also know where the CWC picked up those L51 right? Because we all know that neither come from Yamnaya.

I'm not sure yet.

Where do you think CWC picked up L51 based on what you've heard from your contacts? Be honest.

a said...

It would be interesting to match samples of ydna/mydna with the unique metal known as Arcant/Hrjatam/Argentom(Armenian/Iranian/Italic).Anyone have any idea how the metal(perhaps Corded Ware/Sintashta? etc...) spread into such diverse set of languages

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

I don't understand how the L51 could have moved through the CWC territory, neither archaeological nor anthropological nor genetic traces of such a movement can be seen.

And where were they moving from? What path did they follow?

The movement of the L51 could only be outside the CWC territory, either the through sea and northern seashore through Jutland (interestingly, there is a BBC along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea) or along the south border of the CWC, but then the question arises with the dating of the Central European BBC.

There is of course another way through the GAC area along the Vistula, which CWC hasn't touched for a very long time, and then to Jutland and the Netherlands, but again there are dating problems, but nonetheless it's consider a branch of the Dutch BBC.

Davidski said...

@Archi

The movement of the L51 could only be outside the CWC territory, either the through sea and northern seashore through Jutland (interestingly, there is a BBC along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea) or along the south border of the CWC, but then the question arises with the dating of the Central European BBC.

You're overthinking this. It's actually very simple. You'll see.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

If it was a movement within CWC, we would have seen it by now. The L51 would have spread inside the CWC from Eastern Europe to Central Europe, as the CWs were exogamous, hence the L51 could move only around the CWs group.

Davidski said...

@Archi

OK, if you say so.

Gaska said...

@Davidski

Forget my contacts for the moment, which as yours can be more or less reliable and more or less sincere, but maybe you want to know what I think and what is my reasoning. Obviously for now the key is partially in Bohemia (not so much in Switzerland)

1-"Possible admixture cline between our Late Neolithic Bohemian individuals and a source with high Eastern hunter-gatherer related ancestry"-ERGO-R1b-M269/L51 line-It cannot be P312 unless we were wrong about the formation time of this SNP (2,800 BC)

2-"Early carriers of this ‘steppe ancestry’ (CWC-2.900 BC) can be found buried in close proximity to individuals without ‘steppe ancestry’ at the same burial site"ERGO-L51/P312? acquires an important autosomal steppe component of R1a-Possibility of finding L51 / p312 in CWC burials?

3-"The genetic makeup of later Bell Beaker and Bronze Age individuals can be explained as mixtures of preceding Late Neolithic populations and a significant proportion of incoming steppe-related ancestry"-ERGO-High proportions of steppe ancestry in the Central and North European BBs

4-"We also detect a number of interesting outlier individuals which add to our understanding of the dynamics and regional nuances of population interactions in 3rd millennium B.C"- ERGO ??????? When did these outliers arrive, where did they come from and what was their genetic contribution?

And two big super unknowns

1 if this was so, why there is no R1a in the BB culture?

2- Why at the moment we have not found R1b in the LBK, GAC, or any other Neolithic culture that would serve as a transmission vector between Narva and the CWC?- We only have one doubtful case in Austria

If this were not the case, I can only think of a very rapid journey of L51 from some Pre-Yamnaya culture (Sredni Stog) to Central Europe. But then we would have to explain the setbacks in the autosomal composition of the BBs and many other issues related to this.



Bob Floy said...

@Archi

"If it was a movement within CWC, we would have seen it by now."

Not necessarily. Why this hatred for the idea of P312 in the CWC?
I don't know exactly what David knows, but this idea that Corded Ware was a 100% monolithic R1a block was always going to get blown out sooner or later, same with the idea of BB and the CWC being totally discreet entities. Folks should try harder to think in three dimensions.

It'll be funny watching the shock wave from this.

Anonymous said...


@Bob Floy, that you're all about only these P312? You should observe in the CWC also R-U106, R-S1200, R-Z2118, R-A8053, R-A8039, R-L151, R-L52, R-L51 in many times more! They are older than R-P312, and more common and all associated with the BBs, therefore, if R-P312 was in the CWC, then all these haplogroups were in the CWC! and they were of it into the BBC!

Davidski said...

@Gaska

What your contacts told you about the oldest L51 samples isn't exactly precise, but it's more or less correct. You should try and work with that.

Aniasi said...

Agree. The CWC covers a huge area, and trying to treat it as absolutely homogeneous makes little sense.

Anonymous said...

@Aniasi

The CWC is certainly a huge culture, but you have no idea how much it was tied up strong inside. Archaeological changes there were transmitted instantly. It's hard to imagine any group living there being isolated from everyone else and having a completely different genetics. I'm sorry, but if the CW didn't have Y-haplogroups of farmers that lived before them, why would they must have R1b? It is unbelievable that R1a inside the CWC are freely mixed and moved, and R1b did not do so if also the CW.
Y-haplogroups do not influence psychology.

Desdichado said...

@Archi

This was understood by everyone who understood archeology and looked at the data of Y-haplogroups non biased enough without yielding to Haak's et al. suggestion.

That's not true. For literally DECADES, the default archaeological position was that Yamnaya was the likely source for Corded Ware. Gimbutas said so in the 60s. Mallory said so in 1989. Anthony said so in 2007. When Haak's paper suggested that the Corded Ware might have been 75% Yamnaya, it reiterated the default position.

Mallory was at least detailed enough in his book to refer to plenty of open issues with regards to HOW Yamnaya was supposed to have led to Corded Ware, and pointed out that there was a lot of disagreement around the question, but not that the Corded Ware most likely had an ancestral Yamnaya component, merely how it was transferred from Yamnaya to Corded Ware.

That doesn't mean that the formation of Corded Ware without Yamnaya hadn't been an idea out there, but it wasn't something that "everyone who understood archaeology" believed. The mainstream, default opinion was that somehow in the gap between the formation of Yamnaya and Corded Ware that a Yamnaya element contributed to the formation of Corded Ware.

AWood said...

@Gaska

Yes sir. The Narva culture, the super human hunter gatherers of the Baltic, who evaporated quite cleanly from their homeland after being conquered by incoming CWC steppe cultures and managed to somehow repopulate the rest of Europe with sticks, stones and fishing hooks.

Anonymous said...

@Desdichado

What I wrote was true. You just don't know archeology. You think that the archaeologists you listed are all archaeologists. It is not true that these people have not even been involved in archeology of the Steppe. And Gimbutas denied the origin of the CWC from the Yamnaya culture. The audacity to believe that Mallory&Antony the only ones who know the archaeology of the CWC and the Yamnaya culture, you have not read the archaeologists who deal with the CWC and the Yamnaya culture. Mallory&Antony did not do any archaeological research of the CWC from the Yamnaya culture at all. The mistakes of Mallory & Antony are their mistakes, not all of them. So you wrote the wrong story.

Anonymous said...

@AWood

You still have to take into consideration that R1b has evaporated from Eastern Europe and appeared in Western Europe, it's just a biological fact!

Gaska said...

@AWood said- Yes sir. The Narva culture, the super human hunter gatherers of the Baltic, who evaporated quite cleanly from their homeland after being conquered by incoming CWC steppe cultures and managed to somehow repopulate the rest of Europe with sticks, stones and fishing hooks.

I see that not only do you like to make a fool of yourself in Anthrogenica, but you don't mind doing it wherever you write. I guess you will continue to look for P312 in the Yamnaya culture, like the rest of the geniuses that accompany you.

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

I think this ancestry map of Rathlin 1 tells us exactly where L51,P312 expanded from:

https//www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/2/368/F3.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1

Rathlin Beakers had not yet acquired local British Neolithic ancestry as per the paper so they are direct descendants of the early Beakers.

Yamnaya and Corded ware DNA tells us L51 preceded the main R1a M417 migration from the Steppe. Ultimately L51 is from the Steppe area in general, the question is how much earlier it arrived in Central Europe than R1a and the specifics of that. My guess is that when the R1a Stog people began migrating to the Northwest, their Northwest neighbours in turn began migrating West. Hence why the Beaker migration starts AFTER the CWC one.

Anonymous said...

@Romulus

So we have to find the R1b-L51 in the pre-CWC horizon of Central Europe and in the pre-BBC horizon of Western Europe. In this case, R1b-L51 may not be from the Steppe, but say from Romania, and the steppe component they received from CW as a result of exogamous marriages.

