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Friday, August 27, 2021

R1a vs R1b in third millennium BCE Central Europe (Papac et al. 2021)


R1a-M417 and R1b-L51 are by far the most important Y-chromosome haplogroups in Europe today. More precisely, R1a-M417 dominates in Eastern Europe, while R1b-L51 in Western Europe.

It's been obvious for a while now, at least to me, that both of these Y-haplogroups are closely associated with the men of the Late Neolithic Corded Ware culture (CWC). Indeed, in my mind they're the main genetic signals of its massive expansion, probably from a homeland somewhere north of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine.

I'm still not exactly sure how the east/west dichotomy between R1a and R1b emerged in Europe, but, thanks to a new paper by Papac et al. at Science Advances, at least now I have a working hypothesis about that. Below is a quote from the said paper, emphasis is mine:

In addition to autosomal genetic changes through time, we observe a sharp reduction in Y-chromosomal diversity going from five different lineages in early CW to a dominant (single) lineage in late CW (Fig. 4A). We used forward simulations to explore the demographic scenarios that could account for the observed reduction in Y-chromosomal diversity. Performing 1 million simulations of a population with a starting frequency of R1a-M417(xZ645) centered around the observed starting frequency in Bohemia_CW_Early (3 of 11, 0.27), we assessed the plausibility of this lineage reaching the observed frequency in Bohemia_CW_Late (10 of 11, 0.91) in the time frame of 500 years under a model of a closed population and random mating (Materials and Methods). We reject the “neutral” hypothesis, i.e., that this change in frequency occurred by chance, given a wide range of plausible population sizes. Instead, our results suggest that R1a-M417(xZ645) was subject to a nonrandom increase in frequency, resulting in these males having 15.79% (4.12 to 44.42%) more surviving offspring per generation relative to males of other Y-haplogroups. We also find that this change in Y chromosome frequency is extreme compared to the changes in allele frequencies at fully covered autosomal 1240k sites within the same males, suggesting a process that disproportionately affected Y-chromosomal compared to autosomal genetic diversity, ruling out a population bottleneck as the likely cause. Our results suggest that the Y-lineage diversity in early CW males was supplanted by a nonrandom process [selection, social structure, or influx of nonlocal R1a-M417(xZ645) lineages] that drove the collapse in Y-chromosomal diversity. A simultaneous decline of Y-chromosomal diversity dating to the Neolithic has been observed across most extant Y-haplogroups (64), possibly due to increased conflict between male-mediated patrilines (65). We view that changes in social structure (e.g., an isolated mating network with strictly exclusive social norms) could be an alternative cause but would be difficult to distinguish in the underlying model parameters.

Right, so even though the CWC was clearly a community of closely related groups, there must have been some competition between its different clans. And since these clans were highly patriarchal and patrilineal, this competition probably led to different paternal lineages dominating different parts of the CWC horizon, with M417 becoming especially common in the east and L51 in the west.

Of course, the expansions of post-Corded Ware groups, such as the M417-rich Slavs in Eastern Europe and L51-rich Celts in Western Europe, were also instrumental in creating Europe's R1a/R1b dichotomy, but obviously these groups were in large part the heirs of the CWC.

By the way, most of the samples from Papac et al. are already in the Global25 datasheets linked here. Look for the labels listed here. Below is a plot made from the Global25 data courtesy of regular commentator Matt.
Citation: L. Papac, M. Ernée, M. Dobeš, M. Langová, A. B. Rohrlach, F. Aron, G. U. Neumann, M. A. Spyrou, N. Rohland, P. Velemínský, M. Kuna, H. Brzobohatá, B. Culleton, D. Daněček, A. Danielisová, M. Dobisíková, J. Hložek, D. J. Kennett, J. Klementová, M. Kostka, P. Krištuf, M. Kuchařík, J. K. Hlavová, P. Limburský, D. Malyková, L. Mattiello, M. Pecinovská, K. Petriščáková, E. Průchová, P. Stránská, L. Smejtek, J. Špaček, R. Šumberová, O. Švejcar, M. Trefný, M. Vávra, J. Kolář, V. Heyd, J. Krause, R. Pinhasi, D. Reich, S. Schiffels, W. Haak, Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in third millennium BCE central Europe. Sci. Adv. 7, eabi6941 (2021).

See also...

On the origin of the Corded Ware people

Understanding the Eneolithic steppe

Conan the Barbarian probably belonged to Y-haplogroup R1a

303 comments:

1 – 200 of 303   Newer›   Newest»
Arran said...

Seems like these early Indoeuropeans were a lot more like urban street gangs than any social order we're used to today.

Constant violence, polygamy, wars and battles, destruction of competing groups... Very grisly ��

Davidski said...

Yes, that's probably true.

By the way, enjoy the social order while it lasts, because things tend to go in full circle.

sds said...

So R1a-M417(xZ645) is definitely Central European in its origin.

Davidski said...

No, R1a-M417 is definitely from north of the Black Sea somewhere.

Rich S. said...

Looks like your idea about a strong connection between Single Grave Corded Ware and R1b-L51 will prove crucial to the western half of the story, particularly since evidently BB arose as a development within the SGC. It seems pretty obvious to me that BB is just a later stage of western CWC.

Genos Historia said...

I bet different tribes in Corded Ware spoke different Indo European languages.

For example, R1b L151 in west and R1a Z645 in the east, probably spoke different IE languages.

Carlos Aramayo said...

@Davidski

"No, R1a-M417 is definitely from north of the Black Sea somewhere."

Maybe you are right on R1a-M417, but what about R1a-Z645? This subclade was formed (by yfull.com estimate) around 3400 years later than M-417.

Genos Historia said...

Yeah, Davidski was the first person I saw say R1b L51 probably comes from Corded Ware. I think he did so in 2018 or 2019.

Before that we all assumed Bell Beaker came from Western Yamnaya. In the comments I was trying to understand why Bell Beaker's farmer ancestry is Northern European if their ancestors came through Southern Europe. I tried to force a Western Yamnaya origin. Then Davidski suggested they come from Corded Ware.

This convinced me. I think many people also started thinking this way at that point too.

Genos Historia said...

I wouldn't compare Corded Ware clans to dumbass street gangs.

Street gangs are too chaotic, immature to create a functional society.

Corded Ware clans definitely had functional societies. They couldn't have been total anarchists. They would have had respect for people. Men cared enough about their kids to provide for them unlike most modern thugs. But at the same time were more than willing to conquer another clan.

Just because they were war-like doesn't mean they were anarchist, careless, idiots.

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

These early R1b-L151 CWC men from the forest steppe have basically no grave goods with the exception of U106 guy with the a-type axe. They bring women with them. They seem to coexist with the earlier farmers until R1a-M417 shows up, who are rich in grave goods and battle axes. 2600-2400 BCE the R1a-M417 men kill off all the other men and take over. Until 2400-2200 BCE when P312 shows up , does the same, and takes over. Finally 2200 BCE I2a2 returns with the knowledge of Bronze working.

Looks like lots of migrations and wipe outs.
Early CWC -> looks like a migration out of necessity
Late CWC -> looks like elite dominance

I suspect the rise of the Beaker culture was in some part related to an early CWC group gaining knowledge of copper working from a previous farmer society and then exploiting that to great effect. The rise of Unetice has to do with knowledge of bronze working. Unetice derived bronze work has ties to the British Isles, Italy, and Mycenean Greece, but not Iberia where bronze work arrived independently along the Mediterranean and interestingly they spoke non-indo european language.

Genos Historia said...

