I can't get the genotype data from the
Burger et al. paper. The lead authors, Joachim Burger and Daniel Wegmann, aren't replying to my emails.
But they were gracious enough to release the BAM files for each of their samples, and these files can be converted to genotype data. So I've included ten of the Tollense Valley warriors (DEU_Tollense_BA) in the Global25 datasheets (see
here).
The claim in the paper that these warriors "represent an unstructured population" is absolutely false and extremely naive.
Below are a couple of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) plots produced with
Vahaduo Global25 views. The samples are labeled according to their Y-chromosome haplogroups. To see interactive versions of the same plots, paste the Global25 coordinates from the text file
here into the relevant fields
here.
These warriors are not a single unstructured population, because they cover too much ground in the above plots for that to be possible. It's clear to me that they represent at least two different groups from Central Europe and surrounds.
Of course, this would be a lot easier to work out if Burger et al. cared to supply more information about each of the warriors, such as their attire, weapons, circumstances of death, and so on. It's a complete mystery to me why this wasn't included in the paper, and the authors are refusing to talk to me, so it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to get it from them.
In the absence of such crucial archeological and anthropological data, I don't want to speculate too much, and get overly creative, but here are a couple of possible scenarios to explain the ancient DNA results:
- this may have been a battle between two Central European armies, one rich in Y-haplogroup R1b and the other rich in Y-haplogroup I2a, as well as their allies or hired help, including warriors from Eastern Europe belonging to Y-haplogroup R1a
- or perhaps it was an invasion from the east by warriors rich in Y-haplogroup R1a, and it was a success, with the local armies, rich in Y-haplogroups R1b and I2a, losing the battle and suffering most of the casualties.
I'm sure that one day someone will attempt to undertake a decent multidisciplinary study of this epic battle, and we'll at least have a rough idea about what happened. Or not.
Citation...
Burger et al.,
Low Prevalence of Lactase Persistence in Bronze Age Europe Indicates Ongoing Strong Selection over the Last 3,000 Years,
Current Biology, Available online 3 September 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.033
See also...
Genetic and linguistic structure across space and time in Northern Europe
221 comments:
1 – 200 of 221 Newer› Newest»Very nice David.My opinion is that the official paper is one of the worst i have read.Many things that dosn't make sense or at least they are not written proper.With Onur Dincer we had a discuss and he is right,The TreeMix analysis of the Tollense paper is very weird, it shows high Southern Han Chinese admixture in the Yoruba! These people really do not know how to make genetic analyses.
Also about:
Here we present genomic data from sediment from an Upper Paleolithic occupational level of Satsurblia cave, Imereti region,
western Georgia, dated to 25, 000 years before present (bp).The site has yielded a rich archaeological record for Upper Palaeolithic
occupation which spans from 33,000-14,000 years before present [2]. A previous study of a complete human genome from a human
right temporal bone from this site, dated to the Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,132–13,380 cal bp) [3], showed that the post-LGM
population which inhabited this region, were ‘Caucasus hunter-gatherers’ (CHG), a main source population for several Eurasian
populations. However, the genetic composition of the pre-LGM inhabitants of the region remains unknown as there are no genomic
data for this period for Western Eurasia.
We report the recovery and analysis of a human mitochondrial genome with clear genetic affinity to Bacho Kiro mitogenomes
from Bulgaria, dated to 45,000 years bp [4]. The analysis of the nuclear genome shows that the recovered human data does not cluster
with the previous reported genome from Satsurbila Cave, in contrast it appears to be close to the present-day Levant populations.
This results evidence of genetic discontinuity during the LGM in the Southern Caucasus region.
Additionally, in the same layer we have also identified the presence of three other mammal species: C. lupus, B. taurusand Ovis
species. The genomic comparison of these lineages revealed relevant data on the evolution of these species as well as the interaction
between humans and human-related species.
The ANE mix must have arrived in the Caucasus sometime before Satsurblia's time (Late Upper Paleolithic).In the pre-LGM Caucasus must have lived people related to Levantines.Without ANE?Might have a relation with Dzudzuana as Onur Dincer also said.
Apparently still the second option. R1b and I2a were already mixed by this time and hardly formed the same type of tribes. The Northern bronze tribes probably came out of Scandinavia later. In this case, apparently, we see one of the stages of formation of the border between the culture of the fields of funeral urns and the Lusatian culture.
@Vladimir
Take a more careful look at the PCA plots.
The I2a and R1b samples overlap, but the former are more northerly and may well have been a different population overall.
It would be also very interesting,to have a clue what dialects pretty much they talked.
I think by now that the most likely scenario is that two regional groups had a quarrel and both called in for help from all their allies. So it ended up being a big stand off between two major alliances of that time.
The losing side, which obviously went into a trap and was largely slaughtered, consisted primarily of I2a and they had help or were even directed by people heavy in R1b, with more elaborated and state of the art equipment. Some of which appear to have been aristocrats and professional warriors.
Who the other side was is much harder to say, but its possible they were largely similar people, which got help from the relative North East, which would explain the R1a guy. Just two big networks of allies clashing in one decisive battle which went awry for the Southern alliance. So there dead were lying around looted after the battle, only those under water left intact - while from the winning side only single individuals which died in close hand to hand combat at or directly in the river could be found - possibly among them the R1a guy.
Another question concerning the study, since they write about other data retrieved:
"CR genotype estimates of 37 individuals from the following cultures: Eneolithic,
Usatovo, Yamnaya, Early Catacomb Culture, Developed Catacomb Culture, Yamnaya-
Poltavkinskaja, Late Catacomb Culture"
What about these? What's known and where to get it? Unfortunately just 1 from Usatovo.
@zardos
Those samples aren't really new samples, they're just genotype calls from a few specific autosomal sites, like here...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/03/population-genetics-of-copper-and.html
Actually, these may well be the same samples.
@ Zardos
Do you base your stories on anything , or do you just puff on something and let the visions flow ?
We see a high degree of genetic continuity in East Germany - historically Slavic areas. Thus, the West Slavs could not come from Pripyat in the Middle Ages, as some archaeologists and historians would have liked to see it.
Too bad that only a very small number of the ancient DNA hobbyists seem to be able (and have the time and resources) to convert BAM files or FASTQ files into genotype data files. I would do it myself, but I have no idea how it works. Gladly someone did it with these and the ancient French files, but the Alemannic samples were less lucky. Maybe Burger and Wegmann thought they could prevent Davidksi from drawing his own conclusions by not releasing the genotype data files. (Sounds like a conspiracy theory which is against the rules of this blog, but seriously, it could have been that way, no?) OK just some thoughts, but now back on topic.
@ Simon_W
Genotyping is not a problem. The problem is that even if you recreate the pipeline 1:1 you won't get the same pseudo-haploid files because alleles are selected randomly.
Thus it's impossible to exactly recreate any analysis from a publication if genotyped data is not available.
@Rob: Its based on various facts we know about the battle. I think the fact that the Tüllenpfeilspitzen were so uncommon further North, same for many other artefacts mentioned in various articles, make the Southern alliance a proven fact. Its not local derived. Even from further away might be many of the various, especially the mentioned R1b-warriors with Southern and South Eastern affinities.
Anthropological analyses showed that most of the warriors found died from long distance weapons, primarily arrows. So it seems that they were attacked by surprise, clumped together and were shot by volley of volley of arrows, most likely from higher ground, before the remains were finished off in hand to hand combat.
That this was a trap seems to be highly likely and was argued so by various authors, including those with archaeological expertise. All points to the fact that one group, most likely the losing side, was cornered directly at the river and the fight went on at the shores and in the water, possible some kind of bridge too, with some combatants ending into deeper water, which left them untouched by later looting.
And that the winning side will have taken most of their dead away is a given fact for most times and cultures, even more so if they were locals.
This makes it highly likely that the vast majority of the dead, especially those which were looted, being from one side, the losing one. Its more likely to find dead warriors of the winning side in nearby or even further away burials.
Or do you think its very likely that the brothers, cousins and allies left their war heroes dead, robbed from all their valuables and rotting on the battlefield? Wouldn't say so and this article agrees:
"Als die Schlacht vorüber ist, sind hunderte junge Männer tot. Ihre Leichen säumen das Ufer. Die meisten sind durch Pfeilschüsse in Kopf und Brust gefallen. Dutzende waren bereits zu Beginn der Schlacht von Pfeilen getroffen ins Wasser gestürzt, ihre leblosen Körper zu Boden gesunken. Andere liegen erschossen oder mit eingeschlagenem Schädel am Flussufer. Die Sieger bergen ihre Toten und schreiten jeden gefallenen Gegner ab, nehmen alles, was wertvoll erscheint, an sich. Ihre Leichen überlassen sie dem Fluss."
https://www.spektrum.de/news/auf-kriegszug-gen-norden/1680250
(popular scientific newspaper)
Its possible they left their own dead behind, but rather unlikely, especially if considering with which care warriors were buried just nearby, like mentioned in another article I can't link to right now, in which they speculated about local warrior brotherhoods and which showed some of the richest graves with the most care of the whole region. And there, after the victory, they should have left their kin and heros rotting on the field? No way.
By the way, I was at the exhibition and was able to look at various of the remains in more detail, and the general impression at least for the river is that this was just a slaughter. The men were shot and punched to death, probably already on the flight or with little organised resistance.
So we look primarily at ONE SIDE of the conflict,
Concerning the genetic variation, the German article mentions and interpretation which goes like that:
"Sell vermutet, dass die Krieger aus dem Großraum »Deutschland« stammten und populationsgenetisch eng verwandt waren. »Vielleicht so ähnlich wie die Menschen aus Hessen im Vergleich mit den Menschen aus Rheinland-Pfalz im heutigen Deutschland«, schreibt Sell."
Mr. Sell argues they are not the same, but come from the "same macro-region", like people from todays Germany could vary. Like people from Hessen vs. Rheinland-Pfalz. So they aknowledge population differences, but just think they are "rather minor".
And I still think that the single R1a guy from below water level might mean a lot, because he might be one of the few warriors of the winning side which were not carried away afterwards.
About three Allemani samples you can ask user Waldemar from Anthrgenica. He managed to convert their fastq to genotype files. From what I can check in K36 calculator for example one was north-German / north-Dutch like, one west German / east French like, and one Iberian/ north-Italian like. If I remmeebr well...
@ Davidski
The I2a and R1b samples overlap, but the former are more northerly and may well have been a different population overall.
But all of them have Baltic_BA-related ancestry. So if you want to have two armies from different places you must conclude that Baltic_BA-related ancestry was all over Europe already in the Early Bronze Age.
Can you add Vatya samples to G25? At least two of them should have enough snps. RISE479, as Rob already pointed out, has very similar Y-DNA. He split from the Tollense guys ~5200 ybp (I-L1229) and judging by the WE PCA he should plot near them. There is also some overlap of mtDNA between Vatya and Tollense.