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

What do you think is the nature of the relationship between Usatovo and CWC? Is Usatovo the ancestor of Corded Ware? And if not, what was its fate?

Ryan said...

@Romulus - that link doesn't work. I assume you mean this? https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/2/368/F3.large.jpg

And if so I think you're right.

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

@Ryan

Yes that is the one

Davidski said...

@Gabriel

I think CWC was either derived from an Usatovo group that moved north or from a closely related population.

It seems to me that the Usatovo groups that moved south dispersed around the Balkans and maybe into Anatolia.

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

It seems to me that the Usatovo groups that moved south dispersed around the Balkans and maybe into Anatolia.

Is this too late to have anything to do with early Anatolians?

Davidski said...

@Gabriel

This is what a recent paper on the Hittites says...

It is assumed that the Hittites migrated to Anatolia in the late third to early second millennium BC. At that time, there was an organization of markets (kārum) and posts in Anatolia founded by the Assyrian merchants, who were trading with the local Anatolian chiefdoms. From the personal names and technical terms on the cuneiform tablets that these merchants used, we learnt that these Indo-Europeans were living in Anatolia long enough to find small chiefdoms.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology/article/hittites-and-their-geography-problems-of-hittite-historical-geography/83F3F11C29A814C16E81C06C3FB514F7

M.H. _82 said...

Davidski
That paper doesn’t demonstrate anything . It’s not archaeology; but basic history

Davidski said...

Yes, it's an overview and discussion of Hittite history, so it doesn't offer anything new, just the general consensus.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Romulus

“Yamnaya and Corded ware DNA tells us L51 preceded the main R1a M417 migration from the Steppe”

But at present surely it seems that L51 appears after CWC / M417

@ all
Archie is wrong about everything
He’s wrong about GAC
He’s wrong about lack of I2a in CWC
And the most absurd claim is CWC mixing with LBK. The 2 groups never met; and are separated by 2,000 years

Nirvana said...

@Davidski

David, can you make a thread about Corded Ware-Sintashta R1a expansion to the far East Steppe ?

Many Xiongnu Elites were found with R1a from Corded Ware in East Mongolia.

I assume they went as far east as Manchuria. That's one hellva journey.

Davidski said...

@Nirvana

Many Xiongnu Elites were found with R1a from Corded Ware in East Mongolia.

Which samples are these?

Vladimir said...

@Romulus Interesting thought. In Eastern Europe there was such a case. The Volosovo culture ( to say otherwise Neolithic culture, stroke-ornamented pottery) disappeared DWP head of the tribes of the comb ceramics. Stroke-ornamented pottery culture archaeologist Danilenko in the Eneolithic Ukraine deduced from Kelteminar . In later works, it is derived from the Elshan culture. Thus other branch on Danilenko is steppe cultures of the Mariupol circle, Yamnaiy including

Anonymous said...

You will admire the royal Battle axes from Troy II, they are a copy of the CWC axes and are no longer known anywhere in the Middle East.

Mammoth_Hunter said...
" @ all
Archie is wrong about everything
"
It is lie. True is only that Mammoth_Hunter is wrong about absolutely everything and always

"He’s wrong about lack of I2a in CWC"
I didn't write it. It is lie.

"He’s wrong about GAC"
You are wrong always because don't know anything.

"And the most absurd claim is CWC mixing with LBK."
Layman the TRB and the Legyell derives from the LBK.


M.H. _82 said...

@ Davidski
That consensus is based in Mellarts theory from 1960s . It currently Circulates around historians rather than archaeologist, Who have become ambivalent about the whole affair.
As we know; many of those older archaeologists were actually right about a lot of things.
But it still doesn’t explain from where why and who, & other details
For that; there’s no simple regenerence- and you’d have to dig around yourself.
my understanding is that there are 2 or 3 possible waves into Anatolia; with one culminating in the III Millennium

Bob Floy said...

@Aniasi

"The CWC covers a huge area, and trying to treat it as absolutely homogeneous makes little sense."

Exactly.

Anonymous said...


Until the Early Iron Age, there was only one migration from Europe to Anatolia, which was linked to the time of the end of Troy I - the beginning of Troy IV, which was apparently divided into two stages - the arrival of the Hittites and the arrival of the Luwians.

Anonymous said...


Complete ignoramus Mammoth_Hunter does not know that in TRB is full of G2a2a, not less than 2 I2. It's shameful.

Davidski said...

@Archi & Mammoth_Hunter

Is this childish behavior really necessary? Can't you try to get along?

Or how about if you just ignore each other? I think that could work really well for everyone.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Archie


Until the Early Iron Age, there was only one migration from Europe to Anatolia, which was linked to the time of the end of Troy I - the beginning of Troy IV, which was apparently divided into two stages - the arrival of the Hittites and the arrival of the Luwia”

Wrong again

1. Ochre grave burial in Ikiztepe
2. Cucuteni C ware in west Anatolia
3. Ezero- ware in west Anatolia

Archie; stop wasting oxygen with your outdated fixation on Troy

Gabriel said...

Also, what is the most likely source for Balkan languages like Illyrian, Thracian and Albanian? Is it also a CW-related source?

Davidski said...

Illyrian, Thracian and Albanian probably came from the western edge of the steppe/forest steppe, so from the general area where CWC was expanding north.

Davidski said...

@Archi

You need to calm down. I can't have these sorts of personal arguments cluttering up the comments section.

This has to stop now.

Anonymous said...

1. Ochre is not an indicator of any migration, it was used in Palaeolithic and the Middle East, too. In the Middle East, the ochre was used in multicolored pieces, and as far as I remember in the Neolithic Age.

2. There was no Cucuteni in Anatolia.

3. Ezero is not a migration, it is just a neighboring territory. Ezero has mounds and corded ware pottery http://s018.radikal.ru/i516/1604/95/291606766813.png This is the migration from the territory of Ezero and this is Troy.
That is why there was only one migration in the Eneolithic/EMBA.

Jatt_Scythian said...

Are there any Ordos culture samples that can be tested?

How cool would it have been if the steppe from Hungary to Ordos had remained in Scythian/European control. History sucks.

Davidski said...

@Archi

Which paper is that image from?

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

https://www.academia.edu/6851833/Corded_Ware_in_the_Central_and_Southern_Balkans_A_Consequence_of_Cultural_Interaction_or_an_Indication_of_Ethnic_Change

http://s011.radikal.ru/i318/1604/2d/65e3091afb7c.png

M.H. _82 said...

Correcting some gross errors from above

1) '' in TRB is full of G2a2a, not less than 2 I2. ''

TRB-groups Y-DNA, from samples thus far

Baalberg : R1b-V88, I2c, I2a1b (Haak 2015)
Gockhem TRB: I2a (probably I2a) (Skolund 2014)
Ansarve: I2a1b x 5 (Sanchez -Quinto 2018)
TRB -Poland: C1a (Fernandez 2018)
TRB- Hildesheim-Sorsum - I2c (krause-Klysora 2018)

TRB: 0% G2a; Archie - 100% wrong.

2) ''There was no Cucuteni-C in Anatolia.''