You could call it war of the clans.

Indo European clans took land from each other a lot.

R1a M417 (xZ645) replaced R1b L151* in Central Europe. Then Bell Beaker R1b U152 replaced the R1a M417 in Central Europe. Then I2a2, R1a Z645 replaced much of R1b U152 in Central Europe.

R1a Z93 Srubnaya replaced R1b Z2103 Yamnaya.




Davidski said...

@Carlos

The precise geographic origins of Z645 and many other markers involved in post-CWC expansions will be hard to pin down.

Z645 is from somewhere in Central or Eastern Europe, but that's the best I can do.

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

Z645 Came with Unetice and according to the paper Unetice came from the North East as it has additional affinity to EHG/WSHG relative to late beaker.

The best model of Unetice from the paper is:
Bohemia_BB_Late + Bohemia_BB_Early + Latvia_BA

Rich S. said...


What no doubt happened is that R1a-M417 came to prevail in Eastern European CWC, while the R1b-L51 dominated CWC clans moved west and became especially prevalent in SGC which gave rise to BB. It doesn't look to me like the various CW clans were wiping each other out. They seem to have directed their efforts toward subduing non-CW peoples.

The practice of the deposition of grave goods as a characteristic of CWC (and of steppe pastoralist peoples in general) predates the eventual coming to prominence of R1a-M417 in the eastern branch of that cultural horizon. In other words, it wasn't a practice introduced by R1a-M417 men. It was already of long standing.

Rich S. said...

@Genos Historia -

David was early in spotting the connection between L51 and CWC, but the very first one I remember suggesting it was Rich Rocca.

Genos Historia said...

@Rich S.

Yes Richard Rooca probably does earn the crown for suggesting this first. I do remember seeing him modelling Bell beaker with CWC_Germany before Davidski talked about a CWC origin. It actually annoyed me at the time. But now I realize he was right.

Maybe the clans didn't kill each other off. But they seemed to have pushed each other off land. R1b L151 seems to have originally inhabited most of western half of Corded Ware. Then they seem to have been pushed only to the western edge by R1a.

How else do we explain Bell beaker culture's 100% R1b U152, other than it pushed out R1a M417.

Rich S. said...

BTW, the surface of the CWC story has just barely been scratched. Wait until we get more results from old Malopolska in SE Poland, where the oldest known CWC-related burials are, burials of the CWC-X Horizon, at Hubinek and Srednia, dated to 3000-2900 BC.

We're also still waiting for that paper on Single Grave Corded Ware that is supposed to show that it was mostly R1b-L51.

Rich S. said...

BB's "100% R1b-U152"? What about all that BB R1b-L21 in Britain, not to mention the BB R1b-DF27 in Germany and Iberia?

You're assuming R1b-L51 was "pushed". Probably it was pulled to the West by easy pickings.

Davidski said...

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Corded Ware groups were exterminating each other, or at least not regularly.

But I do think that they routinely competed with each other. Of course, every competition has its winners and losers.

Also, neighborly disputes are pretty common, so are family feuds. So it's a not a controversial suggestion.

ancestralwhispers.org said...

Looks like the most Yamnaya-like samples have more HG (using Ukr_N as a proxy) ancestry when compared to usual Yamnaya, much like Early Polish CWC. I imagine Sredny Stog will be similar as well.

https://i.imgur.com/FoPO5NO.png

Rich S. said...

In Europe in the third millennium BC and just prior, the basic movement of steppe pastoralists was from east to west. If the earliest CW was dominated by R1b-L51, then it would have on the leading edge heading west. No need to imagine a force behind pushing them. They moved west into land occupied by Neolithic farmers whose population had probably already been decimated by Yersinia Pestis.

Thanks to Kristian Kristiansen, we know of mass graves of Neolithic farmers whose skulls had been bashed in, probably courtesy of CW axes. We don't have anything comparable filled with the remains of men with steppe DNA.

As the early R1b-L51 CW clans pushed west, the territory behind them was filled by other CW clans dominated by men who were R1a-M417, who were also moving west, but a little later. No need to imagine that they were being chased either.

Rob said...

To repeat from older thread, seems like proto-CWC were moving into sparse lands (concurrent with a milder Baden-related migration)
Then we see the layering of CWC-related shifts

The main thrust of Unetice -could be an Epi-Corded group with connections to Baltic & Carpathian regions, hence large 'bounce -back'' of I2 lineages
On related note, whichever way we look at it, Baltic/pre-Slavic seems to point to the southeastern Baltic

@ Genos
That true. Also, sometimes groups left lands and wondered elsewhere, and then filled up by others. Although population replacements did happen, its not always the best explanation

https://imgur.com/EeoBvj5

Davidski said...

@Rich

No doubt that the early Corded Ware males who pushed west were rich in R1b, or even exclusively R1b, like those who pushed north were basically all R1a.

But there was clearly a lot of diversity in the middle, and it persisted in some areas, like in southeastern Poland, but died out in others.

The competition that I'm talking about may have been as simple as one family group taking more fertile land than another, and thus eventually forming a much larger group, and eventually a population. On the flip side, other clans in the region may have dwindled in number.

Desdichado said...

Exactly; there's no need to talk about constant extermination events. Sometimes one family just grows a lot and another doesn't. We see it only because we give so much importance to the Y-DNA haplogroup. From the point of view within the society, nothing particularly noteworthy is happening except one family is having loads of kids, cousins, and whatnot, and becoming socially more prominent than another. Hardly worth commenting on, from their perspective.

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

In Ceasar's own writings about the Gaulish tribes, they were constantly killing eachother off and mass-migrating/invading. Early Corded Ware was only marginally different.

Genos Historia said...

The way I see it is...

People don't willingly leave their land. So for example, the disappearance of R1a M417 from Bohemia in the Bell beaker period can only be explained by R1a M417 being forcibly pushed out.

This shouldn't be a surprise as we know Bell beaker forcibly took control of land in Spain & Britain.

I understand R1a M417* and R1b L151* coexisted to an extent in Central Europe. Possibly replacement doesn't explain their relationship. But the rise of Bell Beaker looks like it does.

Davidski said...

It's obvious that the "late" Corded Ware Bohemian group rich in R1a-M417 was some sort of expansion at the cost of other lineages in the area.

The Bell Beaker expansion with its R1b-P312 was something similar.

But eventually R1b-P312 all but disappeared from many parts of Central Europe, with many people thinking for a while that it was an Iberian lineage.

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

who pushed R1b-L151 west? northward expanding R1a-M417 groups like we see in Fatyanovo/Baltic CWC/Scandinavian Battle Axe culture, or GAC expanding into the Forest Steppe? These people did not migrate for no reason.

Finds like Zlota do imply that the GAC were an unwanted intrusive culture. Despite the mass burial at Zlota the GAC people were successful in migrating into the Forest Steppe as their artefacts are widespread there until 2350 BCE, contemporaneous with Eastern European CWC. We know they contributed to the Catacomb Culture and apparently to the main lineage of the Unetice culture as well.

GAC looks also to have been initially diverse, some R1b-V88 from this study are GAC. It's the Eastern European I2a2 GAC which migrated into the Forest Steppe that proliferated.

Andrzejewski said...

@Genos “ For example, R1b L151 in west and R1a Z645 in the east, probably spoke different IE languages.”

Satem v. Centum

Davidski said...

The GAC argument doesn't make any sense, because Corded Ware moved right into the heart of GAC territory.

So if they were being pushed out by GAC, then they plausibly would've gone where there was no GAC.