Another interesting case is scy009 from Ukraine with P312. He's clearly from the same background as the Tollense warriors.
Given the significant Tumulus and Urnfield cultural influence on the Lusatian culture, to the point that it is generally included within the Urnfield system, I find it more likely WEZ56 fought with the southern squad, rather than against them. Maybe all the dead on the winning side got buried and we just have samples from the losing side?
@Arza
Well, it's highly unlikely that, say, WEZ56, WEZ57 and WEZ58 are all from the same population, even if they share some genetic components.
Especially the idea that WEZ56 and WEZ57 come from the same ethnic group strikes me as totally retarded.
@Copper Axe
You would first have to successfully argue that WEZ56 was from the Lusatian culture and then build on that.
But I can't see any evidence pointing in this direction.
@Copper Axe: The R1a guy/WEZ56 deviates in more than one way. Important is he seems to have come from the untouched below water level group of corpses. So even if his comrades wanted to, they couldn't save his body!
He might have tried to finish off a wounded warrior or attacked them frontally and just got killed in the water or on some kind of bridge, carried away by the river, so nobody did find him. Of course we don't know for which party he fought, but chances that he was from "the other side", the winners, are probably 10 times higher than for any looted body from higher ground.
One correction, I was too hasty, the "warrior brotherhood" theory was from the very same article, but the burials referred to were far away, from Neckarsulm near Heilbronn. This is a possible source region for the more Southern R1b fighters, but not directly related to the customs up in the North.
"Einige der Toten lagen zu zweit, dritt oder fünft in der Grabgrube. Aus den Mehrfachbestattungen schließt Knöpke, dass die Toten vom Neckarsulmer Männerfriedhof Krieger waren und einst in kleineren Männerbünden oder Gefolgschaften organisiert waren."
Terberger assumes that these followers or brotherhoods might serve as a good model some of the warriors found. The region is also part of the more Bell Beaker dominated sphere in Southern Germany, from which we would expect similar R1b-haplotypes like those found in Tollense.
Again one might interprete all these facts like one wants, but it just remains extremely unlikely that the winning side left their dead rotting on the battlefield as long as they were above water level and therefore reachable, what they must have been if being looted.
@ Zardos
Yes I understand the dynamics of the battle, that's pretty clear.
However, in terms of the people, the clear outlier is the WEZ56, which is pulled toward Baltic LBA. The others (R1b, I2a2) overlap, although clinal and tending toward divergence. They seem to overlap with some Hungarian individuals, and Halstatt Bylany
The broadly coterminous Halberstadt_LBA, on the other hand, might have more affinity with Unetice from north-central Europe, and more distantly, Nordic Bronze Age.
And although we can be sure from even 16 out of a hundred + samples that the majority of people are within that cluster, the more fine detail will be lacking (esp. who had what weapons), especially given the lack of context. And that simple a function of the remains being dredged up from the river. So the lack of additional detail is quite understandible, its amazing they got the data they did. What is far worse is when scholars mis-attribute samples to a context which they are not.
@Rob: That's true. They must be careful, especially since nearby we know that artefacts were put into place independently from the battle and even one Neolithic individual was among the remains. So in fact every individual must be checked for whether it really belongs to the battle site or coming from a different context.
Yet for some individuals they seem to have been pretty sure, like he one with the pourse and all the other personal stuff, like if he was carrying a modern travel bag. I really wanted to know whether they tested this individual, to which the goods were attributed, because he should have been an elite warrior on campaign, but I couldn't find anything.
@ Davidski
There are comparable distances inside e.g. Bavarian Beaker cluster.
They are not homogeneous and the claim from the study that there is no structure is an obvious BS, but they clearly share very specific ancestry. At a first glance they look like an ongoing merger of at least 3 populations.
But I can't see any evidence pointing in this direction.
If not from Lusatian culture then from where?
@ Rob
However, in terms of the people, the clear outlier is the WEZ56, which is pulled toward Baltic LBA
Every sample here is pulled towards Baltic LBA. All the I2a guys, all the R1b guys. It's mind boggling why you both choose to ignore this.
They are not necessarily of the same ethnicity, but they are from the same region.
@Arza
From somewhere near the East Baltic.
@ Azra
I don’t think i said they aren’t pulled toward the Baltic somewhat
But those aren’t Baltic haplogroups . The elevated HG ancestry in them isn’t from the Baltic either
They’re just people with contact to the Baltic
@Copper Axe
"Given the significant Tumulus and Urnfield cultural influence on the Lusatian culture, to the point that it is generally included within the Urnfield system,"
On the contrary, it was the Lusatian culture that influenced Tumulus to such an extent that Urnfield appeared. The Lusatian culture is older than Urnfield, and this tradition of cremation in urns extends to Tumulus from the Lusatian culture and as a result, Urnfield is born.
----
For that time, we can only talk about three large opposing formations, the Tumulus culture, the Proto-Lusatian culture and the Nordic Bronze Age culture. All of them were hostile to each other, so on which side the Lusatians were playing is not at all determined.
I must say that we really do not know at all the autosomal distribution between the cultures of that era, therefore, it is now impossible to assert who is from which region.
Dawid, or near the South Baltic, like N47 and N49. Both I2a2, both with a strong Balto-Slavic drift, and the first one most similar to the Kashubians.
Forgot the possibility that the winners may have looked exactly like the losers, rich in I2-Y3672, or some other related branch.
Another possible scienro.....
>The R1b and I2a soldiers were from multiple tribes who formed an alliance.
>This tribal alliance was from somewhere in Central Europe, invaded Northern Germany, and were defeated by a native population who isn't represented in the dead bodies.
The expected makeup of Bronze age Germany would be something like Unetice, Nordic Bronze age, British Bronze age, something like that. Halberstedt_LBA fits this picture.
It would be surprising if a population with this much hunter gatherer ancestry was native to Northern Germany.
Maybe, this is wrong, maybe a population like this did live in Germany in Bronze age. But it is hard to believe.
Unrfield cave in Germany had mostly Y DNA I2a2a so this makes it possible I2a, WHG-rich populations lived in Bronze age Germany.
Apparently there's some Finnish aDNA bam files available from Majander et al 2020.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31083-6
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1H_IUfSDrPLe6CnHe5PLSDAla98KdGhCC
17th-18th century Finland proper so not THAT ancient, but still aDNA.
I recall a several years old article about this battle, wich claimed this about it:
3 populations. One Scandinavian like, one Polish like, one southern, possinly northern Italian or Balkan. Measurements showed, NONE of the dead grew up local, but they all must have come a very large distance to this battlefield.
The fact that the best comparisons for the Weltzin 28 assemblage are found in the male
(warrior) burials of southern Central Europe may indicate the possible origin of at least
some of the warriors involved in the Tollense Valley battle. Typological similarities indicate
connections to this region, including the socketed bronze arrowheads that are similar to
those from sites in south-eastern Germany and Bohemia (Dombrowsky 2017). Different
types of dress pins, a palstave of Bohemian type and a sword of Riegsee type are also typical
objects from these southern regions (Figure 10; Dombrowsky 2014; Jantzen & Terberger
2018). Some of the dress pins (types Mostkovice, Platenice, Pleszów; cf. Essen ̆ 1985: 58)
found in the Tollense Valley are outliers of their main distributions, which makes trade
a less probable explanation for their presence. Strontium isotope studies also support a
non-local origin of some of the Tollense individuals (Price et al. 2017). In summary, it
seems very possible that at least some of the combatants originated from southern Germany
or Bohemia.
Invasion from Urnfield into the north.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/lost-in-combat-a-scrap-metal-find-from-the-bronze-age-battlefield-site-at-tollense/9984BB85B2126C139E5ACA5111236307
Who are the ancients that they cluster with on the second PCA? The samples in the top part in the void between Celtic/Germanic and Uralic?
@Ryan
https://vahaduo.github.io/g25views/#NorthEurope
@ambron
N47 and N49 don't carry Balto-Slavic-specific drift. They just have high ratios of hunter-gatherer ancestry. You can check this for yourself.
Corded_Ware_POL:N47,0.12862,0.116786,0.089755,0.076874,0.055395,0.021475,0.001175,0.007615,0.016566,-0.017677,-0.00065,-0.007493,-0.000149,-0.005643,0.006379,0.022673,0.013169,0.002027,0.001006,0.011881,0.012478,0.002102,0.004067,-0.010965,-0.001197
Corded_Ware_POL:N49,0.122929,0.121864,0.082212,0.088179,0.036622,0.030678,0.00564,0.007154,0.002863,-0.027882,0.002761,-0.001649,0.0055,-0.001789,0.005022,0.018828,0.013038,0.004434,0.005279,0.011631,0.011854,0.003091,-0.006409,-0.008314,0.001557
https://vahaduo.github.io/g25views/#NorthEurope
@ ambron & Davidski
Target: Corded_Ware_POL:N49
Distance: 1.3582% / 0.01358151
28.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
21.6 Baltic_EST_BA
17.0 UKR_Meso
11.4 POL_Globular_Amphora
10.8 POL_TRB
4.6 UKR_N
2.8 HUN_Baden_LCA
2.4 Corded_Ware_Baltic_early
1.2 POL_BKG_N_o2
0.2 Baltic_LTU_Narva
0.0 Baltic_EST_Narva
0.0 Baltic_LTU_Meso
0.0 Baltic_LVA_HG
0.0 Baltic_LVA_MN
0.0 POL_BKG_N
0.0 POL_BKG_N_o1
Target: Corded_Ware_POL:N47
Distance: 1.6700% / 0.01669999
19.2 HUN_Baden_LCA
15.6 POL_Globular_Amphora
15.4 Corded_Ware_Baltic_early
13.8 UKR_Meso
13.2 UKR_N
12.8 Baltic_EST_BA
7.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
3.0 Baltic_LTU_Narva
0.0 Baltic_EST_Narva
0.0 Baltic_LTU_Meso
0.0 Baltic_LVA_HG
0.0 Baltic_LVA_MN
0.0 POL_BKG_N
0.0 POL_BKG_N_o1
0.0 POL_BKG_N_o2
0.0 POL_TRB
@Davidski,
WEZ57 who has R1b clusters in modern Northern France in your PCA. Which overlaps with Bronze age Southwest Germany which could be where he is from. He could be from separate region than the two main populations.
He seems separate from the others.
@Arza
Yes, Polish CWC is related at some level to Baltic BA and modern Balto-Slavs.
This isn't surprising, considering the geography, and the likelihood that Baltic BA was a new population in the East Baltic that got there from somewhere in the south.
But Polish CWC samples don't cluster with Balto-Slavs in fine scale PCA, which is what really matters here.
The similarity that you're picking up is indirect and coincidental, and probably largely mediated via a nearby population that was eventually ancestral to Balto-Slavs.
@David - Thanks. So actual mixed Swedish/Finn types. I guess hat drift just from whatever local flavour of Corded Ware was there before Uralics intruded? East Baltic Indo-European types of some flavour as others are suggesting.