''The influx of a stock-breeding population from the North Black Sea steppes can
be traced by the distribution of pottery specific to the nomads of that region, made from
clay mixed with clam shells and called “Type C pottery”, as well as by the distribution of
“zoomorphic sceptres” and individual burial finds. They migrated in two directions from
their original locations: west and southwest towards the mouth of the Danube, and south
towards the Caucasus and Anatolia (fig. 10). The earliest evidence of the presence of separate small groups of people from the North Black Sea steppes dates from the end of phase
III of the Late Chalcolithic Varna and Kodzhadermen-Gumelnita-Karanovo VI cultures. In
some settlements besides pottery typical of the local cultures, finds include individual vessels or fragments of vessels made from clay mixed with clam shells, i.e. Type C pottery (fig.
11). They differ both in technology and in shape and ornamentation from the pottery of
the cultures in whose environment they occur. Such pottery has been found in the tells at
Carcaliu (Constanţa County, Romania), Hârșova I (Constanţa County, Romania), Năvodari
(Constanţa County, Romania), Pietrele -Măgura Gorgana (on the north bank of the Danube
in Romania), Kozareva Mogila (west Black Sea coast near the city of Burgas, Bulgaria),
Rupkite-Tepeto (in the region of Thrace in Bulgaria) (Voinea 2005, 138). As to how this pottery appeared in these regions, it could have been carried there or made there. It is hard to say whether these were separate small groups (expeditions that reached Thrace where the copper mines were located, or larger groups that settled in regions traditionally inhabited by farmers and lived side by side with them, but not in the same settlements''

(Opportunities for tracing influences of the Balkans on Anatolia during the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth millennium BC; Georgieva)

3) ''“Ochre is not an indicator of any migration, it was used in Palaeolithic and the Middle East, too. In the Middle East, the ochre was used in ''

''Another point of contact in terms of funerary practices is provided by the late 4th millennium cemetery of İkiztepe on the southern Black Sea coast. Here, the normative body position is supine and extended, and often the deceased is sprinkled with ochre; while there are no parallels for this in Anatolia, most LCh and early EBA burials along the Black Sea coast present the same interment practice (Welton 2010:134-141). ''
Massa- Networks before Empires: cultural transfers in west and central Anatolia during the
Early Bronze Age



Archie- the problem with being a Fool is that you don't have insight into the Fact that you're a Fool & hence a trapped in a hopeless spiral

M.H. _82 said...

@ Davidski

''Which paper is that image from?''

The paper outlines the mutual influences between northern Balkans & steppe group, and is just more evidence that the origin & stimulus behind the Sredni-Stog phenomenon was the interaction began by above groups. That paper particularly focuses on the return flow of steppe influences to the Balkan centres - like Cord decorated pottery, shell-temptered Cucuteni -C ware, and horse-headed sceptres; although the most convincing explanation for the latter is that they made in the Danube region & moved to Russia, as per Govedarica.

Note should be made that the refence describes of cord-decorated pottery in the Eneolithic, and its circulating around groups like Dereivka, etc, not the 2800 BC ''Corded Ware Culture''.

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski Would you suggest that the earliest pre-Proto-IE may have originated in a Vonyuchka-like population just to the north of the Caucasus mountain range and spread from there to both Samara/Khvalynsk area by the Volga on one hand and to Sredny Stog on the other one, or do you still think that it has to be Khvalynsk or Samara and then spread south and west from there?

Davidski said...

@Andrzejewski

I don't think that looking for the pre-Proto-IE homeland makes much sense. But I'm pretty sure now that the Proto-IE homeland was much further west than the Caucasus or Samara.

The obvious reason is that there's not a single Indo-European branch that can be linked directly to Yamnaya and those Yamnaya-related groups from the Caspian steppe.

No matter which branch you're looking at, they can be explained by European Late Neolithic/Bronze Age groups from either the North Pontic steppe or surrounds.

This also includes the Anatolian and Tocharian branches, because it makes more sense to derive Anatolian languages from contacts between the Balkans and western Anatolia, than anything from the east, while the huge number and diversity of Andronovo and related groups living in East Central Asia can explain Tocharian.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Davidski,
"The obvious reason is that there's not a single Indo-European branch that can be linked directly to Yamnaya and those Yamnaya-related groups from the Caspian steppe."

Yamnaya's R1b Z2103 is common in some parts of the Middle East. Ancient DNA shows it in Armenia, Iran and Israel in the late Bronze age. Looks like at one point lots of Yamnaya people passed through the Caucasus into Middle East. They could be source of Anatolian languages.

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

Do you think early Indo-Europeans were a farmer+steppe mix like Sredny Stog, or that they were rather Yamnaya-like?

Davidski said...

@Samuel Andrews

Maybe, but my impression is that Z2103 generally peaks in areas populated by Hurrians.

Also, there are two Iron Age Z2103 samples from a part of Iran more securely associated with Hurrians than Anatolian speakers, or any other ancient Indo-Europeans.

Davidski said...

@Gabriel

Do you think early Indo-Europeans were a farmer+steppe mix like Sredny Stog, or that they were rather Yamnaya-like?

They were farmer+steppe+forager mixtures, with very different ratios of farmer, steppe and forager ancestries depending on where they lived.

Davidski said...

@All

Where can I find more info about the Sofievka culture described in this article?

The Daggers of Usatovo and Sofievka

Matt said...

Whatever the Tepe Hasanlu IA and Hajji Firuz IA men spoke*, they clearly are already very close to modern people in the "Central Iranian Cluster (CIC)" (https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008385) with little need for any further admixture, and certainly no need for anything explained by a big wave of sudden population movement from NE Iran or Central Asia, probably no room for one with even modest accommodations made for known historical population movements and exchanges.

See: https://imgur.com/a/2C9JVa8

*And you can clearly debate it back and forth, given the paucity of evidence, although linking Hurro-Urartian backs to the steppes seems a pretty remote possibility. Certainly Hasanlu IA is contemporaneous with at a minimum when there must have been people speaking earliest Old Persian in the same general area - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Persian - "According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash, who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became the official language of the Achaemenid kings.[10] Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai, presumably Medians) are first mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III.[11] The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word *pārćwa."

Davidski said...

@Matt

I'm not seeing any persuasive arguments in the text that you posted and linked to that Persian was spoken at Hajji Firuz or Teppe Hasanlu when these Z2103 individuals were alive there (1193-1019 & 971-832 calBCE).

As for their genetic structure being very similar to that of present-day Iranians from the region, yep, I already knew that. But this might be a coincidence to a large degree, because Turkmenistan_IA DA382, who does come from a region that was likely to have been Iranian-speaking during his time, can be used very successfully to model the ancestry of present-day Iranians.

An early Iranian, obviously

Anonymous said...

Avoid lie.

1. G2a in TRB
TRB Germany Salzmünde [I0551/SALZ 3] 3400-3025 BC M G2a2a
TRB Germany Salzmuende-Schiebzig [I0551/SALZ3B] 3400-3025 BC M G2a2a

Wrong screamer's in a puddle like always.

2. No any words фbout any Cucuteni!

"The influx of a stock-breeding population from the North Black Sea steppes can
be traced by the distribution of pottery specific to the nomads of that region, made from
clay mixed with clam shells and called “Type C pottery”, as well as by the distribution of
zoomorphic sceptres” and individual burial finds. "

It is about the Usatovo culture! Not any Cucuteni.

Everything he writes is a mistake and it is not true always.

3. " late 4th millennium cemetery of İkiztepe" is near Balkan. It could be all the same consequences of the same migration from the north to Ezero and on to Troy. But there may be the influence of the Middle East where burials with ochre are also known in the Neolithic Age. It's still an indicator of impact, but not yet of migration.

Davidski said...

@Archi

Wrong screamer's in a puddle like always.

Seriously WTF?

Bob Floy said...

@Davidski

This might be worth a look.
https://books.google.com/books?id=nKNOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=sofievka+culture&source=bl&ots=BWn5NugGNr&sig=ACfU3U0EDzJfdbmzhfrxDiuNO3pgmcGgcg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjg9_Htn_3kAhUiT98KHfVhBu0Q6AEwAnoECBoQAQ#v=onepage&q=sofievka%20culture&f=false

"Wrong screamer's in a puddle like always."

This needs to be a t-shirt.

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

This article deals with: in the first stage of the trading operation Sredniy Stog culture (where for the first time in the steppe appeared Corded Ware pottery) in the Carpathian-Balkan Mountains within the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province, in many burials are presented trade items such as high-quality Donetsk flint and animal products from the steppe.
The second stage is the spread of Hettito-Luwians. The third stage is the spread of Luwians and Illirians. Corded Ware pottery (as well as mounds) did not penetrate into Anatolia, where the local tradition of ceramics on the potter's wheel has been preserved, but the royal stone Battle Axes (like CWC) are still represented in Troy.

Gaska said...

@Davidski-What your contacts told you about the oldest L51 samples isn't exactly precise, but it's more or less correct. You should try and work with that.

I have not told you anything about what my contacts think, but what I think, and I find your enigmatic words somewhat contradictory. Some European researchers are concerned about the dimension that the Yamnaya problem has reached.

I do not know the degree of relationship of L51 with the CWC (dates, sites etc) but I do not believe that it participated in the initial migration of that culture to the West. However it seems that you think otherwise. That means we would have to find L51 somewhere in the steppes or forest steppe after 3,000 BC, and this makes no sense.