Obviously, in many cases different early Corded Ware clans went in different directions, for whatever reason. So R1b-L51 ended up near the Rhine, while R1a-M417 ended up in the East Baltic.

On the other hand, Central Europe initially had clans with R1a-M417, R1b-L51, Q1b and also R1b-Z2103, and maybe more.

Then, as per Papac et al., the Y-chromosome diversity collapsed, probably due to the expansion of an R1a-M417 clan.

Genos Historia said...

@Andrze,

That's what I was thinking.

@Davidski,

This is something none us took note of. It is a good point. There are a lot of clans in the early stage. It does fit with what I've been saying, that Corded Ware was an explosion of many different Kurgan tribes all leaving the Steppe together. But I didn't expect there to be this many clans. Q1b especially is a surprise.

ambron said...

It confirms what I have been saying for a long time that the increase in the share of a given paternal line does not have to be related to the replacement of the population, but may be the result of a change at the level of the social structure.

Davidski said...

@ambron

We don't know if the rise of R1a-M417 in Bohemia during the late CWC period was accompanied by a large-scale shift in overall ancestry.

It may have been, except that the population in question was already very similar to the groups that it was replacing.

Matt's graph that I posted in the blog post suggests that this is indeed what happened, because the CWC M417 samples cluster more or less together.

Rob said...

Curiously, the largest mass grave was in LBK context. One LBK village massacred another.
Then we have the Eulau case of CWC family burial.
There is also the R1b-M269 male killed off at Vucedol tell.
It's wonderous how, even after this study went at pains to differentiate various pre-Corded groups, some people still talk of Old Europe as it was monolithic. Too much Gimbutas & Anthony ..

ambron said...

David, we can of course plot different scenarios, but the most important thing is that the patrilineal structure population can change due to current social conditions. So there is no need to change the population; a change at the level of her social structure is enough.

Rob said...

@ Rmulus
Those R1b-V88 arent attributed to GAC with any certainty. They could be late TRB

ambron said...

The most important lesson from this Czech study for lovers of Slavic history is that the Balto-Slavic drift appeared in the population of Western Slavic lands in the early Bronze Age, not in the early Middle Ages, as the proponents of the Pripyat theory believe.

Ric Hern said...

How much did Corded Ware want to Control Traderoutes ? It seems to me that Bell Beakers and later Celts focused more on the Traderoutes than Corded Ware did ?

Rob said...

@ Davidski


“ Then, as per Papac et al., the Y-chromosome diversity collapsed, probably due to the expansion of an R1a-M417 clan”

However, they highlight a ~ 15.8% increase in offspring (seems relatively small but caused a pronounced Y -DNA boost), rather than expansion from the outside.

This is c/w growth in settlement sites as Corded Ware period progressed.
So what we have is :
LBK arrives, LBK busts (G2a predominantly)
TRB forms, TRB busts (mixed HG-lineages + minority farmer)
Resulting comparative sparseness in north-central Europe with a few mobile networks, featuring steppe and non-steppe (GAC) groups.
Comparative growth of R1a-M417-derived lineages in central Europe
A 're-check', with an obviously intrusive BB groups from the West.
Then countercheck during Unetice period.

So whilst conflicts obviously did occur, they were most often local & might not have been the main cause for Y DNA shifts, because no matter how badass, I'd imagine its difficult to inflict the kind of mass casualties we might have initially envisaged to account for the Y-hg shifts. Most of these cycles seem to be more reflective in climactic swings, IMO.

Davidski said...

Climatic swings may have been a factor, but other factors, possibly complementary ones correlating with the climatic swings, were probably a new economic package and social organization.

Matt said...

@David, at the end of last thread you asked "How do the earliest CWC samples from Poland and the Baltic states behave in that graph?", so I've done the same graphs adding in all the samples from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (removing those that really don't fit a 3-way model, though I've left in those that have some low level Siberian ancestry late in the period for Estonia), and also including Yamnaya for context: https://imgur.com/a/jDLGHUm

The samples I label as Corded_Ware_Early in the Baltic are the two with earliest YBP dates, the two females (Plinkaigalis242 and I4629) and they overlap with the contemporary earliest Czech samples in the Yamnaya ancestry vs time plot. Poz81, the R1a1a1a guy from Poland, has a little more steppe ancestry than the Czech samples of the same time (maybe because slight difference in dates, or because Poland's further east so less admixture on average or just random chance).

I've also done a plot here which shows Hungary and Croatia samples included - https://imgur.com/a/c27lSOx

That region seems distinctive because you see some steppe start to enter, but there really isn't a lot of R1 at all coming in (and when it does its accompanired by similar levels of steppe ancestry to what contemporary R1 populations north of Hungary seem to have, which suggests just people moving without admixing as much) and there predominantly just a lot of I2 and G2 and E1 and J2, as far as it goes up until the Iron Age.

I've made a pastebin for a PAST4 datasheet with all the above and some more (including Fatyanovo for reference, Swiss and German samples, etc) - https://pastebin.com/EdNJYJXG . It's a CSV so anyone will have to open as spreadsheet and copy and paste into PAST. I hope the format reads OK and has got all the Y-dna haplogroups right.

Baltic_BA like outlier here is pretty cool as he confirms that the Baltic_BA ancestry profile was already in existance by early in the 2nd Millennium BCE (he's around 700-1000 years earlier than the samples we have in Latvia and Lithuania) - although Spiginas2 already showed the profile at around the same time, so that may be nothing too new (can't remember if Spiginas2 had the full drift or only close to it).

Rob said...

Climactic events (leaving out very early history, like Ice Age)
8.2 ky event: arrival of farmer in Western Europe ; pottery in East
6.2 : collapse of Varna-Karanovo VI
4,8: Catacomb migration , final push of steppe to West
4.2 : expansion of Andronovo through Asia , at expense of pre-Andronovo groups; collapse of Los Millares
3,6: Thera eruption. Collapse of Knossos, El Argar, Unetice systems
3.2: collapse of Srubnaya

Slumbery said...

@ambros

"The most important lesson from this Czech study for lovers of Slavic history is that the Balto-Slavic drift appeared in the population of Western Slavic lands in the early Bronze Age, not in the early Middle Ages, as the proponents of the Pripyat theory believe."

There is exactly one sampled individual in the study that clusters close to Baltic_BA, he is an outlier among the late Unetice samples and the main cluster of the late Unitece samples is not shifted in that direction compared to early Unetice or BB.
(Some of the early Unitece samples - like CLH007, KNE006 - seem to form a cline into that direction, but it disappears in late Unitece.)

A said...

mtDNA H2b in Unetice and in Amenhotep III, from his Mitanni mother.

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

The oldest traces of the GAC in Eastern Europe can be found in Volhynia ca
2950 BC. Slightly later, approx. 2900-2850 BC, GAC settlers reached Podolia. To
the SE Baltic coast, GAC patterns came around 2850 BC. About 2650 BC at the
latest, traces of GAC presence can be found on the Lower Neman River, ca 2600
BC on the Middle Dnieper and ca 2500 BC in the Upper Dnieper drainage.


Why would they be migrating towards the steppe year after year if invasions by steppe people were driving their migration? That doesn't make sense. GAC migrated southeast due to a climate shift in northern europe causing the area to be unsuitable for farming, hence a south migration. What caused early CWC to migrate northwest? Free land left behind by GAC? But they didn't stop at the vacated GAC area, they continued on.

In the Danish SGC paper we learned that there was a centuries long hiatus in Denmark between FBC and the Danish SGC. Free empty land apparently was desireable to the early CWC.

ambron said...