@Samuel/David - if this is a battle with warriors spanning France to Finland that's pretty epic in scale eh.
@Ryan,
Yes, it is interesting to see mercenaries. By the way one soldier is from Spain which is even further West from where the battle took place than France is. He is the mot far fled soldier.
WEZ54 clusters perfectly with the many published Bronze age Spain samples.
WEZ54: Spain.
WEZ57: France. Probably.
WEZ56: Northeast Europe.
Its getting even funnier, because the genetically South Western shifted, Bell Beaker derived R1b individual, WEZ57, seems to have a strontium profile which fits best into Scandinavia. So of all the individuals, he is most likely to have grown up in the North.
He might have been a hostage, a foster child or part of a Northern tribe with an unusual profile. That's unknown.
In any case, the whole battle seems to show Bronze Age relations between Scandinavia, Northern Germany, Southern Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and even the Baltics. Who knows what kind of networks and alliances were involved? I think it was clear from the beginning, that this was no minor brawl between peasants, like German archaeologists put it.
This was a trans-regional conflict involving different parties and interests, culminating in one decisive battle. Because the only thing sure for me, at this point, is that the losing side would have had a hard time recovering from such a defeat. I mean its not like the Roman empire at its height, which could just muster new legions or call them from elsewhere. Such elite warriors with very expensive equipment were not easy "to produce". And hundreds if not thousands were lost in this battle.
Interestingly, while many of the dead warriors were roughly locals, so not from far away, the horses might have been foreign or imported.
There were horse breeders in the South East even before that time, related to Bell Beakers and living on the Pannonian plain. Wouldn't wonder if at that time elite warriors in Southern Germany and Bohemia would have bought trained horses from the South Eastern groups in Austria and Hungary.
@zardos
"Because the only thing sure for me, at this point, is that the losing side would have had a hard time recovering from such a defeat. I mean its not like the Roman empire at its height, which could just muster new legions or call them from elsewhere."
Nothing of the kind, this battle was followed by the Zero World War. So this was just the beginning. How many such battles there were in the north, it was definitely not the last, in Urnfield culture there were constant battles, maybe a smaller scale.
The human remains found along the Tollense Valley in northeastern Germany represent an archaeological find of major
importance. Evidence of large-scale conflict in the Bronze
Age, ca. 1250 BC, vividly documents the role of warfare in
this period. Investigation of the place of origin of the individuals engaged in this conflict involved the isotopic
proveniencing of the human remains using strontium, lead,
carbon, and oxygen in tooth enamel.
....
The results of our analyses can be interpreted as identifying
two major groups of individuals along with several outliers. It
seems very likely that the outliers came from a range of different places. The local group is rather homogenous in terms
of both provenience and diet. The non-local group appears to
be more diverse, suggesting a rather mixed group of backgrounds. The origins of the non-local group are difficult to
isolate in terms of the isotopic data that are available. The
widely variable isotopic signatures from some of the nonlocal individuals do suggest that the non-local group involved
a diverse group of warriors. The absence of values above
0.720 suggests that the combatants did not originate in the
Scandinavian Peninsula
.....
In southern Moravia in the
Czech Republic, there are values between 0.710 and 0.715
reported (Smrčka et al. 2006) so that this area might also be
a candidate for the origins of the non-local group. There are
some areas with similar values in the eastern Mittelgebirge
and the Ore Mountains. There are zones of similar values in
Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg (Knipper 2012) although
generally not in areas of substantial prehistoric population.
Although it is not possible to pinpoint the origins of the nonlocal dead, the bulk of the evidence points toward Bohemia as
a good possibility. Perhaps the most striking result of the isotopic study is that the non-local combatants are not from
northern Germany and must have traveled long distance to
reach the battlefield at Tollense.
https://www.academia.edu/34119122/Multi_isotope_proveniencing_of_human_remains_from_a_Bronze_Age_battlefield_in_the_Tollense_Valley_in_northeast_Germany
David, there's the isotope issue that Romulus touched on. And here we have a problem ... The WEZ56 strontium isotope ratio is O.7093, which shows that it was rather a local warrior.
@ambron
How do you know that there are no places well to the east of Germany that produce these sorts of ratios?
David, it looks like WEZ56 is most likely a local individual for East Germany.
@ambron
How do you know that?
His genome-wide profile doesn't look local to East Germany.
David, that's why I said we had a problem. From the context of the study it follows that such strontium isotope values should be local to Welzin.
@ambron
Strontium isotopes can't tell you where a person came from, they can only tell you where he didn't come from.
There are many parts of Europe with the same strontium isotope values as eastern Germany, so there's no problem.
@Archi: "Nothing of the kind, this battle was followed by the Zero World War. So this was just the beginning. How many such battles there were in the north, it was definitely not the last, in Urnfield culture there were constant battles, maybe a smaller scale."
I said nothing of the opposite. The point was that the network which lost, was heavily weakened, so I think its even possible that it crashed afterwards and other groups and alliances took advantage of its weakness, the vacuum, leading to a new chain of events, like you said.
Its possible that there was exchange along a network, so its possible that individuals from non-local ethnic groups WERE RAISED locally, or like the one WEZ57 possibly up further in the North. This doesn't mean the rest of his kin lived there too. We have such strange cases of hostages, foster sons, slaves, mobile specialists or small clans moving. Even if the isotopic profiles are definitive, what they can be, this tells you nothing about the ethnic origin of an individual, but just the place where he was growing up.
Davidski:How do you say the first two are more northerly, can you bring the Nordic bronze culture to it?
@Steppe
The coordinates are available here for the Tollense samples and Nordic BA samples.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/07/getting-most-out-of-global25_12.html
As far as I know, the distribution of stable isotopes in Pribaltica and north-eastern Poland is the same as in southern Sweden. But I don't know much about it. Maybe some isotope specialist can tell us something.
you should be aware of the context of these skeletons: they were victims of war thrown into a small river, many of them relocated due to water stream, so they had no weapon attire or any other archaeological identification, except arrows sitting in their bones and then the C14 dates of course, showing this to come from a probably single event. The strontium isotopes done by Price et al. showed various mostly non local backgrounds,suggesting that warriors had been recruited from a variety of places. In this they are similar to Viking Age retinues from warrior cemeteries
Best
Kristian
@Kristian Kristiansen
Thanks, but is there any way that we can get detailed descriptions of these bodies and anything that was possibly associated with them?
WEZ15
WEZ35
WEZ40
WEZ51
WEZ53
WEZ56
WEZ57
WEZ58
WEZ59
WEZ83
Hi,
See Fig 9 in the following:
A bioavailable strontium isoscape for Western Europe: A machine learning approach
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0197386
and the figure in this abstract:
Bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr in European soils: A baseline for provenancing studies
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969719313853
Having read more comments I agree that the loosing party probably oriiginated in central EUrope, here we have in the Carpathians at this time mege-settlements of proto urban character, which suggest highly organised socities with a surplus population, They could in all likelyhood have decided to enter Mecklenburg, fertile and still not tooo densely settled. After 1250 BC we can observe that full hilted swords become heavily worn before they end up in burials, so disruption occurred over a wide region around this time.
@ambron
Strontium isotope ranges in Europe.
https://i.imgur.com/sq9f8O5.png
WEZ57 would surely fit better into Southern France or Iberia, if these regions would have the same isotopic profile (?).
Based on the archaeology it is most likely that bodies with flint arrowheads were shot by northeners, who still mainly used such arrow heads, and bodies with bronze arrowheads were shot by southernes, since here such arrowheads dominated, at least when we look at grave inventories. Thus, there should be dead warriors from both parties in the Tollense valley, and since they were fighting around this little river/stream and a bridge, bodies would have fallen into the water from both sides, difficult to retrieve later.
To Davidski question: no I cant say, we will ahve to await a more full publication, where we can combine bodies and arrowsheads with strontium and DNA. What we can say though is that after TOllense, and probably startaing around 1300 BC, trade and mobility between the north and the Carpathians increased dramatically, there are two concentrations of the dominant warrior sword Nau 2, in the Carpathians (mostly in hoards and rivers,bogs) and in south Scandinavia (mostly in burials). SO whoever won or lost in Tollense, there were substantial movements of warriors and weapons between the two regions.
Here's what's interesting. If WEZ40; 1300-1200 BC; 1300-1200 BC; Tollense Valley, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern; Germany_LBA; R1b-L51 (xZ2118, P312, U106, A8053), then maybe these people are relatives of the R1B-L52 * found in South-Eastern Poland?
David, thanks for the strontium.
The isotope map excludes for WEZ56 most of the area to which its genotype fits, i.e. North-Eastern Poland and Pribaltica. However, it does not exclude Western Pomerania in the close vicinity of Welzin.
I picture it as a Bronze Age Teutoberg
@G2a-M406...
What is the source of this Sataurblia citation?
"Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t drink milk"
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/warrior-skeletons-reveal-bronze-age-europeans-couldn-t-drink-milk#
WEZ57 seems to be from Southern Germany. From all population averages, both ancient and modern, he's closest to DEU_Lech_BBC, DEU_Singen_EBA and DEU_Lech_EBA, in this order.
WEZ56 in contrast is closest to Lithuanian_VZ, more than to any ancient pop. But the distance is still considerable. So in all likelihood he's from somewhere in northern Poland.
These are the most outlying of the ten available individuals, with the rest plotting inbetween.
@Rob
"The broadly coterminous Halberstadt_LBA, on the other hand, might have more affinity with Unetice from north-central Europe, and more distantly, Nordic Bronze Age."
In G25 scaled, Halberstadt_LBA is closest to England_IA, followed by Scotland_MBA. So, kind of Northwest European, but not Germanic.
Zardos said: "Its getting even funnier, because the genetically South Western shifted, Bell Beaker derived R1b individual, WEZ57, seems to have a strontium profile which fits best into Scandinavia. So of all the individuals, he is most likely to have grown up in the North.
He might have been a hostage, a foster child or part of a Northern tribe with an unusual profile. That's unknown."
Oops, I have seen this only now. So a western Tumulus culture-like individual from Scandinavia.
Italo-Celts vs Balto-Slavs?
To me it looks like after the collapse of old europe and subsequent steppe migration, certain old neolithic people familiar with metalworking concentrated around the valuable metal deposits in the alps / carpathians and thrived there as opposed to other neolithic groups which were marginalized and contributed only trace amounts to incoming Beakers (Britain, Iberia). That explains I2 in Unetice->Urnfield.
Beakers in Iberia did not import metal work from Unetice as they had their own deposits. Or at least that is my understanding of post-beaker Iberia. These Urnfield derived types only showing up with celtiberians where we find I2 again and northernly autosomal.
Simon_W said...
"Oops, I have seen this only now. So a western Tumulus culture-like individual from Scandinavia."
Can you read? Here is a huge discussion that you ignored.