I think I am not mistaken in stating that L51 is in some late Neolithic culture in Central Europe and that its origin is not in the east-In any case, I hope that the new papers that are going to be published end once and for all with biased interpretations.

Bob Floy said...

@Gaska

"I think I am not mistaken in stating that L51 is in some late Neolithic culture in Central Europe and that its origin is not in the east"

I have always admired people so sure of themselves, I would like to have things as clear as you.

Gaska said...

@Bob Floy

Ha Ha Ha, you are right. If you ask me why I think like that, I could tell you my
arguments, however when I ask you, you shut up, obviously because you only have "faith" in what other people tell you.

At least I have been right about denying the link between the Yamnaya culture, R1b-L51 and the IE language, so I guess I will have some credibility.

Arza said...

@ Davidski
Seriously WTF?

https://i.postimg.cc/76rYXgPv/puddle.jpg

Davidski said...

@Gaska

Here's what you said in one of your comments above...

I have asked and although they have not specified anything, one of those responsible for the genetic analysis of El Argar culture said that they were clear that the lineage of that culture (obviously P312/Df27) has remote origins in northern Russia???

This is actually correct.

In regards to whether L51 will be found in CWC remains, that has already happened and hopefully the papers don't take too long to appear. And please note that I said papers (ie. plural).

Anonymous said...

1. Salzmünde is TRB!
2. So-called Cucuteni C ware is the steppe pottery founded in Cucuteni! Cucuteni used the stepp pottery - this is unambiguously proven scientific fact. Moreover, it clearly says in the text that this pottery from the steppes of the nomads.
Learn to read!
3. “late 4th millennium cemetery of İkiztepe" is close to Balkan. Late 4th millennium is start spread of Hittit-Luwians. There is kurgan c. 3000 BC in south Ezero at Bosporus!

M.H. _82 said...

@ Archie

Salzmünde is Boleraz (south) influenced! In any case, 1 from ~ 20, not to mention the inflated WHG T.R.B. possesses, just demonstrates you don't understand genetics.


- ''So-called Cucuteni C ware is the steppe pottery founded in Cucuteni!''

Not quite. ''Cucuteni C'' is steppe influenced Cucuteni ware

- ''Late 4th millennium is start spread of Hittit-Luwians. There is kurgan c. 3000 BC in south Ezero at Bosporus!''

But you first stated ''the beginning of Troy IV, which was apparently divided into two stages - the arrival of the Hittites and the arrival of the Luwians.''

Troy 4 is 2200 BC.
Get your stories straight at least.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Bob

'This needs to be on a shirt''

His moniker should be Shame! Shame ! Shame !

Bob Floy said...

@Gaska

"I could tell you my
arguments, however when I ask you, you shut up, obviously because you only have "faith" in what other people tell you."

You've told us your arguments over and over again, and they're not convincing, but I see that you have plenty of faith in them, even though all indications are that you're about to be proven wrong.
No one told me to expect L51 in the CWC, in fact everyone I've ever said that to disagreed with me, until recently. Try harder if you're going to cast aspersions.
I've been expecting L51 in Corded ware for years because it's actually a reasonable thing to expect, if you're looking at the big picture and don't rush to conclusions. Think about it. But I have no vested interest here, if the PIE homeland turned out to be in the damn Canary islands it wouldn't injure me in the least. You, on the other hand, are personally invested in a western European origin for L51. You tried to backpedal on this, but then went straight back to it the next day, because you can't help yourself.

And you haven't demonstrated a damn thing about L51 and IE languages being unrelated, are you paying attention?


Bob Floy said...

@Mammoth Hunter

"The man in the puddle: a story of self-love"

Gaska said...

@Davidski said-"This is actually correct-In regards to whether L51 will be found in CWC remains, that has already happened and hopefully the papers don't take too long to appear. And please note that I said papers (ie. plural)"

So it does not surprise me that there are many people worried, especially in relation to the linguistic repercussions, because it leaves only R1a as a possible dispersion factor of IE. Demic diffusion related to L51 and Yamnaya, would be a lost cause and yet it would explain the contradictions we are seeing in Iberia and Italy. It will be a pleasure to discuss the details of the migration of L51 across Europe and its relationship with the CWC and the BBC.

Anonymous said...

@Mammoth Hunter

1. Salzmünde is TRB! You were shouting that there was no G2a in TRB, but there were. You will not be able to save your position by anything, you always claim only one error.

2. So-called Cucuteni C ware is the steppe pottery founded in Cucuteni! Cucuteni used the steppe pottery - this is unambiguously proven scientific fact. Moreover, it clearly says in the text that this pottery from the steppes of the nomads.
Learn to read!

3. “late 4th millennium cemetery of İkiztepe" is close to Balkan. Late 4th millennium is start spread of Hittit-Luwians. There is kurgan c. 3000 BC in south Ezero at Bosporus!

Troe IV it is the misprint you should read Troe VI.

M.H. _82 said...

Yes Archie. Aha

M.H. _82 said...

@ Bob & Gaska

We're all very eager for the Swiss & Bavarian - Lech Valley papers.
It'll be important to carefully dissect out the context & chronology of whatever samples come to light. Some of the papers have a habit of generalising and doing sloppy analyses. So close scrutiny will be needed/

Nirvana said...

@Davidski

R1a1a R-M17/M198 sample. It originated in Corded Ware if I'm not wrong.

"Xiongnu cemeteries have been found at Noin-Ula, Bor Bulagin Am, Golmod, Golmod-II, Takhilt Khotogo, Egyin Gol, and Duurlig Nars in Mongolia. Duurlig Nars has been considered as an elite cemetery among those sites in Mongolia. The excavation of three tombs in Duurlig Nars site has proved this through the recovery of various luxury items such as gold ornaments. This archeological evidence demonstrates the social stratification of the Xiongnu Empire."


https://www.podgorski.com/main/assets/documents/Kim_2010.pdf

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/mongols.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41104159_A_Western_Eurasian_Male_Is_Found_in_2000-Year-Old_Elite_Xiongnu_Cemetery_in_Northeast_Mongolia

http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/60_Genetics/KijeongKim2010%AD_2000-Year-OldEliteXiongnuEn.htm

https://www.academia.edu/13579687/Strong_genetic_admixture_in_the_Altai_at_the_Middle_Bronze_Age_revealed_by_uniparental_and_ancestry_informative_markers

Gaska said...

@Bob

Calm youself down.

1-Of course if you had been waiting for years to find L51 in the CWC, you could earn a lot of money as a fortune teller. I certainly only expected it as a kind of L51/P312 outliers, not being part of migrations (at least the initials). And I keep wondering how it is possible then that R1a did not become part of the BBC

2-I don't know what arguments you mean, but if we talk about Yamnaya, then not only have they been convincing, but even the most recalcitrant Kurganists have liquidated the Yamnaya culture as a possible source of both L51 and IE. Ergo my arguments have proven true.If you refer to Iberian BB migrations to other regions, Fernandes et al (2,019) have shown that they occurred, because they have found Iberian Df27 in Sicily, etc

3-Regarding the linguistic issue, genetic continuity in Iberia is sufficient evidence to at least doubt the relationship between L51-P312/IE. I believe that many people agree on this, and I also believe that the Etruscans will help to understand this position. And if it is also confirmed that L51 is in Northern Russia, I do not think anyone can link this lineage to IE, although obviously everything depend on the exact location and dating.

4-I am NOT going to explain again what I think about the origin of L51 because I have already done it many times. We will wait for the dates and the autosomal composition of these samples in northern Russia. Then we will be clearer what is the most remote origin of that lineage. As is my haplogroup, I am especially interested in finding out

5-I do not like what you have said about the Canary Islands, but I am not surprised that a Briton can think that because there were defeated three British armies. Now they let them pass as tourists, but they can't leave because their tour operators go bankrupt.


Bob Floy said...

@Mammoth Hunter

"Some of the papers have a habit of generalising and doing sloppy analyses. So close scrutiny will be needed"

Can't disagree with that.

Bob Floy said...

@Gaska

You seem upset.

"...I am not surprised that a Briton can think that because..."

Where is this "Briton"?

M.H. _82 said...