Matt, Arza writes about Spiginas2 like this:

Spiginas2 definitely isn't ancestral to Baltic_BA. Spiginas2 is something similar to Tollense/Encrusted Pottery etc. + local EHG-rich Latvia_MN. It plots on WE PCA together with Baltic_BA by accident, just like Eneolithic samples from Ukraine.

https://slavicorigins.blogspot.com/2021/08/dynamic-changes-in-genomic-and-social.html

ambron said...

Slumbery, the fact that the Baltic BA signal disappears over time in the Unietic culture, does not mean that it also disappears in the Mierzanowice culture from which derived this signal the authors of the study, as well as in the later Trzciniec culture, which shows genetic continuity with the Mierzanowice culture.

MitchellSince1893 said...

@Rich S. said "... the very first one I remember suggesting it was Rich Rocca."

Yes, at least as far back as May of 2017 when he started this thread
https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?10749-Corded-Ware-origin-for-P312.
Back when I was thinking P312 originated near Moldova/Western Ukraine e.g. Budzhak.

vAsiSTha said...

the qpAdm documentation in the excel supplement of this paper is just fantastic.

i guess globular amphora + yamnaya + minor Ukr_N/LatviaMN/pittedware models for corded ware are right after all.

Am surprised how much impact yamnaya had, had forgoten about it. The %s are huge

The Scythman said...

if we assume that the yamnaya migrants who had reached the CW horizon by 2900 BCE spoke a type of Late PIE , it might mean that they formed a kind of "dialect continuum" out there across the entire CW horizon by 2800/2700 BCE and all of them could understans each other in early CW cummunity , since then different parts of CW started to diversify into new languages (Indo-Iranian , Balto-slavic , Pre-Germanic , Italo-celtic) . also as you mentioned yeah different clans experienced "founder effect" for a specific Y-dna .
this dialect continuum might explain why for example Balto-slavic got significant similarities to indo-iranian (indo-slavic theory) and at the same time it has some eye catching shared features with Other western european dialects

Simon_W said...

@Davidski

"By the way, enjoy the social order while it lasts, because things tend to go in full circle."

That's quite a pessimistic view. It reminds me of the song "l'avenir est un long passe":

https://youtu.be/rlqvaI38mz8

But I'm sure the optimist by default Steven Pinker would disagree. And I'm convinced Germany won't attack France or Poland anymore, and that in spite of the brexit, the EU will not crumble away. Even though that's precisely what some morons in many countries are hoping. :D

Gorbs said...

Carlos Quiles has admitted that his CWC/Uralic theory was wrong. https://indo-european.eu/2021/08/r1b-rich-earliest-corded-ware-a-yamnaya-related-vector-of-indo-european-languages/

Tiger Mike said...

I would hardly say P312 disappeared from much of Europe, at least anything west of a line from Norway, the German-Polish border, down to Aegean. There is no doubt the subjugation of Celts by Romans and Germanic groups knocked P312 down a bit, but there was P312 in the German wanderings too.
These were Bell Beaker lands once but even the East Bell Beakers didn't dominate eastward into Poland, etc. They did well but those lands were always quite competitive.... probably between different IE groups.
I really think the P312 dominance in Western Europe is really just the Bell Beakers (probably AOC) just running through "green fields" where little IE competition was present.

Davidski said...

@Mike

I said that P312 disappeared in much of Central Europe.

That's why it's not seen as a Germanic or Slavic marker.

Matt said...

Rich S. - Thanks to Kristian Kristiansen, we know of mass graves of Neolithic farmers whose skulls had been bashed in, probably courtesy of CW axes. We don't have anything comparable filled with the remains of men with steppe DNA.

Courtesy of Furholt's paper this year (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-020-09153-x), apparently there is a mass grave at Eulau with large numbers of dead from the Corded Ware culture in multiple burials (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278416509000348 - "We present a detailed study of antemortem and perimortem trauma in a group of Corded Ware skeletons from four multiple graves and give the most probable interpretation of the site, based upon all available bioarchaeological evidence. The pattern of observed injuries in male, female, and subadult skeletons, including cranial trauma, arrow wounds, and fractures of the forearm and hands points towards a violent event that resulted in the death of all individuals, most probably a raid.".

Also from Haak on Eulau - https://www.pnas.org/content/105/47/18226. Haak has some adna back then and seemed to think the victims were some R1as, but I don't know how much this stands up (since pre NGS results are often questionable).

(Heads smashed in!)

I don't know if we have any dna from this site to confirm the genetic Corded Ware affiliation of these people, only some later Unetice samples from this site. They unfortunately didn't make it across to published ancient NGS dna (yet...?).

This is supposedly some example of non-CWC on CWC violence according to this article - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155083 - "we have rather scant evidence of the social and economic processes once the Corded Ware Culture was established, but the Eulau cemetery has demonstrated that relations between non Corded Ware and Corded Ware groups could be hostile", though from where they draw that conclusion I don't know. Perhaps they think it was Beakers wot did it?

(This article talks about more of the smashing in of the heads and bodies of a Corded Ware man, woman and child at a different location - "Tiefbrunn is located in the parish of Mintraching near Regensburg, Bavaria. Three graves were investigated in 2001 in connection with road work. Two were undated, but the third (grave 3) contained a triple burial from the CW period ... The skulls of all three individuals exhibited signs of severe trauma and they had probably suffered violent deaths. The grave thus offers many parallels to the famous Eulau burials in Sachsen-Anhalt ".

Dates of Eulau - "At Eulau, 8 of the dates fall in the range of 2600–2500 BC, i.e., the middle phase of the CW.". The Tiefbrunn grave of the 3 killed people however were "from the early pioneer phase" of the CWC).

Though I'd also note that the mass grave of Globular Amphora Koszyce was not a grave full of men (no Tollensee battlefield of GAC men, this) - it was a grave of ordinary people of all ages and sexes from a village who'd likely been killed by raiders whilst the men were away...

(https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/5000-year-old-mass-grave-hides-family-tragedy - "They found that mothers were buried next to their children, and siblings were placed next to one another. Fathers and other older male relatives were conspicuously missing from the group, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.". Some of the other coverage from this time I remember theorising that this was a sneak attack while the adult men were away fighting or drawn away, then returned to find their families murdered. Glorious battle at the dawn of the Bronze Age...)

Davidski said...

Beakers would've used bows for a massacre.

I once read of a likely massacre in the Swiss Alps that was probably done by Beakers, because Beaker arrows were inside the victims' remains. But I don't have the link now.

Davidski said...

@Simon

Pandemics, climate change, floods, fires, economic collapse...

But don't worry, you can hide out in the Swiss Alps.

R1b Le destructeur de chattes said...

Well in ce central Europe R1b p312 make up like 10 15% of the y DNA pool total, I won't call it a disappearance

AWood said...

Depends on the definition of "Central Europe". I think R1b is still the most common haplogroup in Czechia (although various branches including U106), where as Slovakia is R1a. We also have many non-R1 lineages in central Europe, many of whom descend from post-BA movements. In my view R1b went through southern Poland and north west Ukraine, not Belarus. R1b is still very common in these regions. Not that anyone suggested it, but the R1a rich regions like the Baltic and Belarus were probably always as such, at least since the Bronze Age. I don't see evidence M269 was ever there.

AWood said...

@R1b Le Destructeur de chattes

P312 + U106 make up about 50% or more of the male haplos in southern Germany and Austria (as per 2016 study), so yeah.

Davidski said...