Isotopes can tell us only whether the people found are from one place or from different ones, they can show us the possible places where they came from and the impossible ones. In this case, people came from different places and these places are not colored dark blue on this map https://i.imgur.com/sq9f8O5.png.
Urnfield arose later than the date of this battle and began to spread to Iberia even later.
Tumulus then? Or early Halstatt?
Quick custom PCA to compare the positions of the old "DEU_WELZIN_BA" versions of the same samples to the "DEU_TOLLENSE_BA" samples - https://imgur.com/a/2pMgMZH
Where there is a sample in DEU_TOLLENSE_BA it generally seems slightly shifted towards the main European cline and away from BALTIC_LVA_BA compared to the DEU_WELZIN_BA version.
@Kristian Kristiansen Do you imply that there is another paper in preparation about Tollense people?
@ Simon
“ In G25 scaled, Halberstadt_LBA is closest to England_IA, followed by Scotland_MBA. So, kind of Northwest European, but not Germanic.”
Yeah it’s R1a -Z280 is obviously not really part of the proto-Germanic package
I think the resemblance to England IA is just similar ratios of steppe/WHG/ANF; otherwise I don’t think there’s a direct link
Atm it seems like a post-Unetice sample in north Central Europe
@Archi
What the heck are you bringing up the Urnfield culture? I've never mentioned that culture in this thread.
Alright, so according to the map you linked Zardos was wrong with suggesting a Scandinavian origin for WEZ57 and strontium isotope ranges are compatible with an origin of WEZ57 in what looks like the Alsace. Which is close to the Lech valley and Singen, whose EBA people resembled WEZ57. In all likelihood he came from the western Tumulus culture, like I said.
zardos said: "Einige der Toten lagen zu zweit, dritt oder fünft in der Grabgrube. Aus den Mehrfachbestattungen schließt Knöpke, dass die Toten vom Neckarsulmer Männerfriedhof Krieger waren und einst in kleineren Männerbünden oder Gefolgschaften organisiert waren."
Ha, Knöpke. I knew him vaguely, he studied with me about 20 years ago. Nice to see former fellow students contributing to the latest discussions.
@ Kristian
I hope you don't mind this question: Given that archaeologists like you were part of the team that took part in the interdisciplinary analysis, how did the authors reach the conclusion that the evidence indicates a single "genetically unstructured" population? I guess a straightforward look at the dispersion of the cluster can push you toward a conclusion of a very large, if loose, population spanning a huge range of variation, but surely the better interpretation given the isotopic values and archaeological information is diversity in genetic and geographic origins. Or did the team take the choice to take the genetic and archaeological analyses independently of each other to reduce the chance of introducing mutally reinforcing biases in conclusions?
Please, I want the source of this citation:
"Here we present genomic data from sediment from an Upper Paleolithic occupational level of Satsurblia cave, Imereti region,
western Georgia, dated to 25, 000 years before present (bp).The site has yielded a rich archaeological record for Upper Palaeolithic"
Posted by G2a-M406 Anatolian Farmer
@Davidski
"You would first have to successfully argue that WEZ56 was from the Lusatian culture and then build on that.
But I can't see any evidence pointing in this direction."
Point taken. Although I think all I would have to prove is that WEZ56 was there by way of the Lusatian culture, regardless if he was from there or not. Which is impossible given the archaeological situation, but not too farfetched when you look at the trade and contacts between the East Baltic and the Lusatian areas, particularly if WEZ56 is from the southern area of the East Baltic region. Although it can certainly be argued that people in that region would benefit from the southern people having less of a grip on that trade route.
@mary
https://www.eshe.eu/static/eshe/files/PESHE/ESHE_2020_Abstracts.pdf
"Metagenomes and ancient human lineages from a pre-LGM layer of Satsurblia cave in the Caucasus"
@Simon: "Alright, so according to the map you linked Zardos was wrong with suggesting a Scandinavian origin for WEZ57 and strontium isotope ranges are compatible with an origin of WEZ57 in what looks like the Alsace. Which is close to the Lech valley and Singen, whose EBA people resembled WEZ57. In all likelihood he came from the western Tumulus culture, like I said."
It seems some authors suggested Scandinavia, probably just because its closer, so I considered it as an option and brought it in, not as a fix opinion, but as a possible explanation. However, looking isotopic profile map, he could very well be from Southern France or Iberia, which is still a better fit for a BB-like R1b individual than Scandinavia and which could be explained by BB-derived networks being active in forming a contribution to the army going North. This is also in line with the socketed bronze arrowheads, which too can be related to a BB derived tradition of highest level archery. And of course to the whole artefacts and inventars found, which all point to BB-derived strongholds in Southern Germany and Bohemia, as do the R1b-haplotypes.
I thought about what Kristian Kristiansen said, and I would add that if both fell into the water and were therefore not recovered, this needs an explanation too, especially since both seem to have died primarly from arrows. Especially because the bodies seem to have been looted - which could however have happened later, by locals which didn't care for the dead of either side, when the dead were washed up the shores. On the other hand I thought its strange that so many victims of both sides ended up dead by arrows in the same place. But even this could be explained: If first one party tried to cross the river, was forced back and had heavy losses by arrow volleys, then the others tried, after that ambuch, to follow them over the river and had the same fate, dying by the defending and retreating party's volleys at the same spot. Not my favoured scenario, but its certainly possible and Kristiansen surely has knowledge I don't have in support of something similar instead of one diverse alliance fighting another. Diverse they would still be, but not as much, with one side more Southern allied and more BB-like individuals among them, using the elaborate equipment, state of the art weaponry and tools, the others being more kind of a regional force, with much more simple weapons and flint arrowheads instead.
The final verdict can only come with more samples, from those not robbed below the water and local burials imho. Therefore my question, especially to K. Kristiansen: Does anyone have knowledge of that kind already, is there something in the making?
If the dead are from both sides, this also means that its completely open who won the battle, so probably the bronze Age professional warriors won after all.
Its really important therefore to look at the victim of the stone arrowheads vs. those with bronzen ones for a comparison. There are some such remains found, as known from the papers and exhibitions, but whether those were among the genetically tested individuals, I don't know. Like the one upper arm bone with a flint stone and the bronzen arrowhead in the skull of another victim.
mary said...
Please, I want the source of this citation:
"Here we present genomic data from sediment from an Upper Paleolithic occupational level of Satsurblia cave, Imereti region,
western Georgia, dated to 25, 000 years before present (bp).The site has yielded a rich archaeological record for Upper Palaeolithic"
Google suggests this source:
https://www.eshe.eu/static/eshe/files/PESHE/ESHE_2020_Abstracts.pdf
@Davidsky Why didn't you miss this message?
In the 13th century BC, this structure https://i.ibb.co/tH82jTH/Trade-network-16-14c-BC-Tumulus-Nordic-BA.png perishes, it begins to be replaced by a completely different structure. In the 13th century BC, swords of the Naue II type began to spread, which originate from the Carpathian region https://i.ibb.co/rs59YKv/Naue-II-Initial.png. It is absolutely certain that this battle was part of the destruction of that system and the spread of a new one in which eastern ties played a very strong role.
@Lukasz
"About three Allemani samples you can ask user Waldemar from Anthrgenica. He managed to convert their fastq to genotype files. From what I can check in K36 calculator for example one was north-German / north-Dutch like, one west German / east French like, and one Iberian/ north-Italian like. If I remmeebr well..."
Thanks again for the hint. Waldemar told me he no longer has those files, he had deleted them. So what you got with your Eurogenes K36 calculator is about the best we can know about them.
Copper Axe, the most northeastern site of the Lusatian culture, was recently discovered in Poland near the village of Suchowola, near the border of Belarus and Lithuania. And WEZ56 fits the most genotypically just north-eastern Poland.
@ Archi
In the 13th century BC, swords of the Naue II type began to spread, which originate from the Carpathian region https://i.ibb.co/rs59YKv/Naue-II-Initial.png.
Interestingly this small marked area can provide all the strontium ratio readings found in the Tollense samples (maybe besides WEZ57 whose origin can lie in the nearby Alps):
https://i.postimg.cc/CKNykn61/Strontium-Sw-ords.jpg
@Davidski,
What region do you think Tollene warriors are from? You say there are at least two population but don't say where you think the populations are from.
Northeast Germany
Hungary-area
Poland
@Samuel
At least one is from Western Europe (WEZ57) and at least one from Eastern Europe (WEZ56).
I don't know where the others are from, but I suspect they're from at least two different areas of Central Europe, one more northerly than the other.
We would need more samples to work this out, but it's clear that there are substructures within this small sample set, so this wasn't a brawl within one group.
Since WEZ56 is closest to Lithuanian_VZ in G25 scaled, but still quite distant to it, he was probably the speaker of an extinct West Baltic language that stood with Old Prussian in an aunt/niece relationship. There's hydronymic evidence for an old Baltic layer in northern Poland extending as far west as the Persante, or Parsęta, as it's called in Polish. This culture may have extended even a little bit to the west of the Oder, as this archaeological map suggests:
https://justpaste.it/7x2nd
I shall try to answer some of the questions posed to me: firstly I am not part of the TOllense team, I have worked with the Willerslev team since 2010-11, as the main archaeologists there. Secondly: I went back to the strontium publication by Price et al. and they conclude that the evidence cluster in two main groups, and then some individuals from other areas. They dont pinpoint the regions of origin. But there you find all documentation of the strontium values. And yes, you can surely expect more publications from Tollense with all evidence. But if you google it you will already find a whole series of papers, among them one that goes through the depostions, scars of battle, and the likely numbers, which were minimum 2000 warriors.
Here is the reference to the strontium paper: Archaeol Anthropol Sci
DOI 10.1007/s12520-017-0529-y
ORIGINAL PAPER
Multi-isotope proveniencing of human remains from a Bronze Age battlefield in the Tollense Valley in northeast Germany
T. Douglas Price1 & Robert Frei2 & Ute Brinker3 & Gundula Lidke4 & Thomas Terberger4 & Karin Margarita Frei5 & Detlef Jantzen3
I should have added that one of the two groups identified by strontium was local, and the non-locals showed one bigger group and several with diverse origins. They compared to results from a historical battle in northern Germany, and saw striking similarities in thes trontium pattern
@ Simon_W
Similarity of WEZ56 to modern Lithuanians is only superficial. And no, Parsęta is not a Baltic hydronym and it was explained to you already 3 years ago:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/10/genetic-and-linguistic-structure-across.html?showComment=1509383709015#c4582370411838915087
Parsęta river has nothing to do with Balts. Its name has a clear Slavic etymology. It comes from the Slavic (or rather Indo-Slavic, as it exists also in Sanskrit) root "prs" which has the meaning of "to sprinkle" or "to splash". It's present in such modern Slavic words as "pryskać" (to splash/sprinkle), "parskać" (to snort), "prysk"/"bryzg" (splatter) etc.
All those absurd linguistic theories and word derivations simply are produced by people who have no clue (and don't want to have a clue) about Slavic languages.