Small print stuff, but if anyone (aside from Archie) is curious about the (pre-)Baden influences on central Europe this outline is useful. Green dot is somewhere close to Salzmunde. Would also help explain the genesis of GAC.

Some have suggested that Cucuteni C ware is Baltic influence (shell tempering being a hunter-fisher-forager trait).

Synome said...

@Davidski

"The obvious reason is that there's not a single Indo-European branch that can be linked directly to Yamnaya and those Yamnaya-related groups from the Caspian steppe."

You have a very fair point. However, I think we should keep in mind that the distribution of surviving languages can bias our guesses about their origins in the same way that modern DNA data can bias our guesses about population history.

If we find genetic and archaeological evidence suggesting that the North Pontic region was influenced from the east shortly before the Corded Ware migrations, that could place the formation of PIE east of the North Pontic. Since the typical definition of an urheimat is that region where a proto language was LAST spoken before breaking up, it may well be the case that the North Pontic was the urheimat of PIE. But the question of where PIE first formed is another question. And I think it is possible to investigate that question with the mounting aDNA evidence we are getting.

I agree that Yamnaya itself is a likely red herring. We need to look a bit further back in time in the region.

Gill said...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/yfull/permalink/918965638466609/

https://yfull.com/tree/P/

Interesting

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski Well, at least it seems that the hypothesis re: Samara HG being replaced by a Vonyuchka-like population to form Khvalynsk with its own R1b subclades vis-a-vis Samara turns out to be quite outdated now, with Gimbutas’ theory of Kurgan originating at the tradition stomping grounds of the Sredny Stog/Early Corded Ware gaining favor again.

Andrzejewski said...

In regards to indigenous Ukraine Mesolithic being completely subsumed by a wave of incomers from the Don-Volga region, does it still hold stock and currency, or is Sredny Stog II a continuation of SS I?

What’s the roles that Dnieper-Donets and Bug Dniester played in its ethnogenesis? I have ALWAYS supposed that Cucuteni Tripolye didn’t completely get wiped off the face of the earth but that it played a very central role in the creation of Usatovo.

Andrzejewski said...

On top of it, I highly suspect that WSHG uniparental markers played some role in Samara and even Khvalynsk cultures (Q1a, a clade of R1b) before being regarded “low class” by migrants rich in CHG aDNA from Progress_EN and migrants from the west carrying R1a.

And could it be then, that R1a was the bearers of the first recognizable PIE speech, and they eventually moved to become the dominant class in Khvalynsk and Piedmont_EN, thereby imposing their language on people speaking Botai-like/Yenisseyan-like dialects north of the Volga on one hand, and Kartvelian/Maykop/Kurt-Araxes ones north of the Caucasus mountain range?

Anonymous said...


Pottery with shell admixture is an ancient tradition of Eastern Europe, especially in the steppe, it was the norm in the steppe long before Cucuteni-Tripolye. It was borrowed to Cucuteni-Tripolye even together with steppe ornaments. The East European tradition of ceramics came from Siberia, and the Balkan ceramics from Anatolia, and it has absolutely different traditions that have nothing to do with East European traditions. Anatolian ceramics is painted ceramics, while Eastern European paint denied, and it is this kind of ceramics that Cucuteni-Tripolye borrowed. No one has any doubts that this is steppe ceramics, freaks do not count.
In general, the influence of the Balkans on the steppe was minimal, the Steppians were of no interest anything from Cucuteni-Tripolye-Blakan except for metal, which is why the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province is called. Except for the borderline settlements, the influence of Cucuteni-Tripolye on the steppe was practically absent (close to zero), but the steppe had a strong influence on the Cucuteni-Tripolye, which borrowed pottery, things, horse-shaped scepters, methods of cattle breeding, and even at the final stage of the burial ceremony (Vykhvatinsky burial ground).

Especially if you understand the text of Georgieva's "Opportunities(!) ..." well.

Andrzejewski said...

@Archi “In general, the influence of the Balkans on the steppe was minimal, the Steppians were of no interest anything from Cucuteni-Tripolye-Blakan except for metal, which is why the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province is called. Except for the borderline settlements, the influence of Cucuteni-Tripolye on the steppe was practically absent (close to zero)”

Really?! As far as I understood, cattle raising came from CT into the Steppes, along with the potter’s wheel and other influences. Cattle used to be considered to have migrated to the Steppes from the Caucasus or Zagros mountains but lately it was proven it was a West —> East route into Steppes.

Kurgan, OTOH are still regarded as a Maykop cultural import.

Anonymous said...

@Andrzejewski
"In regards to indigenous Ukraine Mesolithic being completely subsumed by a wave of incomers from the Don-Volga region, does it still hold stock and currency, or is Sredny Stog II a continuation of SS I?"

SSI and SSII have nothing in common. The first is the Dnieper-Donetsk culture, and the second is the Sredny Stog culture. None of them came from the other.

"I have ALWAYS supposed that Cucuteni Tripolye didn’t completely get wiped off the face of the earth but that it played a very central role in the creation of Usatovo."

Only as a substrate, first in Usatovo is still a significant percentage of imported tableware of Tripolye, and then it disappears completely. In general, Usatovo men took Tripolye women at the beginning of this culture.


"migrants from the west carrying R1a."
Why the West? In the west, just one solid R1b (I2a).

A said...

@Andrze,

"Cattle used to be considered to have migrated to the Steppes from the Caucasus or Zagros mountains but lately it was proven it was a West —> East route into Steppes."

Do you have any more info on that?

Anonymous said...

@Andrzejewski

"Really?! As far as I understood, cattle raising came from CT into the Steppes, along with the potter’s wheel and other influences. Cattle used to be considered to have migrated to the Steppes from the Caucasus or Zagros mountains but lately it was proven it was a West —> East route into Steppes."

The first time you hear like myth. It contradicts everything that archaeologists have proven. Where did you get such an invention?
The potter’s wheel was not known in Eastern Europe and it is appeared later anywhere.
The cattle were borrowed at the beginning of the Neolithic period, and it had nothing to do with the Eneolithic Cucuteni-Tripolye.
Naturally, no one has ever proved that the cattle are from the Balkans. The cattle in the steppe are primarily sheep and horses, and in the Balkans there are no horses and sheep in the minimum quantity.
In Eastern Europe, the pottery appeared long before the cattle breeding appeared, before the pottery in the Balkans! In Anatolia, cattle breeding was introduced long before the appearance of pottery, and it is called Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and that is how it comes to Europe. And in Eastern Europe, where pottery was the first to appear in Europe and moving from east to west, it appeared long before the advent of cattle breeding.

"Kurgan, OTOH are still regarded as a Maykop cultural import."

It is a perfect mistake, an old delusion. Kurgans in the steppe existed long before the beginning of the Maykop culture.

Matt said...

@Davidski, you could model Iranians with Turkmenistan_IA and local people from the CA, but it seems a bit questionable why you would do that when you have samples already present with R1b-Z2103 at this time who don't seem to require that. Especially if proposing a later population movement (because that would seem to require assuming the two Z2103 are outliers, and there isn't anything to suggest they are).

Re: , the suggestion is that persons who can be related to the Persians (certainly by any fairly reasonable standard) are already present in that area (proximate to Lake Urmia) by 9th century BCE in Assyrian records - "In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai, presumably Medians) are first mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III."

Andrzejewski said...

@Archi “SSI and SSII have nothing in common. The first is the Dnieper-Donetsk culture, and the second is the Sredny Stog culture. None of them came from the other.“

What happened to Dnieper-Donetsk then?

And what links Bug-Dniester to Dnieper-Donetsk? If I’m not mistaken, BD was mostly WHG who became agripastoralists whereas DD were by-and-large Anatolia-offspring.

Anonymous said...

"And what links Bug-Dniester to Dnieper-Donetsk? If I’m not mistaken, BD was mostly WHG who became agripastoralists whereas DD were by-and-large Anatolia-offspring."

No one sample of the Bug-Dniester culture is not tested yet. The Dnieper-Donetsk culture has not any link to Anatolia neither archeologically nor genetically.
The Bug-Dniester and the Dnieper-Donetsk cultures existed in different times and linkages between it were minimal.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Synome

“. However, I think we should keep in mind that the distribution of surviving languages can bias our guesses about their origins in the same way that modern DNA data can bias our guesses about population history.”