@AWood

I didn't mention U106, which has a very different history to P312.

Genos Historia said...

Celts in Central Europe must have had lots of P312 for a while.

I was under the impression R1b U152 remained predominate in formally Bell Beaker area: Germany, Austria, Czech, till the Germanic and Slavic tribes moved in.

Then again, Unetice shows a huge decrease in U152 frequencies.

Rob said...

''I once read of a likely massacre in the Swiss Alps that was probably done by Beakers, because Beaker arrows were inside the victims' remains. But I don't have the link now.''

Chasseur-Petit-Sion.
The Bell Beaker takeover of the Remedello-allied Swiss LN

''you can hide out in the Swiss Alps.''
in his Alpine lair, as he strokes his cat, planning world domination

GeorgeKatz said...

Maybe it doesn't at all, but does this paper impact Anthony's argument that R1a-417 and R1b-l51 were a Yamnaya underclass, i.e., do we have any further insight as to the original steppe population from which CW originates? On the other hand, I don't see how this paper changes Davidski's argument that CW originated north of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine. Specifically, the route CW took from there was north because of the presence of excess Latvia_MN/Ukraine_Neolithic/PittedWare-like ancestry in Bohemia_CW_Early.

The one surprise to me was that R1b-l51 (earliest CW) seems to have arrived in central Europe before R1a-417 and was pushed out by R1a-417 in a rather dramatic way. I've always assumed the two--R1bl51 and R1a-417--arrived together because the two were from a common ancestral population. It's amusing to think that the dominant group of Western Europe started out as a humble refugee people fleeing for their lives before turning into the genocidal maniacs popularized in the press.

Tiger Mike said...

Is there evidence R1b-P312 was ever the prevailing haplogroup east of the German/Polish border down to the Adriatic (I apologize not Aegean)?
We know there were some eastward migrations of East Bell Beakers, then later Celtic and Germanic groups, that might have carried P312.
It is quite possible for P312 to have formed in East Europe but it may have been the most western vanguard of Corded Ware. If the TMRCA is about 3000 BC it would have barely been a wisp before reaching Germany.

JBS said...

As a side note, Angela on Eupedia is ripping the Corded Ware to shreds. She's saying that they have almost absolutely nothing to do with Yamnaya and barely anything to do with Indo European anything. She's calling out anyone and everyone who ever said that Corded Ware has anything to do with Yamnaya. I'm actually kind of surprised by her strong reaction. From what I've read what she's saying is counter to what the vast majority of population geneticists have said. She's also saying that Corded Ware and Yamnaya have nothing to do with each other on an archaeological basis. Again, I haven't seen much of anything that says they do not share archaeological likeness except in some pottery. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I just feel like it's a harsh statement to basically say CWC has nothing to do with Yamnaya.

Davidski said...

@GeorgeKatz

Early Corded Ware samples from Bohemia, Poland and the Baltic states do include individuals with R1a, so it's not correct to claim that R1a arrived later than the early Corded Ware period.

Also, I don't expect that Anthony and the David Reich Lab will push the underclass theory for very long.

Clearly, the early Corded Ware population did not live amongst the Z2103-rich Yamnaya. This is obvious not only from the Y-haplogroup data but also the autosomal ancestry proportions.

So I'm positive that reason will prevail very quickly there.

Davidski said...

@Mike

During the Bell Beaker period P312 was the main Y-haplgroup in most of Central Europe, reaching a 100% frequency in many areas.

After that it crashed in much of the region, and today is only a minority lineage in this part of Europe.

So my point was that it was certainly a dramatic rise and fall for P312 over a relatively short amount of time.

Simon Stevin said...

@Davidski

David how much CHG does CWC on average have? The usual suspects have taken to claiming that there’s a tremendous difference between CWC and Yamnaya, and that CWC absorbed Indo-European from the latter. I believe Afanasievo has the oldest R1b-L51, or is that not true? Excluding Afanasievo, the oldest L51 has been found in early CWC Bohemia, with WSH autosomal DNA/ancestry, along with other clades associated with the steppe/Eastern Europe, such as Q1b, R1a-Z646, and Z2103. Q1b has been found in purely WSH derived Afanasievo samples too. What’s there left to dispute?

Davidski said...

@Simon

Early Corded Ware is almost identical to Yamnaya, so their CHG ancestry proportions are very similar depending on the test.

My estimate is that on average early Corded Ware has around 35% CHG and Yamnaya a bit more.

Davidski said...

@JBS

There are a lot of mentally unstable people online who can't deal with the reality of what ancient DNA is showing.

These people will keep fighting against reality until there's absolutely no hope left for whatever their crazy pet theory happens to be.

So my advice is to completely ignore them.

Desdichado said...

Pandemics, climate change, floods, fires, economic collapse...

But don't worry, you can hide out in the Swiss Alps.


In a blog that spends much of its time talking about population replacements of the past, it seems like you're missing a big one here...

Rob said...

@ Romulus

“ In the Danish SGC paper we learned that there was a centuries long hiatus in Denmark between FBC and the Danish SGC. Free empty land apparently was desireable to the early CWC.”

Exactly. Little wonder that EKG had only minor TRB admixture.
Key melting zones will need to be analysed properly and cautiously
Two opposite ends games are Britain and Balkans, which Matt has already commented on

GeorgeKatz said...

@Davidski

The paper does seem to be saying that R1b-l51 arrived in Bohemia before R1a-417 and coexisted with other non-Steppe peoples for a period. R1a-417 then arrives soon thereafter and R1b-l51 disappears for a couple of centuries before returning in the form of BB. This surprised me because I'd assumed R1b-l51 and R1a-417 derived from a common ancestral group. I'm not so sure about that now.

JBS said...

I may be forced to ignore them pretty soon because of the push back I'm giving. I'm not sure where the disdain comes from but it's certainly there. I'm looking forward to further papers providing new insights and integrating the ideas that many have laid down. All I'm trying to do is get to the truth and enjoy myself along the way. Papers like this one will surely help.

Davidski said...

@GeorgeKatz

My understanding of the paper is that the early Corded Ware community in Bohemia had a relatively diverse paternal gene pool, including R1b-L51, R1a-M417 and even Q1b2.

Can you quote the part of the paper which suggests that R1b-L51 arrived in Bohemia before R1a-M417?

Rob said...

Davidski
Figure 4 shows the earliest bohemian CWC are R1b-L51
But n=4

Davidski said...

Right, but not far behind them in that chart (left of the 2600 BCE cutoff) is the Qb1a2 and the oldest R1a-M417.

And all of these samples are classified as Corded Ware Early in the paper.

GeorgeKatz said...

"In addition to autosomal genetic changes through time, we observe
a sharp reduction in Y-chromosomal diversity going from five
different lineages in early CW to a dominant (single) lineage in late
CW (Fig. 4A)."

My reading of Fig. 4A (along with Matt's plot), shows R1b-l51 predating R1a-417a by at least a century.

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

I believe that the Centum languages share a common ancestor in Unetice. How mentally unstable does that make me on a scale of out of 10?

Davidski said...

@GeorgeKatz

OK, like I said and as per your quote, the early Corded Ware community in Bohemia had a relatively diverse paternal gene pool, and it only became dominated by R1a-M417 during the late Corded Ware period.

This may or may not have happened due to an influx of extra R1a-M417 from somewhere else during the late Corded Ware period, because it's also possible that it was a local expansion.

Please also keep in mind that C14 dates have large standard errors and there are also limitations to sampling. So the earliest Corded Ware graves with R1a-M417 may not have been found.