Seems like if the Tollense area is within the 'last neolithic frontier' in Northern Europe.
Most Welzin samples have very high HG.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Europe#/media/File:Chronology_of_arrival_times_of_the_Neolithic_transition_in_Europe.jpg
@Kristian Kristiansen
Thank you for that study, which is very interesting. The Battle of Wittstock which the paper compares the Tollense battle with is a very interesting comparison as the Swedish army there was led by a Scotsman.
Might be a hint to explain the outliers.
Where WEZ58 would be from? Baltic?
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/10/genetic-and-linguistic-structure-across.html?showComment=1509383709015#c4582370411838915087
"Parsęta river has nothing to do with Balts. Its name has a clear Slavic etymology. It comes from the Slavic (or rather Indo-Slavic, as it exists also in Sanskrit) root "prs" which has the meaning of "to sprinkle" or "to splash".
https://wiki.yoga-vidya.de/Sanskrit_Verbal_Roots_List_with_English_Translation
"prush, pruṣ , प्रुष् , to become wet, to sprinkle"
Prustha means the rear end in Marathi which does the above.
and
"pras, pras , प्रस् , to extend, to expand"
There is prasuti: meaning to produce for example a woman delivering a child or prasaran meaning to publish. Prasad means an offering.
There is also a related root:
"pra, prā , प्रा , to fill" prana the life force that fills the body or pradhyapak or a professor (who fills the students with knowledge)
It is unlikely that WEZ56 came from Lithuania, because Lithuania looked like the Baltic BA at that time. Only the later gene flow from the south drew Lithuanians from Baltic BA towards the Poles.
Kristian, your map has been circulating on the Internet, showing the Slavs in Central Europe for several thousand years. What do you think about the absurd idea of some Polish archaeologists that the Slavs came to Central Europe only in the Middle Ages from the Dnieper and here multiplied rapidly in the settlement void? Because genetics excludes it rather unequivocally...
I guess most of them were 'locals' heavily admixed with Ertebølle HG that was prominent present along the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern coast.
Because they were (for the most) very high in HG:
https://www.mupload.nl/img/wbzkvql.56.05.png
And the battle field lays amidst the old Ertebølle territory and even some LBK-like outliers, Tollense area in blue:
https://www.mupload.nl/img/u6r26roex.01.28.png
@ Kristian Kristiansen
Thanks for your contributions to the field over the years.
Whilst most people here seem interested in speculating the exact location of where these warrior came from, for me, a very important aspect is what they tell us about European diversity in the epochs after the steppe migrations.
The narrative offered by David Reich has been:
''with the Corded Ware culture, a new ancestry from the steppe arrived (shown in green). It was a massive replacement: at least 70 percent of ancestry in Central Europe''..and that ''they overturned the local population in such large numbers''
What numbers and which population ? No consideration was offered of co-synchronous, non-Corded groups in central Europe like Bernberg, GAC, final TRB, Baden enclaves which did not simply disappear
This data from Tollensee tells it all.
It shows us that steppe autosomic population is ~30-40% steppe; 60-70% pre-steppe; and the ~ 50% I2a (pre-steppe YDNA)
So wone might ask from where did this acnestry, which was allegedly 'massively overturned' re-emerge from? I guess according to Harvard, Copenhagen, and their so-called 'advisors', we would have envisage their remaking 'from the ground', like Tolkien's dwarves.
What this in fact underscroes is a school-boy blunder, where the immigrant population (Corded Ware) is (mist)taken to represent the entire population of Central Europe. In in the hasty efforts to serve pre-constructed indo-Europeanist matenarratives, a process of ad-migration is contorted into some kind of blanket replacement.
And that's without even getting into regional idiosyncracies, e.g. southern Europe. But for Schroeder at a, geography is apparently irrelevant. For them the advance of CWC across Europe explains why ''Europe experienced such a dramatic reduction in Neolithic genomic ancestry at this time''
WHich 'Europe' are they talking about, what is is the uantitative criteria for 'dramatic' ? They seem to be blissfully unaware fact that individuals from southeastern Europe ''at this time'' possessed as much as 100% Neolithic ancestry .
I raised these shortcomings with your colaborators at GeoGenetics, but unfortunately they were too arrogant, and perhaps embarrased, to accept their errors.
You were quoted to say ''These results were a shock to the archaeological community''
It was a shock because the claims are clearly fallacious, approaching tabloid hyperbole
Let's hope future work in this field is more objectively attentive to data and i hope you can guide against thie mistruths being published by certain geneticists, who seem to lack an even basic understanding of European culture-history
To question about my map on Slavs-which one? I once wrote a paper on nationalism and archaeology, where I showed such a paper to exemplify nationalist constructions.Btw all my papers are freely accessible on academia.edu. Clearly Baltic is an old language probably going back to eastern Corded Ware, Andronov, Abeshevo west of the Urals to the Baltic. The historically attested Slavs is quite another and much later story.
The impact of the Corded Ware is something that will be debated for some years to come, we are still learning more, and new papers are on their way. But I still stand with most of what we said in our Antiquity paper from 2017; it is clear that there was several centuries of co-existence with post Neolithic populations, and that scenarios varied from real massive colonizations in more empty spaces like western Jutland (indicated by pollen idagrams), to much lesser impact with stronger cultural and economic admixture in areas with still massive Neolithic presence. But I also believe that the plague was a major factor weakening Neolithic populations.
@Kristian Kristiansen
"Clearly Baltic is an old language probably going back to eastern Corded Ware, Andronov, Abeshevo west of the Urals to the Baltic."
Genetics does not confirm any of this. Both the eastern Corded ware (Fatyanovo) and Andronovo do not belong to the Baltic world. This has been proven, about Abashevo has not yet been proven, but there is hardly any doubt.
The Baltic languages are not ancient, they arose no sooner than they separated from the Balto-Slavic continuum. There is nothing particularly ancient in it, the verb system is so simply completely innovative, essentially Finno-Ugric, in contrast to the completely archaic Indo-European Slavic.
I am interested in another question, is there an answer why the data on Tollense appeared in 2017, and such squalor as this paper appeared only now? What was done for three years that such a useless paper was written in which there is no research on Tollense?
@ Kristian
''it is clear that there was several centuries of co-existence with post Neolithic populations, and that scenarios varied from real massive colonizations in more empty spaces like western Jutland (indicated by pollen idagrams), to much lesser impact with stronger cultural and economic admixture in areas with still massive Neolithic presence.''
One can certainly agree with that. But as you outline, even in north-central Europe, the picture was variegated. Somewhat paradoxically, amongst the most profound impacts was the furthest from the steppe - in western Europe (in terms of the cultural marginaliation of Megalithic cultures, and male uniparental shifts verging on ~100%)
Going back, the issue seems to have was the refusal in Anglophone literature to treat migration . Hence your article Prehistoric Migrations—the Case of the Single Grave and Corded Ware Cultures makes you a living legend
Since horses played an important role in many cultures and the Tollense Valley battle has evidence of possible domestication horse (bones), are they being compared to horse bones from eastern Corded Ware, Andronov, Abeshevo west of the Urals to the Baltic?
@Kristian Kristiansen
Fatyanovo people were rich in R1a-Z93 and basically identical to Sintashta, so Fatyanovo was probably Indo-Iranian speaking. See here...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/07/fatyanovo-males-were-rich-in-y.html
Balts are very poor in R1a-Z93, and instead rich in R1a-Z280. So it seems that the Corded Ware population ancestral to Proto-Balts was located somewhere south or west of Fatyanovo.
@Rob, I agree totally with your plea for diversity and with the incoming Steppe Pastoralist it's not from scratch.
"amongst the most profound impacts was the furthest from the steppe - in western Europe (in terms of the cultural marginaliation of Megalithic cultures, and male uniparental shifts verging on ~100%)"
Even there the image is varied, North Dutch Hondsrug/Drenthe was a major Funnelbeaker stronghold, here the Steppe pastoralist came immediately into the midst of the old Funnelbeakers. The impact was therefore indeed high nevertheless unto today there is an elevated HG among people from that area that is IMO not totally on the account of the Steppe guys. Already the North Dutch Bell Beakers had some HG/Funnelbeaker amount! May be the West-Frisian BB sample of Olalde (2018) were not all the way representative, because that area was not a Funnelbeaker hotspot. So even in stamp size North Dutch there is some subregional diversification.
That doesn't make the big picture different (huge impact of the pastoralist) but it's not one size fits all in whole Northern (Northwestern) Europe...it's indeed diversified.
To davidski: yes, the genetics relatedness and yet slight differences that you mention makes perfect sense also with historical linguistics. Since Old Baltic contains many words/terms similar to Sanskrit, thus reflecting a once shared/or neigbouring linguistic past
Kristian, I meant the map from the article Invasion aus der Steppe:
https://www.academia.edu/36689289/Invasion_aus_der_Steppe
Off topic, but Teepean47 updated his google drive of the two Majander 2020 samples with Eigenstrat files
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1H_IUfSDrPLe6CnHe5PLSDAla98KdGhCC
These are the individuals at hand:
Description of archaeological contexts and sample selection
Porvoo Cathedral burial ground
The stone Dome of Porvoo in Finland gained its status as a Cathedral in 1723 [116
], although an earlier, wooden church has been on the site, and the cemetery around it used likely as early as 13th to 14th century on. However, most of the individuals excavated from the site in 2007 were buried in a 17th to 18th century style in coffins, and were relatively wealthy, considering their burial location at the prestigious, southern side of the church. The late timescale is confirmed by the lower bound of the radiocarbon dating of the PD28 individual in 1666 CE, although the upper bound reaches into the modern era (Klaus-Tschira-Archäometrie-Zentrum am Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum, Mannheim, Germany: MAMS 35328, Figure S1). It is known that the cemetery was formally used until 1789, and the churchyard leveled in 1791, providing a historical limit to date the remains excavated from the site [117
,118
] .
The Holy Ghost Chapel, Turku
Historical Julin’s plot in Turku, Finland, contained the Church of the Holy Ghost and its cemetery. It was also a location of an early hospital for the poor (House of the Holy Ghost). The cemetery was used over at least two hundred years, from the end of the 14th century to the mid-17th century [119
]. The remains excavated from the site in 1985 were deposited in the crypt of the Holy Ghost Chapel, located in the Casagrande property later built on the plot. The radiocarbon dating for the individual CHS119 placed the bone material between the years 1443 and 1460 CE (Klaus-Tschira-Archäometrie-Zentrum am Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum, Mannheim, Germany: MAMS 35325), but the reservoir effect corrections calculated at the Helsinki Natural History Museum Laboratory of Chronology revealed a dual peak pattern of two time windows, one between 1450 and 1525 CE, and another between 1570 and 1630 CE [57
, 58
] (Figure S1).
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31083-6
Why would we even think that they can be grouped by their y-dna and that one,literally one,R1a sample means anything in this context.Could have belonged to any of the tribes fighting here,its just one sample,it means nothing at all.