Follow the path of Z2103 into Western Asia; and it’s distiribution seems mutually exclusive with IE languages; apart from Armenian. By let’s see the context there..

M.H. _82 said...

@ Archi

“are no horses and sheep in the minimum quantity.
In Eastern Europe, the pottery appeared long before the cattle breeding appeared, before the pottery in the Balkans! In Anatolia, cattle breeding was introduced ”

Incorrect is !
Huge reservoir effects have biased these estimates
7th millennium BC my ass. This is part of the reason why the falsehood that PIE emerged in Russia came about. False database
But that’s all gone now. :)

Davidski said...

@Matt

You seem to be pushing a theory in which Iranian languages moved south from the steppe into Iran across the Caucasus with a population related to Yamnaya (Catacomb?).

This seems like an unusual proposition, because it would mean that the migrations of Andronovo groups into Turan, and indeed into areas that are seen as the earliest Iranian and Indo-Aryan speaking regions, didn't have anything to do with the spread of Indo-Iranian languages and, along with Corded Ware, aren't really the linguistic link between Balts and Indo-Iranians.

All the best with that, but it looks like a lost cause to me, especially also in the context of forthcoming ancient DNA results from the western end of the steppe.

Anonymous said...

Mammoth_Hunter said... "my ass"
Learn archaeology and don't shame yourself.

In Europe first pottery was appeared at 8500-7000 BC in the Elshanskaya culture. In Anatolia this time is Pre-Pottery Neolithic.



Hajji_Firuz_IA Iran Hajji Firuz [I2327 / FH8, K10 B1] 1193-1019 calBCE (2910±20 BP, PSUAMS-4413) M R1b1a1a2a2
is probably either a Hittit-Luwian or an Armenian (Mushk).


Davidski said...

@Synome

If we find genetic and archaeological evidence suggesting that the North Pontic region was influenced from the east shortly before the Corded Ware migrations, that could place the formation of PIE east of the North Pontic. Since the typical definition of an urheimat is that region where a proto language was LAST spoken before breaking up, it may well be the case that the North Pontic was the urheimat of PIE. But the question of where PIE first formed is another question. And I think it is possible to investigate that question with the mounting aDNA evidence we are getting.

I agree that Yamnaya itself is a likely red herring. We need to look a bit further back in time in the region.


The North Pontic region was certainly influenced from the east shortly before the Corded Ware migrations, and this might mean that PIE formed east of the North Pontic, but it need not mean that.

I think to keep the Caspian steppe in the game you would need to demonstrate that at least one of the key early PIE migrations started there, like, for instance, the migration of the Proto-Anatolians. But I'm pretty sure it'll be easier to get the Proto-Anatolians into Anatolia from the western edge of the steppe than across the Caucasus.

So like you say yourself, Yamnaya is likely a red herring, and that's the point I'm making here. Even if its people were Indo-European speakers, then they spoke a language from an Indo-European branch that went extinct early and was never attested.

Davidski said...

@Archi

Hajji_Firuz_IA Iran Hajji Firuz [I2327 / FH8, K10 B1] 1193-1019 calBCE (2910±20 BP, PSUAMS-4413) M R1b1a1a2a2 is probably either a Hittit-Luwian or an Armenian (Mushk).

Probably a Hurrian. Early Armenians are probably these guys...

Early chariot riders of Transcaucasia came from...

M.H. _82 said...

@ Archie
As I said -reservoir effects greater than1000 years in Elshanka because it’s tempered with shells
Do you know what that means? Have you even done high school science ?
“You are totally layman”

= “Hajji_Firuz_IA Iran Hajji Firuz [I2327 / FH8, K10 B1] 1193-1019 calBCE (2910±20 BP, PSUAMS-4413) M R1b1a1a2a2
is probably either a Hittit-Luwian or an Armenian (Mushk”

Yeah right. What’s a “Hitto-Luwian” and whats he doing in 1000 BC Iran? Why dont you have a look at the map of the distribution of Indo- and non-Indo-European languages in Anatolia?

Anonymous said...

@Davidski
"Early Armenians are probably these guys...
Early chariot riders of Transcaucasia came from..."

It's probably Mitannie's influence. Don't forget about Aryans Mitannie.

Armenians (=Mushki) is associated to the Sea peoples and their invasion in 1200-1000BC. No one has seen Armenians there before this time.

M.H. _82 said...

“Armenians (=Mushki) is associated to the Sea peoples and their invasion in 1200-1000BC. No one has seen Armenians there before this time.”

Interesting
How did they sail their boats up the mountains ?

Gabriel said...

@Davidski

Why do Bronze Age Armenians have more steppe ancestry than modern Armenians?

Anonymous said...

@Mammoth_Hunter
"As I said -reservoir effects greater than1000 years in Elshanka because it’s tempered with shells"

don't be ridiculous, there's 7000BC dates coming straight from the pottery, no shell. At 7000 BC in Anatolia was Pre-Pottery N.

"What’s a “Hitto-Luwian” and whats he doing in 1000 BC Iran? Why dont you have a look at the map of the distribution of Indo- and non-Indo-European languages in Anatolia?"

That was just one option, you need to look at the cards. Historically, during the invasion of the Sea peoples the Hittites fled their cities, this is a well-known fact. They could have fled far away, because they were attacked by Mushki up to Lake Van and beyond.

Davidski said...

@Gabriel

Why do Bronze Age Armenians have more steppe ancestry than modern Armenians?

There are a few reasons for this.

One is that the Proto-Armenians probably came from the Balkans not the steppe, and another is that there were significant border and genetic shifts in Armenia and surrounds since the Iron Age.

Desdichado said...

Interesting
How did they sail their boats up the mountains ?


It's long been believed that the Sea Peoples were on the move because of more inland commotion. The general idea that the Sea Peoples were recorded historically because of their connection to literate peoples of the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age, but that the Sea Peoples were the tip of the iceberg to what was going on in Europe and the northern Middle East.

Aniasi said...

Or even in the past 120 years. Today's Armenia represents one fringe of a much larger area.

Leron said...

The Sea Peoples are greatly overhyped. Humans are always on the move. Their slight connection to Europe doesn’t make it anymore significant than previous groups coming and going. The Hittites sacked Babylon centuries earlier, and that had a greater impact in world events during the Bronze Age and lingering effects up to the Iron Age.

Anonymous said...

@Leron
"The Sea Peoples are greatly overhyped. Humans are always on the move. Their slight connection to Europe doesn’t make it anymore significant than previous groups coming and going."

Nonsense. The invasion of the Sea Peoples is not in vain called the Zero World War, it was a catastrophe BA of universal scale, for example, Central Anatolia for c. 4 centuries (Dark Ages) almost completely deserted, there appeared people only with the arrival of the Phrygians. The Mycenaean civilization was destroyed, whose cities were burned down and Peloponnese was greatly depopulated. This is all a consequence of the invasion of the Sea Peoples from Europe.

From Peloponnesus to Babylon, cultures have undergone enormous changes, incredible in scales and principles.

These peoples are not slightly connected with Europe, but very much, at least where their archaeology is well fixed, it is Peloponnesus and Anatolia.

And if we remember that just at the same time Indo-Aryans come to India and Iranian to Iran, and that there are the Dark Ages were there at the same time, the scale of change is huge, from Central Europe to India.

Balaji said...

@Davidski, you wrote:

“No matter which branch you're looking at, they can be explained by European Late Neolithic/Bronze Age groups from either the North Pontic steppe or surrounds.

This also includes the Anatolian and Tocharian branches, because it makes more sense to derive Anatolian languages from contacts between the Balkans and western Anatolia, than anything from the east, while the huge number and diversity of Andronovo and related groups living in East Central Asia can explain Tocharian.”

In this, I agree with @musci lover about Tocharian and disagree with you. Tocharian people could not have had ancestry from Andronovo as you can see if you take s look at the following map of centum and satem languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum_and_satem_languages#/media/File:Centum_Satem_map.png

Also, as stated by @music lover, your modeling of CHN_Shirenzigou_IA as a combination of fourth millenium Botai from Kazakhstan, second millenium Steppe_MLBA from Kazakhstan and first millenium Mebrak from Nepal does not make sense.