Also, you have to agree that despite some shifts on Matt's chart, all of the early Corded Ware samples are indeed very similar in terms of overall ancestry.

So I'm not sure how this idea came about that the early R1b-L51 and R1a-M417 Corded Ware samples derive from different gene pools, but this isn't what the data in this paper shows IMHO.

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

None of the R1a-M417 samples from Baltic CWC or Fatyanovo date 30XX-29XX BCE like this R1b L151 guys, they all date 28XX BCE at the latest. There is one female from Baltic CWC that dates 3200-2600 BCE but that seems like a fair one to ignore.

GeorgeKatz said...

"So I'm not sure how this idea came about that the early R1b-L51 and R1a-M417 Corded Ware samples derive from different gene pools, but this isn't what the data in this paper shows IMHO."

I'm not suggesting that at all. It's clear that they (as well as the Yamnaya) derive from the same gene pools--they're all Steppe derived. However, my assumption had been that R1b-l51 and R1a-m417 were much more closely intertwined--more or less forming a single tribe/clan and that R1b-l51 accompanied R1a-m417 (as a much junior partner) into central Europe. I'm not so sure about that now, and it makes sense given how R1a-m417 came to dominate central Europe and forced R1b farther west.

My point is more of irony than anything else. Had R1b been more closely intertwined with R1a in central Europe, i.e., they two were indistinguishable, and not been pushed out, Steppe dominated BB may never have arisen in Western Europe.

Davidski said...

@Romulus

Differences of 100-200 years are practically irrelevant here, especially since we're dealing with C14 estimates.

All of the so called early Corded Ware males from Bohemia, Poland and the Baltic stats are very, very similar to each other and also to Yamnaya.

Davidski said...

@GeorgeKatz

Well, I can't comment about how intertwined the R1a-M417 and R1b-L51 early Corded Ware people were exactly. They may or may not have been different clans right from the beginning.

But I do believe that both R1b-L51 and R1a-M417 more or less arrived together in Central Europe from the Corded Ware homeland, probably along with Q1b and even R1b-Z2103.

It's clear that not much R1a-M417 made it to the Lower Rhine, which is where Bell Beakers probably formed. But not much R1b-L51, if any, made it to the East Baltic.

Slumbery said...

@ambron

"the fact that the Baltic BA signal disappears over time in the Unietic culture, does not mean that it also disappears in the Mierzanowice culture from which derived this signal the authors of the study, as well as in the later Trzciniec culture, which shows genetic continuity with the Mierzanowice culture."

Sure, I would not be surprised to learn that this drift was preset in a much wider region than the Baltic. (In fact a Northern Ukrainian origin also requires that.) I have two observations however (well, two and a half):
1. This merely allows Slavic formation in the west, does not prove it.
1.1. It is still pretty far from the Transdanubian theory you entertained here in the past.
2. Even if Trzciniec is indeed ancestral to Slavs culturally (I actually find it likely), it does not necessarily follow that the western half of the former Trzciniec territory was even part of the source region of the much later expansion. There are some 1500 years between Trzciniec and the Slavic expansion and people moved around (also Northern Ukraine was part of Trzciniec to begin with).

I have no problem with the idea that Slavs had roots in the area of modern day Poland in a Bronze Age time depth, but that can be a quite different from where they expanded 1500 years later.

Finally you say this:
"as well as in the later Trzciniec culture, which shows genetic continuity with the Mierzanowice culture."

Do you mean genetic in a cultural sense or population DNA sense? I ask that, because I am not aware of the samples.

ambron said...

David, maybe however BB genetics formed in south-eastern Poland...

"This region was an important social area in the 3rd Millennium BCE, a true prehistoric melting pot of human groups with different origin, which may have witnessed emergence of typical BBC genomics almost 200 years earlier than in other parts of Europe".

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63138-w

Davidski said...

No, they formed in the Lower Rhine region, because all Bell Beakers show ancestry from Dutch Bell Beakers, and they have hunter/farmer ancestry from the North Sea area.

ambron said...

David, how can we explain this paradox?

Davidski said...

I'm not sure which paradox you're referring to.

Bell Beakers are derived from the Single Grave culture, and the Single Grave culture came from the east, and probably via Poland.

ambron said...

Slumbery, although the genetic continuity between Meirzanowice and Trzciniec was demonstrated only in mtDNA, no demographic event between one culture and the other was recorded that could change the auDNA structure of the local population.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.24057

And the already known samples from the Trzciniec culture (Turlojiske) have a lot of Balto-Slavic drift.

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

ambron said...

I meant this paradox that the typical BB genomics appears earlier in south-eastern Poland than in other parts of Europe. So she had to take shape already at the stage of the SG culture march through Poland.

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

The cultural situation in the Forest-Steppe zone and along its border with the
Forest zone was highly complex. The GAC societies migrating to this territory from
approx. 3000-2950 BC entered land that was mostly settled by the Tripolye culture
population, which by then was in its late phase. Funnel Beaker culture settlement
might still have been present in the region around the banks of the Bug (in isolated
enclaves?). At the same time as the GAC, or possibly somewhat later, Corded Ware
culture population groups arrived in the region under discussion.
GAC settlers took over the territory of the Forest-Steppe groups of the late
Tripolye culture (phase CII): the whole of the Gorodsk group area and a part of the
area of the Kasperivtsy/Gordineşti, Kosenivka and Sofievka groups.

https://i.imgur.com/NKHlxxP.png

Davidski said...

No, typical BB genetics in the true sense formed in the Lower Rhine.

Earlier populations, like those in Poland, were only coincidentally similar.

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

Border between GAC and CWC:

https://i.imgur.com/reauCY2.png

Rob said...

The BB cultural package was polythetic, however the population shows a series of definable steps and structures
Ambron is correct to point out that there are apparent contradictions, however they appear to be resolvable

Davidski said...

ambron just thinks that the quote he pulled out of that paper must be correct, but it's not, because the authors were just looking at broad variation and affinities.

Rob said...

Yes I know he was probably referring to other notices; but I meant that we do have a resolved oddity - L51 coming from the east then back from the west

Davidski said...

There's a retarded discussion at Anthrogenica about where Corded Ware came from.

Someone tell those bozos that there are new Sredny Stog samples from Ukraine on the way that are basically like early Corded Ware.

old europe said...

@davidski

Are these samples very similar to the sample I6561 that has now been redated?

Davidski said...

No, they're like Yamnaya.

Everyone here saw where they cluster in Anthony's Youtube PCA, so I'm not sure what the confusion is about.

Matt said...

As another exercise, here's another one of those plots like I have drawn up above (y-dna, time and Yamnaya ancestry), this time using samples from CZE, CHE, FRA, GBR: https://imgur.com/a/OnQbr4I

(Other regions removed because it gets a bit crowded).

The interesting bit to me here is the position of the R1b-M269 LN/FN Steppe rich outliers in Northern France and Switzerland, Aesch25 and CBV95. Although they're high steppe compared to later people in Western Europe (those from post 2500 BCE), they do generally fit in with their steppe level compared to the early Bohemian samples of the same time. CBV95 who is between CZE_CWC_Early and CZE_CWC_Late in time, is also pretty much intermediate between them in his steppe ancestry.

More speculatively and with a Britain and France focus, here's another plot that takes the above, but removes the CHE samples after the LN/FN and removes the CZE late CWC and late Bell_Beaker and later CZE samples: https://imgur.com/a/8Joc1J5

(As an aside, one feature of the above plots is you can really see the emergence of I1 and R1a in the British sample set quite late, around the Saxon and Viking Period; maybe this will change with a bit dataset with more post LBA samples from the Iron Age and Roman period, or maybe not).