@Roidrage
The Y-haplogroup calls align with their autosomal ancestry.
The R1a is especially noteworthy in this context, because this sample is very similar to modern Balts and northern Slavs who are also rich in R1a.
You should look more carefully at the plots I posted.
@ Weure
''Even there the image is varied, North Dutch Hondsrug/Drenthe was a major Funnelbeaker stronghold, here the Steppe pastoralist came immediately into the midst of the old Funnelbeakers. The impact was therefore indeed high nevertheless unto today there is an elevated HG among people from that area that is IMO not totally on the account of the Steppe guys. Already the North Dutch Bell Beakers had some HG/Funnelbeaker amount! May be the West-Frisian BB sample of Olalde (2018) were not all the way representative, because that area was not a Funnelbeaker hotspot. So even in stamp size North Dutch there is some subregional diversification.'
Im not 100% familiar with the Netherland region, but it seems to have been a region where TRB remained fairly late, as in East Denmark. Further souteast (e.g. Poland), TRB societies had already been on the decline by ~ 33/3000 BC due to expansion of Baden from south and rise of GAC, the latter itself posing some internal contradictions (earliest C14 in central Poland, but a western-shifted autosomal ancestry, but possibly 'east Baltic' Y-DNA).
It does seem as if CWC utilised at least partially the land previously cleared by the TRB slash-n-burn economy
Given the hostile soil conditions around early CWC barrows in Netherlands, Denmark - with its tiered Single Graves - holds promise to establish contextual and diachronic insights into the formulation of 'CWC societies'
@Kristian Kristiansen,
In case you have to read on this blog: Based on ancient DNA, Corded Ware is the source of most Indo European languages not just Baltic, Slavic, Germanic.
Bell Beaker in Western Europe is a descendant of Corded Ware. This links Celtic and Italic to Corded Ware.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/04/aesch25.html
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/04/corded-ware-cultural-and-genetic.html
As is Andronovo in Asia. This links Indo Iranian to Corded Ware.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/07/fatyanovo-males-were-rich-in-y.html
@Norfern-Ostrobothnian
FIN_MA:CHS119
FIN_MA:PD28
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16T-hsr8pLzudx3-DuDIWKBYxD38Rs5RW/view?usp=sharing
My opinion, is Corded Ware was created by a large scale invasion/migration of many different populations from the Pontic Steppe into Northern Europe.
In other words a mass exodus out of the Pontic Steppe of many tribes who possibly spoke multiple different IE languages.
@Rob in the North Dutch situation TRB influx is from 3400 BC, in some way an Ertebølle offshoot. On the Hondsrug Drenthe is was very prominent, a TRB stronghold. Mostly in a small, significant region called the Hondsrug.
See the blog of FrankN:
https://adnaera.com/2018/09/09/a-first-and-intriguing-glimpse-at-trb-west-group-adna/
or the dissertation of Kasten Wentink, Ceci n'est pas un hache (very recommended!)
https://www.sidestone.com/books/ceci-n-est-pas-une-hache
To ambron: that map in the German steppe paper I had nothing to do with, however, it is not totally wrong, but let us wait for more resaerch, much new is underway. As for langauge and Corded Ware: I agree there were several migratory waves, that is certainly clear, and much local variation. However, the group moving into Hungary later became Bell Beakers and brough italo-celtic further west and south. But those moving north of the Carphatians I would rather see as bringing proto Baltic/perhaps Slavic, and pre Proto Germanic. Now, it will alsways be difificult to resolve these linguistic questions in this early stage, but we are working on it with linguists. See also our forthcoming paper in Plos ONe on Copper Age Social Organisation, an in depth analysis of two Bell Beaker cemeteries combining all possible knowledge we can squeeze out of the data, including linguistics.
Are there any plans to get more DNA from Mycenaean grave circle skeletons? They already got mtDNA, why not go back for more?
That's what I wanted to hear, a separate wave from the steppe moving through Pannonia and possibly getting influenced by the Pannonian-Carpathian sphere on the way, being the ancestors of the Bell Beaker clans.
I only believe the Northern route for "Proto-Bell Beakers" if there is a continuous chain of samples which make it indisputable. A Northern route never made sense to me, but I would accept it of course, once clear evidence is in favour of it.
The culture, technology, ideology, the physical characteristics, everything points to influences from the South East relative to "classical Corded Ware".
@Kristian Kristiansen: "See also our forthcoming paper in Plos ONe on Copper Age Social Organisation, an in depth analysis of two Bell Beaker cemeteries combining all possible knowledge we can squeeze out of the data, including linguistics."
Can you tell us for which time this paper being scheduled (roughly)?
@zardos
There was R1b-L51 in the Single Grave population in the Netherlands. That's where the R1b-P312 rich northern Bell Beakers came from, and they moved into the Carpathian Basin from the north.
Of course, they were influenced by the populations from the Carpathian Basin, as well as from France and Iberia, but this is not where the main Beaker population originated.
I wrote about that here...
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-balkan-connection.html
Just look at the PCA plots in that blog post.
In addition to the Northern and southern routes, you can also consider the Central route: Lviv-Krakow-Ostrava-Brno-Vienna and further up the Danube: Linz-Regensburg-Ausburg and just the Lech valley
@ Davidski
What was the route of R1b-L51 to the Netherlands/Denmark prior to 2800 BCE ?
TO davidski: right, my mistake, it makes also sense with the archaeology, where Netherlands have always been pointed out as an zone of mixing and innovation leading to Beakers. Although archaeologically there is a rather long borderzone from Netherlands down the Rhine between Bell Beakers and Corded Ware.
Kristian, thank you for your reply and I look forward to seeing more results.
@zardos,
"A Northern route never made sense to me, but I would accept it of course, once clear evidence is in favour of it."
Bell Beaker's farmer ancestry is from Northern Europe which excludes the possibility they come from Pannonia-Carpthian sphere.
Two years ago, I thought Y DNA made it impossible for Bell Beaker to be from Corded Ware. But I couldn't explain why their farmer ancestry is Northern not Southeastern as would be expected if they came from Western Yamnaya.
It was impossible to find an explanation other than Bell Beaker being from Corded Ware. Then we find R1b L51 in Corded Ware Poland and Germany by 2020, which confirms it.
"The culture, technology, ideology, the physical characteristics, everything points to influences from the South East relative to "classical Corded Ware"."
Everything but DNA :).
It actually makes sense Bell Beaker is from Corded Ware. I've seen archaeologists describe Bell Beaker, Corded Ware as apart of the same phenomenon of spread of single-grave, tumulus burial culture of 3rd millenium BC Europe.
@Samuel Andrews
What evidence is there that Germanic is descended from the wave of migration that brought Baltic/Slavic to north eastern Europe? Germanic is attested several thousand years later, the Proto language dating the late Bronze age and daughter languages to the Iron Age. If people dispute Italo-Celtic descending from Bell Beaker of 2500 BC, why does Germanic get a pass here?
@Samuel Andrews
"It actually makes sense Bell Beaker is from Corded Ware."
It's impossible. Bell Beaker can never be derived from Corded Ware.
There were two migration waves - one gave Corded Ware, the other gave Bell Beaker. They were definitely very different. The unity of the horizons of Corded Ware suggests that there really was one population that was very closely connected with each other, but on the periphery included different border populations. This is how the border Bell Beakers became Indo-Europeans.
"I've seen archaeologists describe Bell Beaker, Corded Ware as apart of the same phenomenon of spread of single-grave, tumulus burial culture of 3rd millenium BC Europe."
There is no such. You are confusing, there is only that Bell Beakers on the territory of the CWC adopted the burial rite of the SGBR.
@AWood,
Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Italic, Celtic, Indo-Iranian all come from Corded Ware. The evidence for this is ancient DNA.
Germanic comes from the same wave of migration that brought Balto-Slavic. But so does Italic and Celtic and Indo-Iranian.
I don't claim there is a special relationship between Balto-Slavic and Germanic. Posters here who study lingusutics say there is special link between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian.
@AWood,
Germanic dates Iron age but its proto-type had been in Northwest Europe since the Late Neolithic.
There were probably multiple para-Germanic languages in the Bronze age, a lot more similar to modern Germanic languages than to other IE languages.
There's a long backstory of para-Germanic languages before actual Germanic formed and spread in Iron age.
It would be cool if there were multiple IE language families whose proto-language existed in Late Neolithic/Bronze age. The only ones are Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. The linguistic relative of all other IE languages died out.
@Samuel
Mycenaean obviously existed in the Bronze Age, so Proto-Greek is very old, like Late Neolithic old.
My mistake, I left out Greek.
But Greek is not widespread like Germanic or Celtic. There is no widespread IE language family from Bronze age other than Indo-Iranian and maybe Balto-Slavic.
My point, was most modern IE language families are from Iron age, and this causes people to forget misses that their proto-types had exited in their home regions for already 2,000 years.
Hence, the wrong idea, Celtic was first IE language in Western Europe.
"But Greek is not widespread like Germanic or Celtic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_colonisation#/media/File:Griechischen_und_ph%C3%B6nizischen_Kolonien.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_colonisation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great#/media/File:MacedonEmpire.jpg
Perhaps the most likely scenario is presented by those linguists who derive the Germanic languages from the common Slavo-Germanic branch.
David, so CWC/BB is a good example of how haplogroup ratios change without population exchange. This is a digression regarding our conversations about medieval Poland.
@ambron
So CWC/BB is a good example of how haplogroup ratios change without population exchange.
I'm not sure what you mean, because Bell Beakers came from the western part of the CWC complex which was very rich in R1b.
And when the expanded, they took their specific type of autosomal ancestry (richer in farmer admixture) and even peculiar head shape with them.
David, but in many cases BB from the western CWC area are autosomally almost indistinguishable from CWC from the same area.
@ambron
I don't get what you're trying to say.
The Bell Beaker expansion wasn't just a massive founder effect in a Y-chromosome lineage, but a series of folk migrations.
It's likely that the Bell Beakers who moved into Poland from the west spoke a different language than the Corded Ware people there, even though both groups were very similar in terms of genome-wide ancestry.
@Davidski
My question is, if someone came from the "steppe" and mixed with local European Neolithic farmers, who will he be like and how different will he be from the CWC?
@Archi
But CWC also had some farmer ancestry, which increased over time to as much as 30-40%.
@Davidski
So, I'm asking how they will differ? How different will they be if the original components were approximately the same?
@Davidski
https://eaa.klinkhamergroup.com/eaa2020/full_paper/files/2647/NJS_EAA2020_poster_updated_final_pdf.pdf
What conclusions would you draw from this work on medieval Finns? How did they differ from modern Finns? Do I understand correctly that medieval Finns were autosomally similar to modern Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians? And the modern Finns have significantly increased the Baltic_EST_BA component, which the medieval Finns had significantly less? I think this proves the southern migration route of the Finns, i.e. South of the Ural mountains. It turns out that a similar autosomal population still lives in today's Russia.