But you are in good company. Narasimhan et al. Have made a similar mistake in using Steppe_MLBA for modeling populations in India.

Davidski said...

@Balaji

My models of CHN_Shirenzigou_IA make very good sense in the context of its uniparental markers.

For instance, it's East Asian mtDNA lineages look significantly Tibetan. This has been noted by other people and you can check it for yourself. It's very easy.

And like I've said before, CHN_Shirenzigou_IA can't have any Afanasievo ancestry because it's very similar to the Tianshan Huns and Sakas, which are known to be in large part of Sintashta/Andronovo origin.

M.H. _82 said...

Archie

''don't be ridiculous, there's 7000BC dates coming straight from the pottery, no shell. At 7000 BC in Anatolia was Pre-Pottery N.''

Anatolia isn't the point of discussion here
First you just said ''In Europe [Russia] first pottery was appeared at 8500-7000 BC in the Elshanskaya culture. ''
Now you take it dwn to 7000 BC. What's your source for this ?

Dolbunova said the turn of 7-6th millenium BC, so at best, its c. 6000 BC. But this is suprious result by Dolbunova

Here is what Vybornov states -' In the mid-1970-s, sites were discovered on the Samara River with unusual Neolithic ceramics with pointed bottoms and faint dash ornamentation, which the researchers compared to Early Neolithic pottery from Central Asia, the Eastern Caspian Sea region, and dated to the ''6–5th millennia BP (Vasiliev, Penin 1977; Vybornov, Penin 1979). This type of pottery was denoted as Elshanka, from the name of the first site examined. ''




''there's 7000BC dates coming straight from the pottery, no shell''

Errgg. The pottery is made with shell temper. This confounds the original carbon dates.
''Molluskan carbon is strongly affected by calcareous chalk-rich landscapes. The mollusk shell 14C dates are up to 3000 yr older than animal bones or charcoal from the same contexts.'

Whilst ''The reservoir offset for the human appears to be about 700 14C yr.'' in Samara region.

The 'Samara_HG' from Haak 2015 dated ¬ 5500 BC seems feasible date with introduction, but as per above, his date is likely inflated because Haak et al. did not correct for carbon dates

Taken together, there is nothing primal about Elshanka. It's just another Myth that Busted !

postneo said...

@Gaska, @Davidski
have not followed all the comments or findings but on the issue of R1bL51, it does not not too much if a token L51 is found in CWC. It still represents a major discontinuity from mainstream CWC.

Davidski said...

@postneo

So far most of the earliest L51 instances are in individuals from Germany and The Netherlands showing very strong continuity in terms of genome-wide ancestry with Corded Ware populations from the same regions.

This of course suggests that if L51 wasn't initially part of the Corded Ware population, then it became so very early and expanded from within it.

Vladimir said...

@Archi " no sample of the bug-Dniester culture has been tested yet. The Dnieper-Donets culture has no connection with Anatolia either archaeologically or genetically.
Bug-Dniester and the Dnieper-Donets culture existed at different times and the relationships between them were minimal."
Bug-Dniester culture comes from Kureczka culture, and that of the culture Gravet. Was under the strong influence of culture Starchevo. So that likely there WHG and Y-haplogroup I2a. After 5500 year until BC Dora ties with Starchevo-krishskoy culture were lost owing to invasions by carriers culture linearly-ribbon ceramics. Subsequently, the local version of the culture of linear-ribbon ceramics evolved into the culture of Tripoli-Kukuten. The remnants of the population migrated to the area of the Dnieper-Donets culture, where they played a role in the creation of srednestogovskaya culture.

Vladimir said...

@Archi 'In Europe [Russia] first pottery was appeared at 8500-7000 BC in the Elshansk. Elshan culture should be considered in more detail. As archaeologists write, it is the basis not only of Samara culture, but also of the Middle Volga culture, which is the basis of the Middle don culture, which is the basis of the Dnieper-Donetsk culture. And the culture of the Dnieper-Donetsk has the same nature as the culture of the Upper Volga, which is the basis of the culture of Narva. Maybe this is the lost line R1b-L51, which separated from the L23 in Elshan, and the second part of Z2103 from there went to Samara?.

Vladimir said...

If so, then R1a is EHG and the culture of Pit-comb ceramics

Davidski said...

I'm not aware of any published or yet to be published instances of R1b-L51 in samples associated with the Narva culture.

Vladimir said...

And in Narva found P297 or even M478 ? At all in Russia judging by YFull very many R1b-M478

Vladimir said...

And then found in Narva P297 clearly not fully examined. It is dated to 5600 years BC, but at this time P297 could no longer be, it broke up 13300 years ago

M.H. _82 said...

@ Davidski


So far most of the earliest L51 instances are in individuals from Germany and The Netherlands showing very strong continuity in terms of genome-wide ancestry with Corded Ware populations from the same regions.

This of course suggests that if L51 wasn't initially part of the Corded Ware population, then it became so very early and expanded from within it.”

But they still made a very conscious effort to distinguish themselves from R1a-Corded ware
Just like later Unetice also utilised a different set of cultural markers to distinguish themselves

Mouthful said...

Another culture that bordering Narva culture that wasn't tested was Neman culture which existed nearby Narva culture, eventually got overtaken by Globular Amphora and Corded Ware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neman_culture

>Some pottery found in settlements of Neman culture was made by Narva culture. Such phenomenon is explained by trade of flint, which Narva culture in the north did not have.[9] Towards the end of the Neman culture, the pottery became more varied and exhibits influence of the Rzucewo culture: imprints made by a cord or resembling a fir.[10] Eventually the culture was overtaken by the Corded Ware culture and Globular Amphora culture.

Davidski said...

I suppose I might be proven wrong, but I don't think any L51 will turn up in the hunter-fishers from near the Baltic.

Mouthful said...

I don't think so either, but who knows. But I think Neman culture samples would provide better fit for Narva like ancestry in for example Bohemian samples since Neman culture was southern neighbor of Narva.

Balaji said...

You may change your mind about Tocharian people having Andronovo ancestry after reading the following article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians

There were both Tocharian speakers and Iranian speakers in western China. Tocharian is a centum language (the ancestral state). Iranian is a satem language which developed later. Andronovo are MLBA and therefore likely to have been satem-language speaking. Afansievo were earlier and likely to have been centum language speakers.

Davidski said...

@Balaji

Pure speculation.

You got any hard data instead?

Hodo Scariti said...

I remember that the amateurs who analyzed Narva R1b samples checked that they were on their path towards M73... do I remember well?

Anonymous said...

@Mammoth_Hunter "(Vasiliev, Penin 1977; Vybornov, Penin 1979)"
Myth, that's what you write. It's got based on the text of the 70s! At that time, the dating was not calibrated!
Don't write nonsense, there is no reservoir effect in ceramics, because they analyze plant remains that have got into ceramics! There are no seafood in them. So your fictional myth is destroyed. Don't fantasize if you don't know anything.

I do not know where you got this fiction, but in the middle of the 7th millennium, many Eastern European cultures with potteries. And even before ceramics, northern cultures in Eastern Europe were the first to make wooden dishes, also the first in Europe. This tradition continues for a very long time, wooden dishes make even Aryans.

In any case, this is before the appearance of ceramics in Anatolia 5600BC. Pottery comes from the east, the Urals is much closer to China than Anatolia, that's all.

In Anatolia came the southern ceramic tradition, where there was a tradition of colored ceramics, and in the Eastern Europe is northern, which denied the use of paint, and so it will always be until the new time.

Anonymous said...

I always take all the data from direct scientific works, in contrast to Mammoth_Hunter, which takes from some indirect outdated children's books, and still not knowing how to read. Here is the map made on dating from the fundamental research "RADIOCARBON NEOLITHIC CHRONOLOGY OF EASTERN EUROPE IN THE VII-III MILLENNIUM BC'' 2016.

https://ibb.co/d4bySxH

There is all the data, everything is strictly according to the dates. I will explain, the Neolithic in Eastern Europe only Pottery (Pottery=Neolithic, Non-Pottery=Non-Neolithic=Mesolithic in Eastern Europe), Non-Pottery Neolithic she did not know. Of course, at this time there is no Pottery anywhere in the rest of Europe. (Even the Bug-Dniester ceramics is older than the Сrish ceramics, although then the Bug-Dniester culture switches to the Сrish ceramics). Everything, this topic is closed, more on a shouting that everything is not right and I'm not going to answer everything, I'm tired, argue with the scientific data is useless.