Now this is a bit selective, but why I've done this is to sort of imagine if a scenario where we have steppe populations going steadily west, such that we have a trail like CZE_CWC_Early->FRA_Haut_De_France_LN->SouthernFranceAndBritain(&Netherlands&c.). This is probably a bit stylized, but its the essential idea of it.

If I take this model then it's plausibly the case that the same sort of pattern of change ancestry in Britain during Beaker and EBA is a continuation of the gradual enrichment of EEF ancestry seen in the other populations. In terms of the level of change, if you go from 100% in 3000BCE to 50% in 2300 BCE, then that's about 35 generations, and that implies a steady rate of about 1 in 70 offspring per generation are between LN EEF and the expanding Steppe ancestry population through this period. Although this may be an underestimate given that you've probably got ongoing migration from east to some degree (and this is probably going to be bidirectional).

And of course, this is probably a bit lumpy so in some places it will be more and others it will be less, and it probably has some decline over time as the steppe related populations get larger and the LN populations get smaller.

I guess under that model, the low level of absorption of Neolithic populations into the incoming population in Britain may fir into the wider model more, if the incoming populations always did tend to have this scenario of slow-but-steady incorporation of something like 1/70 to 1/40 people per generation and it slows over time as the expanding population gets larger and develops a more extensive (and insular?) network to draw on.

Also an updated version of my PAST4 datasheet from above with this in, in case anyone wishes to look at it in detail: https://pastebin.com/7hWaGaE5

Matt said...

Tangent to my above comment on any implications this may have for Britain and France and Western Europe picture, makes me think of Armit and Reich's preprint about whether Steppe ancestry got to Britain either at 2450 BCE in a pulse, or earlier around 2700 or 2600 BCE - https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/169610/1/AQY_RE_20_251.R1_Proof_hi.pdf Although perhaps not the 'Beaker Invasion' vs 'Steppe Drift' framing.

I tend to assume with Reich and Patterson that when either of them present some unusual hypothesis, they have found some dna that backs it.. . But maybe not, the last view of it Reich on his latest presentation gave still had very few samples around 2500 BCE in Britain, no more than in the Olalde paper and those who they did have were completely EEF, albeit two of three were from the very edge of Orkney (not exactly where we'd expect to see steppe people first appear in the Isles) - https://imgur.com/a/HYJZLfv. And it does seem unlikely that Steppe people were arriving in Britain, but their characteristic "Single Grave" ritual was absent (CBV95 had some kind of burial with a Beaker, and perhaps with a wagon, according to Bell Beaker Blogger - https://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2020/06/we.html).

("Inhumations dating to the period from around 2600‒2200 BC are thus at an absolute premium for aDNA analysis." as the Armit and Reich preprint puts it!)

This presentation from Reich was also interesting for Beakers as it did confirm that the Amesbury Archer, the so-called "King of Stonehenge", who would be the earliest sample in the sequence, was another EEF rich outlier among the Beaker complex, like the Boscombe Bowmen sample I2416 (both would've had more or less present day Basque like ratios of ancestry). But unlike the Boscombe Bowman I2417 who is more Steppe rich than any of the other Beakers in Britain, albeit not by a lot)...

Slumbery said...

@old europe

So the long controversial I6561 was re-dated. Could you refer me to a publication on this? Have they done direct radiocarbon dating on the sample?

Andrzejewski said...

@Romulus “ GAC settlers took over the territory of the Forest-Steppe groups of the late
Tripolye culture (phase CII): the whole of the Gorodsk group area and a part of the
area of the Kasperivtsy/Gordineşti, Kosenivka and Sofievka groups.”

So it’s GAC that led to the demise of Tripolye and not the Indo-Europeans?

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski “ Someone tell those bozos that there are new Sredny Stog samples from Ukraine on the way that are basically like early Corded Ware.”

Reinforcing the Sredny Stog —> Yamnaya & CWC hypothesis, isn’t it?

Simon Stevin said...

Was that early Bohemian sample belonging to Z2103 CWC or Yamnaya?

Matt said...

On another note, looking at the CWC samples with Beaker and Yamnaya and Fatyanovo for context - https://imgur.com/a/bN6Uzmb

It does seem like some of the DEU Corded Ware samples (I1536, I1538, I1534, I1544, I1532) all dated at Esperstedt from 2500-2050 BCE, are usually steppe rich in average compared to other samples of their time, with I1536 having a stonking 90% Steppe ancestry. These are all patrilineal relatives of each other (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195491).

There are also 4 other samples from the site which were in Haak's 2015 paper (as I0104, I0103, I0049, and I0106) and there are relationships between these (I0104 is related to I1540 and I1541).

So I wonder if these dates are actually wrong and these men are in fact from much earlier in the CWC than is estimated. Might be one for some analysis with Ringbauer's cousin detection methods - if they find that these guys are actually 2nd or 3rd cousins of the Czech Early CWC, then possibly they'd end up being redated. It could be that they're just steppe rich for their time of course (seems possible enough) but it also seems unusual. (Also this would be cool as would confirm more R1a in the early CWC and put paid to potential for questionable theories of "R1a followed R1b" or whatever built on very few samples, but can't argue for a result from useful consequences!).

If it can be proven that one is related to any early CWC within a bound that makes it improbable for them to be that late, then may potentially re-date all of them, due to these relationships.

(Same if they're found to be relatives to any Globular Amphora people from Czechia or Poland, again that would redate them).

Dibran said...

Hi David,

I have a question for you, not directly related to this article.

Is there any word/updates on the rumored IA-Czechia R-L1029?

It's been some time now, and I haven't seen so much as an abstract for an upcoming paper.

Did this turn out to be false? Or is this legitimate and coming soon?

weure said...