@Vladimir
Saari et al. used a very broad West Eurasian PCA to draw those conclusions. And such comparisons between modern and ancient samples are always poor in academic analyses, due to PCA shrinkage.
When I run those samples in my PCA of Europe and Northern Europe, they'll cluster with modern Uralic-speaking samples, probably western Finns.
@Archi
They'll differ in terms of ancient ancestry proportions and also in terms of recent drift.
For example, late Baltic CWC is very similar to Balto-Slavs in terms of recent drift, while western CWC and northern Bell Beakers cluster with far Northwest Europeans, especially the Irish.
There is a succinct GAC - Yamnaya interaction zone in Dniester forest steppe
Early Baltic CWC spread up Dnieper; just east of eastern GAC
Early Polish CWC is identical to early Baltic CWC.
And we'll also soon be getting early CWC samples like this from Bohemia and Germany.
I think using some mixed populations (such as GAC with it's around 1/4th WHG ancestry) could bring good fits and differentiate streams of ancestry, such as HG ancestry. They could be then broken down to their composite parts of EEF, Steppe, WHG/EHG and other ancestries (like some north African in Iberians).
@Davidski
"They'll differ in terms of ancient ancestry proportions and also in terms of recent drift."
The proportions change over time, the drift depends on the terrain.
@Archi besides what Davidski has pointed out we see in archeology not this in for example the Netherlands:
'There were two migration waves - one gave Corded Ware, the other gave Bell Beaker.'
There was a marked migration wave in the form of Single Grave/ Pastoralist.....but the second one is in the Netherlands 'only' a cultural transformation not an immigration. I see no evidence for that! You?
David, of course I don't mean ethnolinguistic issues. My point is that within the same population, different Y-DNA haplogroups can dominate at different times. It all depends on what male lineages are gaining power and thus appropriating most of the women.
@David: Do you have a concrete migration path for the Corded Ware-related clans which formed early Northern Bell Beakers?
Many things are possible, but what made Bell Beakers peculiar doesn't look like coming from Central-Eastern European Neolithics. I'm less sure about the French-Benelux Neolithics with their Southern relations and more South Eastern European groups, but what "made Bell Beakers" was not from anywhere in Eastern-Central European imho. But I might be wrong.
@ Rob
Is the Dniester Forest Zone the area from where the Ancestors of Western Corded Ware originated ?
@weure
There is no cultural transformation there, the BBC does not originate from the CWC, neither archaeologically, culturally, anthropologically, linguistically, nor genetically - the only common thing is that they had their starting points of migration somewhere from Eastern Europe to Western (BBC) or Central (CWC) Europe, where there was a similar substrate.
The CWC is the SGBR https://i.ibb.co/fXcg0GH/CWC-SGBR.png.
The second stage of migration BBC, BBC on the territory of CWC acquire the properties of CWC. BBC does not distribute the SGBR https://i.ibb.co/ysMC0zL/Centum-IEgroups.png.
@ Ric
''Is the Dniester Forest Zone the area from where the Ancestors of Western Corded Ware originated ?''
It seems the Dniester-Prut zone was 'blocked'' by the expansion of GAC toward the southeast.
So i think the main route was up the Dnieper, avoiding GAC. This then moved to (i)East Baltic and Scandinavia (BAx) (ii) inland toward Poland and North Sea littoral. GAC was essentially circumvented. This would also explain the lack of GAC-related admixture in early CWC individuals. As early as 3000 BC, groups of ~ 25 men were venturing toward the Baltic and east-central Europe, setting up the first kurgan-liek burials. Over the next few hundred years, the number swelled up as more people came / locals (esp F.) were assimilated into CWC societies
BTW, the fact that early BB plots so close to Fatyanovo-Sintashta is a possible clue about BB
@Rob
« BTW, the fact that early BB plots so close to Fatyanovo-Sintashta is a possible clue about BB»
Which BB sections do you have in mind?
@ Rob
Thank you.
@Archi in the Netherlands/ NW Germany Single Grave Culture and Bell Beakers do overlap:
Single Grave:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Grave_culture#/media/File:Single_Grave_culture.jpg
Bell Beaker
https://www.mupload.nl/img/wxh4o81wfpp.png
The incoming of Single Grave is very well marked in archeology. Bell Beaker period shows no sign of influx.
@weure
So what? It is trite that the BBC was located along the CWC border. Your statements are not clear at all. What wasn't there? It is a proven fact that BBCs settled in the territory of the CWC, including the Netherlands, signs of later mixing are proven.
You write very badly and incomprehensibly.
@Archi
You're just making things up now.
There's no evidence of any mixing between BBC and CWC.
The southeast Polish CWC samples that belong to R1b-M269 don't have anything to do with BBC, because none of them belongs to R1b-P312 nor are any of them similar to any Bell Beakers in terms of genome-wide genetic ancestry.
@Davidski
I'm not making anything, archeology clearly proven mixing.
Genetics haven't proven anything yet, but I see this mixing. The peripheral southeast Polish Pseudo-CWC are the earliest BBs that did not yet have the entire archeological package of the BBC and therefore became Pseudo-CWC, they did not take over most of the CWC traditions. This is just an example of the assimilation of the Bell Beekers by CWC, these people left no descendants. Another example of exactly the same peripheral assimilation is the Swiss CWC I2, which you prefer not to think about.
@Archi
The southeast Polish CWC samples aren't Bell Beakers and they're not the earliest Bell Beakers you fool.
In the Netherlands, there is change in the material record ~ 2450 BC. It is not a seemless transition, perhaps ooccurring over a few generations
The earlier network established between SGC, Vlaardingen & the Paris Basin shifts. The exchange of Grand-Pressigny flint ends, also the Vlaardingen culture ends.
The AOO - Maritime pottery can be argued to evolve along the Rhine, however some new ideas about warriorship & metallurgy probably came via south Poland & Carpathian basin.
Archi: "The Baltic languages are not ancient, they arose no sooner than they separated from the Balto-Slavic continuum. There is nothing particularly ancient in it, the verb system is so simply completely innovative, essentially Finno-Ugric, in contrast to the completely archaic Indo-European Slavic."
I don't understand that statement? What is Finno-Ugric about it?
Also, forming tenses periphrastically, although widespread in Europe today for future and perfect tenses isn't archaic (I know for example, concerning Greek that in Late Antiquity and middle Ages and modern times there were multiple ways to form the future periphrastically with the verbs 'want', 'have', 'to be' + subjunctive etc, but Classical Greek formed the future more like Lithuanian..
I have no reason to say the aren't any innovations but I am not sure how you quantify them and what you consider Finno-Ugric..?
Other than that, basically the Finno-Ugric verb system is essentially Indo-european in origin. That is the most reasonable way to explain the similarities (the other way is Kortlandt's view that IE was a branch of Indo-Uralic with a 'Caucasian' substrate, which is imho unlikely ).
But Lithuanian, for example, doesn't have an inflected negative verb, which is an interesting feature of most (?) Uralic languages (I am sure about Finnish and Sami). Interestingly, that feature also exists in Korean.
@Archi,it's basically quite easy in the Netherlands, CW/ Single Grave came in at 2850 BC that is quite marked. There they transformed into Bell Beaker by taking the BB cultural package.
When you suppose that the BB migrated from SW Europe (?) to NW Europe (North Dutch/NW Germany) how on earth did they travel, did they jump across the Southern Lowlands right above the Rhine? Beam me up Bell Beaker? Makes no sense: not archeological, not genetical....
You make only remakes but don't show any narrative what could counter SGC>BB. If so then please show it!
@Davidski
'And when the expanded, they took their specific type of autosomal ancestry (richer in farmer admixture) and even peculiar head shape with them.'
hahaha I even have that headshape today this metrics with flat occiput:
our cephalic index is: 83.8 (brachycephalic)
Your height/length index is: 74.8 (hypsicephalic)
Your height/breadth index is: 89.2 (acrocephalic)
Your facial index is: 88.1 (leptoprosopic)
Your upper facial index is: 56.3 (mesene)
Your nasal index is: 56.9 (leptorrhine)
The old fysical anthroplogist called that Dinarid or Norid or such like coins ;)
A Bell Beaker echo???
Cool new Vking paper by Willerslev:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8
@Rob
From what I know pseudo-Grande-Pressigny daggers were made from local flint in the Netherlands, a tradition that started in the late SGC and continued in early BB. Furthermore Vlaardingen culture sites showed a lot of cultural influences from SGC (e.g. pottery) and IIRC BB has an uptick of both WHG and EEF compared to CWC. It might have been part of the BB genesis.
Viking paper is officially out, now. Data availability
Sequence data are available at the European Nucleotide Archive under accession number PRJEB37976
The Viking paper is out, will Davidski's PC run overtimes!? ;)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8#data-availability
@weure
CW / Single Grave did not transform into Bell Beakers. BBC don't have CWC / Single Grave cultural background. You are making some statements contrary to archeology. There is no SGC > BBC, this formula is impossible neither from the point of view of archeology nor from the point of anthropology. The SGC affects the nearby Dutch BBC, from which the second wave of BBC migrants to Britain Islands originated.
The influence of the CWC on some bordered BBCs has been there from the very beginning.
The CWC assimilated a lot of those who happened to be on their borders.
I have already written about migration paths more than once, look.
I don't trust any of the conclusions by the Viking paper. It is is difficult to differentiate different Northwest European populations, that you can make the models say whatever you want them to.
Vikings were Pirates not ancestors. They didn't contribute to anyone outside Iceland, Greenland, Orkney, Farose islands.
The idea people in England are part Viking, is tabloid news and very unlikely to be true.
The idea SCandinavians have lots of contiental admixture from Viking age, is tabloid news.
DNA papers always make things more sensational/interesting than they actually are.
This whole Viking abstract looks like bs.
Something like 90% of Scandinavian Y DNA belongs to lineages only found in Scandinavia, so no there isn't substantial Medieval European admixture in Scandinavia.
And there isn't substantial Norweigan ancestry in Ireland. It is minor at best.
Hi folks. There is a new Viking study that came out today. I recommend to you, read this study with cautions. I learned that you can‘t blindly trust any genetic paper because there are many woke geneticists out that can use a legit data to make it say what they want. Genes don‘t lie flawed methods and wrong conclusions can screw genetic results. The authors were talking about breaking the stereotype of the blond and tall Vikings, about white supremacy and diversity, blah blah. When scientists can't keep their agendas, political views or virtue signalling out of their work they behave unprofessional. That's mean you have to read their study carefully and with a critical mind. Similar to the Roman study this paper also focuses on how diverse and not so blond the Vikings were. Therefore, I take anything this study concludes with a big grain of salt. Here the thing, the ugly truth about the stereotypes is that they are actually often true, just not always true. So the blond Viking stereotype was likely often true but not always. According to this study modern Scandinavians surprisingly are only around 15-30% Viking. Woke Scandinavians that are already distancing themselves from their Viking heritage in order to embrace diversity and multiculturalism, will celebrate this genetic study. For the more Viking- loving Scandinavians the result of the paper will be an earth-shattering discovery.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8739755/Not-Vikings-Scandinavian-Picts.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/09/scientists-raid-viking-dna-explore-genetic-roots/
@Wise Dragon,
Fucking politics corrupt everything. They are making the DNA say whatever they want it to. It's frustrating because this DNA study actually matters.