Anonymous said...

@Vladimir

"Bug-Dniester culture ... The remnants of the population migrated to the area of the Dnieper-Donets culture, where they played a role in the creation of srednestogovskaya culture."

It's only in the imagination, there's no evidence to support this assumption.

M.H. _82 said...

@ Archi


Yes, that image which you link is correct. It shows the pottery Neolithic of Eastern Europe c. 6300 BC (+/- reservoir effect)

This is what you siad:
''Learn archaeology and don't shame yourself.
In Europe first pottery was appeared at 8500-7000 BC in the Elshanskaya culture. In Anatolia this time is Pre-Pottery Neolithic.''

Anonymous said...

@Mammoth_Hunter "It shows the pottery Neolithic of Eastern Europe c. 6300 BC (+/- reservoir effect)"

Don't write you fantasies, there's nothing like it. There is no hypothetical reservoir effect from 7014BC, there are earlier dates up to 8500 BC, so I indicated the range for the Elshanskaya culture, unlike you, I am not lying, you always do that.

And 6300BC is already all other Volga and Don cultures, this map shows the cultures with ceramics until the end of the 7th millennium, the end of the 7th millennium already on another map "Map 2. Sites of the turn of the 7/6 - 6th mill BC due to radiocarbon dating".

Arza said...

@ Davidski

I think that you're right. It's not the L51 that was brought to Bohemia by this Narva-like wave.

Check this out:
https://i.postimg.cc/HkL2JDXK/bohemia.png

We know that the "Balto-Slavic drift" was sometimes accompanied by the ordinary Iron_Gates-like WHG (Spiginas2, CWC_Poland). If this HG-population that has reached Bohemia was mixed in such way it would explain why Narva was the most similar one in their analysis. Beyond any doubts they didn't try Baltic_BA as a source. They are also incapable of differentiating between those two WHG kinds. There is a huge chance that they don't know what they hold in their hands.

Such migration of HGs responsible for the "Balto-Slavic drift" would neatly explain the occurrence of this "drift" in Kuyavian CWC, Czech, Hungarian and Bavarian Bell Beakers, Welzin (isotopes pointing to Moravia and artefacts pointing to Silesia), Hungary_BA (or rather southern fringes of the Lusatian Culture), some Wielbark samples (Przeworsk actually?)... and finally... Slavs.

I hope that they'll release the data soon.

epoch said...

@Arza

"They are also incapable of differentiating between those two WHG kinds. There is a huge chance that they don't know what they hold in their hands."

Iron Gates like WHG have a large affinity to Anatolian farmers when compared to other WHG's and it's not Basal Eurasian, nor EHG. See the AHG paper.

Vladimir said...

@Archie nevertheless archaeologists this argue. "It is considered to be proved the fact of the beginning of Neolithic late Mesolithic cultures of Ukrainian
Polesie under the influence of the population of the samchinsky phase of the Bugo-Dniester culture (BDK) at the beginning of the VI Millennium BC " (E. V. NOGIN (Institute of archaeology of NAS of Ukraine, Kiev) Neolithic PROBLEMS between the DNIEPER and DESNA. page 17). He refers to the work of L. L. Zaliznyak in particular to the work of the Final Paleolithic and Mesolithic of continental Ukraine. http://elib.psu.by/bitstream/123456789/1557/1/Nogin_2014-1.pdf

Arza said...

@ epoch
was sometimes accompanied by the ordinary Iron_Gates-like WHG

"-like" from the POV of G25: https://i.postimg.cc/tC9dfZRW/IGlike.png

M.H. _82 said...

@ Archie

It’s all pretty clear; I’m not sure why you’re struggling with understanding :

In the Caspian region:
“In the steppe Povolzhye date from 6500–5500 cal BC, In the forest-steppe zone of Middle Povolzhye, the Neolithic period is dated from 6500–4700 cal BC, and in the forest zone of the Middle Povolzhye, the Neolithic period lasted from 6000–4300 cal BC.””
From said authors

In west steppe ;
bug-Dniester is also c. 6300 BC; and by then there’s Neolithic in Balkans.

It’s just
Flows of ideas amongst hunter gatherers on the north frontier of agropastoralist sphere. Nothing to do with Palaeolithic East Asia

Andrzejewski said...

@Vladimir Starčevo was Anatolian immigrants into Serbia. Not HGs. But I don’t agree w/@Archi about Bug-Dniester and Dnieper-Donetsk completely disappearing.

We just saw when it comes to Cucuteni Tripolye that it played a role in the ethnogenesis of Usatovo so I’m happy to see that it did NOT vanish. Commentators used to say stuff like “Farmer admixture in CWC came exclusively from GAC, because the latter were rich in WHG, although people gloss over the fact that CT was just as rich in WHG as GAC - lots of mtDNA HV, R01, etc which are due to foragers. The fact that Corded Ware was rich in farmer aDNA is partly because of CT culture.

Anonymous said...

Vladimir said...
" @Archie nevertheless archaeologists this argue. "It is considered to be proved the fact of the beginning of Neolithic late Mesolithic cultures of Ukrainian
Polesie under the influence of the population of the samchinsky phase of the Bugo-Dniester culture (BDK) at the beginning of the VI Millennium BC "

There is no way this V statement can be deduced from this ^.

Vladimir said...
"Bug-Dniester culture ... The remnants of the population migrated to the area of the Dnieper-Donets culture, where they played a role in the creation of srednestogovskaya culture."



Mammoth_Hunter said...
"It’s all pretty clear; I’m not sure why you’re struggling with understanding :
In the Caspian region:
“In the steppe Povolzhye date from 6500–5500 cal BC, In the forest-steppe zone of Middle Povolzhye, the Neolithic period is dated from 6500–4700 cal BC, and in the forest zone of the Middle Povolzhye, the Neolithic period lasted from 6000–4300 cal BC.””


Finally, you will learn to read, you are constantly able to read and understand.

And compare it with what I have written.

"And 6300BC is already all other Volga and Don cultures this map" "other" this does not means the Elshanskaya culture.

And you wrote it.
Mammoth_Hunter "It shows the pottery Neolithic of Eastern Europe c. 6300 BC (+/- reservoir effect)"

"In west steppe ;
bug-Dniester is also c. 6300 BC; and by then there’s Neolithic in Balkans."

No, in Balkans there is not pottery in this time. It is maybe only in appearing in Greece territory, first pottery is appeared there in Non-Eastern Europe from Levant.
The Bug-Dniester pottery was appeared later other culture in this map.

Davidski said...

@Arza

Can you do anything with these genotype files? I'm getting an error.

https://edmond.mpdl.mpg.de/imeji/collection/woFcMTgRKNqe4Nzm

Andrzejewski said...

@Archi @Mammoth “This is what you siad:
''Learn archaeology and don't shame yourself.
In Europe first pottery was appeared at 8500-7000 BC in the Elshanskaya culture. In Anatolia this time is Pre-Pottery Neolithic.''

No. Pre-Pottery Neolithic is associated with Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages in the Fertile Crescent and also included South Eastern Anatolia. They may be the source of 20% Levant_N in Ciftlik samples, but that sort of ancestry is lacking in Barcin_N type which moved to populate Europe 2-3 millennia earlier.

Anonymous said...

@Andrzejewski
"No. Pre-Pottery Neolithic is associated with Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages"

NO No. Pre-Pottery Neolithic = Semitic languages it is full anti-scientific nonsense and fantasies.

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski We need to look at the obscure culture Comb Ware or Comb Ceramic: they seem to be the source of an EHG/WSHG in Narva Culture and perhaps have something to do with Volosovo and the EHG non-Uralic substrate in the Saami languages; it seems that prior to IE and Uralic languages there used to be unrelated group of languages which may have been the substrate of Baltic HGs and perhaps also shared it with Erteboelle culture. It’s hard to tell if the forager admixture in TRB/GAC ultimately was mediated via Baltic HG or SHG and if the source of both was identical. But it looks as if Combed Ceramic was another missing jig in the puzzle

«Oldest ‹Older   401 – 600 of 1027   Newer› Newest»