It matters because It is being used to deconstruct Scandinavian's national identity. This is while at the same time Swedes are becoming a minority in their own country.
BBC tried to deconstruct British identity with Cheddar man. It is disgusting.
Eastern Europeans don't have to deal with this shit. There's a propaganda war, Western European national histories are being lied about and identities are being erased.
@Wise Dragon,
This is why David Reich's Harvard team is the best.
They don't make unsubstantied claims.
@Samuel Andrews
"The idea people in England are part Viking, is tabloid news and very unlikely to be true."
LOL. Have you heard about the area of Danish law in England? In the English language there is a huge number of Scandinavian borrowings, even words like "they", "egg", "give" are all borrowings from Scandinavian.
"The idea SCandinavians have lots of contiental admixture from Viking age, is tabloid news."
LOL. Do you know that the Vikings married a lot of foreign women and about the trade routes along which foreigners sailed? And the Danes had a great connection with the Baltic Slavs-Vairi(Vari/Varni).
@Samuel
Well, Danish Vikings conquered much of England, they had strong political ties with Poland, and so on.
So we should expect stuff like this to be reflected in their ancient DNA, and it does seem to be.
@Davidski,
Danelaw looks like a conquest by Danish army dwarfed by the native English population. Vikings didn't do folk migrations into British Isles. So my view is they couldn't have made noticable genetic impact.
@Samuel Andrews
There are a large number of English village names in the Danelaw ending in -by.
David, even the Danish king of England was half Polish.
I admire the Anglo-Saxons for their ability to promote their own history. This is clearly missing from the Slavs. Therefore, everyone knows the Norman Vikings, but no one knows that the main force in the northern seas were the Slavic Vikings - Chąśnicy and Witezie.
@Wise dragon, who politicized it?
Just face the facts:
1. The ones with a deviation in the right arm politicized it because they coined the Vikings as the prefect example of "das Herrenvolk" the stereotype to the max, now it seems like more differentiated. So what? Stereotype kaput, alles kaput? :))))
2. They showed that when the interacted more and more with a widening world, the world comes also on the floor in the heartland. Nothing wacko woke.
@Archi, look at the calendar...."The SGC affects the nearby Dutch BBC' SGC is previous to BBC. So not contemporaneous!
Look at this:
https://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2015/11/interesting-corded-ware-grave.html
@ weure
Relax. I generally read genetic studies with caution, even professional, famous geneticists suggest to take some studies with a grain of salt since they are flawed and misleading.
I have read some crappy genetic studies.
Anyway, this Viking paper stated that not all Vikings were Scandinavian, so of course some Vikings wouldn't have resembled the Scandinavian Vikings. Southern Europeans often joined the Vikings on their raids, hence these Vikings would have resembled Southern Europeans. This is no rocket science. However, I have issue with the woke undertone when discussing phenotype and pretending that all Vikings looked generally like Southern Europeans or part Asian.
I want neutral genetic studies with no preaching. You rather should face the fact that genetic papers are too often politicized. Always use your common sense when reading any study.
Besides, here another paper that concluded the opposite concerning Viking look and confirmed the stereotype about them:
DNA research shows that many of the Vikings of Denmark had red hair, while the Vikings of Northern Scandinavia had blonde hair:
https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/the-people/appearance/
Furthermore, the stereotype of flax- blond, blue-eyed tall Vikings and tallness was birthed by ancient and medieval sources and accounts, long before Nordicists showed up. Ancient Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and medieval European that have encountered the Vikings independently stated that they were very blond, blue-eyed tall people. So fully Scandinavian Vikings were mostly or often blond, light haired but not always since some of them had other origin. So what? I read some comments about this paper that were full of glee and gloating about Vikings, Nordic people being dark.
@Wise dragon
" Anyway, this Viking paper stated that not all Vikings were Scandinavian"
Of course, not all Vikings were Scandinavians. It is well known that the Baltic Slavs (Var-, etc) were also Vikings, this is perfectly described in the sagas. Vikings are a movement. This paper is dedicated to the study of the Scandinavians of the Viking times, this is its drawback, because it does not study the Baltic Slavs who were also Vikings. For example, Slavic Vikings lived on Bormholm, we know this for sure from archeology.
@WiseDragon agree, but is stays a fact that the politicizing of the Vikings is not something of these scientist, it's simply a mortgage in the discussion about them, like the Frisians were raised on a "Herrenvolk" shield that has simply troubled research.
That the stereotype has old roots is known. And may be the classic writers find the Vikings/ Nordics very typical blond and robust because on average they were more blond and robust than in average Southern Europe. But that doen't mean they were all like that, it's a real possibility that sexual selection during the middle ages and beyond enhanced the ligher type. I remember some works from Iceland in which the upper class (jarls)is described light featured, the free farmer (karls) middle class (most of the people) somewhat reddish and the thralls as dark featured. This was in the period after Viking time.
So it's a real possibility that the Scandic population was somewhat more darker in that time than later on.
And indeed Viking was not as such a population, but you could say a 'life style'. There was really nice exhibition in the Frisian museum earlier this year in which they showed that some Frisians also joined the Vikings 'bands'.
@weure,
The lies about this Viking paper is apart of a trend of trying to deconstruct ethnic identities in Western Europe. It is no small problem.
The authors of the paper are apart of the problem. They didn't intend it to be that. But, I know from reading many genetic papers that authors always exaggerate the finds of their paper and the confidence in their methods.
In this paper, saying Vikings weren't very Scandinavian and saying that modern British have Viking ancestry, is interesting. Which is why the authors exaggerate these claims even though they're based on questionable methods.
The truth is going to be much closer to what people have known for centuries about Vikings. The media won't report that because it isn't interesting.
@weure,
When this paper speaks of natural selection they're referring to in last 4,000 years. Viking pigmentation allele frequencies are same as their modern Danish sample set.
@weure,
Vikings even had national association: Danish Vikings, Norwegian Vikings, Swedish Vikings.
And they were led by Scandinavian Kings and Jarls/Nobles. It would be much easier for them to use native soldiers instead of foreign mercenaries.
Frisian Vikings were an exception not normal.
Sam, there were also Slavic Vikings. They were called Chąśnik or Witeź. Witeź has the same etymology as Viking. It comes from the Slavic word witęg - conqueror (etymologies from Germanic languages do not stick together). Only few people know about it, because the Slavs do not have the skill to promote their history, which should be regretted.
@Sam im into a middle ground, in the paste Viking heritage is misused and politicized (the Herrenvolk thing)
I see some weird things in the paper indeed because they claim the Vikings were less light featured but in the paper itself they stress (except black hair that was obviously more current then) that the nowadays Danish population and the Viking population were more or less the same. You got a point there!
What is certainly is a point is that Viking equals not Scandic, because Picts, Frisians, Slaves all were part of the Viking 'bands' and that's logic because when the Vikings move into a widening world and interacted this is kind of logic. So the Vikings were kind of the mobile, more and more global players of that time. The 'hillbilly's' staid at home, less interacted.
Norse and Danish settlement in Britain is an historical fact, Slavic Vikings not so much. As others have pointed out the extensive influence of North Germanic on middle English is far too extensive to be other than caused by a large population component. The nature of the admixture is indiicative of a mixture of social equals and continues after the end of the Danelaw.
Modern social ideas influencing interpretations is always a risk in contoversial areas of research like human genetics, however, hostile knee jerck reactions from the MAGA hat brigade is more telling of the posters than the research.
@Samuel Andrews Germanic languages are a merger of a Single Grave R1b (offshoot of CWC) and R1a (“pure” CWC) from the Baltic.
Any other theory like some non-IE substrate from TRB or Erteboelle (ANF and/or WHG) one is completely unsubstantiated. Germanic languages have close to, if not 100%, Corded Ware + Single Grave vocabulary.
Samuel, you sound like a White Nationalist.
Which you have your 1st Amendment right to express. But my illusion of anything WNist shattered approximately 5 years ago when I discovered that at least 50% of my aDNA came from Anatolian farmers and CHG, i.e. the West Asia.
On top of the disappointing realization, that both my English language and my ancestors’ Polish are descendants of a language which arose on the Pontic Steppes in Eastern Europe but with 50-50 likelihood it was a CHG one.
@Palacista,
"Linguistic influence" isn't evidence of Danish ancestry in England. It doesn't matter how mainstream the view of Viking admix in England is. There's a lot of mainstream views which have no substantive evidence. Loanwords aren't substantive evidence.
The only real evidence is DNA. Because, Northwest Europeans are all so similar, only Y DNA can confirm Norse ancestry in England. I don't trust the methods used by the authors in this study.
I don't care either way if there is Danish ancestry in Britain. I am just frustrated by the idea Vikings were a folk migration to Britain in the same way Anglo Saxons were which is an idea you see in British media and 23andme.
Andrzejewski,
The ancient Anatolian farmers and the CHG are, genetically at least, a completely different people to the present day inhabitants of those regions.
In fact, the ancient Anatolian farmers are much more related to modern south Europeans than they are to Turks, Kurds, Armenians etc.
@Palacista,
"Modern social ideas influencing interpretations is always a risk in contoversial areas of research like human genetics, however, hostile knee jerck reactions from the MAGA hat brigade is more telling of the posters than the research."
Yeah, how dare people to think for themselves and to reject ideology driven manipulation of scientific work. Here the thing, researchers, scientists should be objective and shouldn't let their personal bias, and political views interfere with their work. Period. They should do their job instead to use the data to make them say what fits a certain narrative and the liberal overlords.
Anyway, the Viking paper suggests that Swedes are only 10-30% Viking-like. This conclusion is obviously ideological driven, thus misleading. Bottom line the true Viking warriors, the real deal were basically identical to modern Danes. Yet the study is framed in a way to make people believe that Vikings in general were and looked different from present day Scandinavians, which is not true. It says a lot about your moral integrity since you're fine with Scandinavians being played and mislead by geneticists about their heritage and ancestry.
Shame on you!
Is it safe to determine that almost all White people have a deep ancestry admixture of Western Steppe Herders - mostly Corded Ware/Single Grave or even perhaps also Sredny Stog with mostly Globular Amphora and a minority of Cucuteni Tripolye? Is it safe to say that the main difference between a Brit, a Pole and an Italian is basically *the respective ratios*?
@Andrzejewski
By and large, Italians have much more complex ancestry than Brits and Poles.
But anyway, genetics doesn't begin and end with ancient ancestry proportions.
There are lots of other things you should learn about, including genetic drift, founder effects, selection, epigenetics, etc.
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