This paper has also effect on the R1b U106 story. I quote a recent reaction from Iain Mc Donald (Yahoo group R1b U106) imo worth reading:
"In short, there is an R-U106 ancient DNA sample from a Corded Ware Culture burial in Plotiště nad Labem, which is about 60 miles east of Prague, just opposite the tattoo shop. The burial was dug up in the 1960s and has been dated to between 2914 BC and 2879 BC, and is of an adult male, aged 25-30. Consequently, we are looking at the foundation of R-U106 being pushed back to before 2900 BC. This is unlikely to be the R-U106 common ancestor himself, and probably not even someone who knew him, but we are clearly looking at one of his close descendants. The TMRCA for R-U106 can't be pushed more than a few centuries before this.
Simultaneously, there is an R-L151 ancient DNA sample from another early Corded Ware Culture burial at Obříství (behind the toy shop), which is just north of Prague. First published in 2011, it is newly dated between 2911 BC and 2875 BC, and is of an adult male, aged 35-50.
Both Plotiště nad Labem (PNL001 and Obříství (OBR003) are right-sided crouched burials with their heads towards the north-west. Their only other R-U106 result is our man in Prague-Jinotice from the Unetice culture. They don't appear to have attempted typing below R-U106 for either burial. Another sample (Konobrže_26A/91, ~2900-2500 BC) is R-L151xP312, but without coverage for R-U106. Other early R-L151 burials include:
VLI011 (2881-2669 BC) xU106, xP312
VLI015 (2881-2669 BC) xU106, xP312
KO1002 (2835-2485 BC) xU106, xP312
STD002 (2882-2673 BC) xP312, xU106
VLI085 (2862-2576 BC) xU106, no coverage at P312
VLI092 (2882-2669 BC) xP312, xU106
Consequently, we are looking at a sizeable, established population of R-L151 in Bohemia during the early part of the Corded Ware Culture probably well before 2700 BC. R-L151 probably predates R-U106 by between 50 and 200 years.
So we are probably talking about ~3000 BC for R-U106 and ~3100 BC for R-L151. There's the possibility to stretch these dates perhaps 2-3 centuries further back in time without too much problem, but beyond that you start to stretch the limits of TMRCAs from modern Y-DNA and you would start to expect both more downstream clades identified in (post-)CWC remains and more basal R-L151/R-U106 clades found in modern populations further east.
Now comes the opinion part. These two results are earlier than just about anyone expected any R-L151 and indeed R-U106 results. They impart big changes to the origin story of R-L151.
Previously, the earliest attested R-L151 burial was circa 2550 BC from the upper Danube (R-U152, Bell Beaker), and the previous R-U106 burials were either our Prazan Unetice fellow, RISE98, or Lille Beddinge in the southern tip of Sweden - both from some time near 2200 BC. This pushes our R-U106 ancestry back most of a millennium to close to its foundation, meaning we can rule out any ideas of R-L151 and R-U106 not taking part in the first stages of the Corded Ware Culture. While R-L151 is later mostly found in western Europe (regions occupied by the Bell Beaker Culture [R-P312] and Single Grave Culture [R-U106]), these dates now places the foundation of R-L151 right at the start of the CWC, and significantly further east.
Another alternative hypothesis - that R-L151 and R-L52 were in western Europe before the Corded Ware Culture but had yet to be sampled - doesn't seem supported by the absence of R-L52 among pre-CWC European Y-DNA, which is now substantial, or by the autosomal DNA of these newly published burials. These new R-L151 CWC burials from Bohemia have a high fraction of autosomal DNA from the Eurasian steppe. This fraction is consistently high in the early-CWC men, and high in 10 out of the 14 early-CWC women. Hence, we can tie the first presence of R-L151 in Europe to the influx of a male-dominated DNA of steppe origin."

weure said...

II
Hence, I suspect we can date and place the initial R-U106 starburst somewhere close to the Czech Republic. It has to be slightly older than 2900 BC, by implication it potentially began even further east. That then implies that R-L151 and R-L52 most likely formed in the "old" country to the east, but the absence of any basal clades of R-L151 or R-L52 in eastern Europe or western Asia means that they can't have been there long or built up a large population before their emigration. At the time, R-L52 was a small family branch, rather than an overbearing empire like the R-Z2105-dominated Yamnaya culture. Our ancestors were probably one of the hangers-on, and perhaps from a culture that hasn't been well-sampled yet.
The placement and timings also (weakly) suggest to me a migration over the north of the Carpathian mountains, rather than south up the Danube, as other have posited (Eupedia is a high-profile example). This is a point I've never been quite sure on, but the north migration has always made more sense to me, and I think this adds to that evidence.
So where does that leave us? This doesn't change the overall picture, namely that our ancestors migrated from the steppelands of easternmost Europe (the former USSR countries) to Europe in the Corded Ware Culture, in a wave of migration that began shortly before 2900 BC and reached the Atlantic shortly after 2700 BC. It doesn't change the fact that our ancestors then stayed in central Europe or migrated to Scandinavia, while our R-P312 brethren formed the Bell Beaker reflux and expanded to the British Isles, Iberia, Bavaria and the Italian peninsula. What it does change are the relation of the individual haplogroups to that chronology."

weure said...

III
This is my take on the chronology. A lot of it is interpretive, so it doesn't come with much scientific rigour. A lot of it is gut feeling and subject to moderate change, even as we unravel more about the implications of these burials. The broad dates probably lie very close to the central estimates from my 2016 work:
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~mcdonald/genetics/table.html
The R-M269 to R-L151 chronology is still nebulous. R-L151 now probably formed between about 3300 BC and 3000 BC, and I suspect somewhere around 3100 BC, probably somewhere in the broad steppelands of easternmost Europe. Very speculatively, we might be talking about one family within a village, or a clan forming a single village, that might have been part of a wider sub-culture with loose association with the Sredny Stog culture (the culture immediately predating the Yamnaya). For whatever reason, this family or clan decided to move westwards. We don't know that reason, but it has been previously linked to the spread of the plague (Y. pestis) to Europe - our ancestors might have been fleeing the instability it caused, or were taking advantage of its effects in Europe, or both. However, our family grew rapidly from this point and for the next several centuries.
R-U106 probably formed some time between about 3200 BC and 2950 BC. I suspect somewhere close to 3050 BC. Depending on the exact time, it may already have been present in the initial migrant population, or our R-U106 ancestor may have been born during this migration period. Either way, it formed before the Corded Ware A horizon swept much of Europe, so it was early on in the migration.
I suspect that the first few generations of R-L151 remained tied together at the start, but that they parted ways somewhere very close to the Czech Republic, around 2900 BC. The first indication of geographical differences we see in R-U106 is R-Z156, and we have a descendant R-Z156 as part of the Unetice Culture appearing later in that millennium in Prague itself. So I suspect the nascent R-Z156 and the ancestors of R-S1688 (and its downstream R-U198) were left to their own devices in what is now the Czech Republic, while most of the rest of R-L151 kept pushing west. This is very approximate, because we don't sample many of the surrounding nations well.

weure said...

In that westward expansion, I suspect that the ancestors of R-Z18 took the most northerly passage, ending up in the Battle Axe culture of southern Scandinavia. R-P312 probably took a more southernly passage to the Rhine Valley, and from there to the Atlantic and north-western Mediterranean coasts. Most of the rest of R-L48, many of the minor R-U106 clades, and probably our smaller brother R-S1194, probably ended up somewhere around the Single Grave culture of north-west continental Europe, especially in the regions around northern and central Germany. However, they seem to have stayed east of the P312-dominated Rhine valley until the demise of the Bell Beaker culture (~1800 BC). This R-P312 versus R-U106xP312 boundary therefore largely reflects the geographic split between the Nordic and Atlantic Bronze Ages, with a more complicated situation occurring inland.
The effects of this earlier chronology on downstream clades need some further thought. The influence here is likely to be less, as the dates don't become much more precise, and don't change as much. However, the metallurgical links supplanted from the late Unetice Culture into the early Nordic Bronze Age in the period leading up to 1700 BC probably deserve some extra attention. Clades like R-L47 could become important in this role if the timings can be made to work. Equally, this could be a source of the sporadic R-Z156 results we see scattered throughout Scandinavia that I've never got my head quite around. So there is a lot to think on."

weure said...

V
Mc Donald comes close to Jockehövel (2013):
"In Germany, as an integral part of central Europe, there are numerous cultural manifestations in the EBA, which, although having their own regionally specific character, when taken average rich single graves and their associated together show distinct common features. These are evident in the appearance of above-votive depositions and hoards with new kinds of ceremonial weapons, such as solid-hilted daggers (Vollgriffdolche) and halberds, as well as various kinds of axe. From this it can be inferred that around 2000–1800 bc a leading social group (‘chieftains’) emerged, in farming communities that stretched from the lower Danube to southern Scandinavia, the south of England (Wessex culture), and Brittany, and were in close contact with one another. Their common features are evident not only on the physical level, as seen cross-regionally in very similar object forms and burial rites, but also in the spread of new technologies, like the introduction of tin-bronze, and the advent of complex metalworking techniques. EBA cultural groups are like ‘islands’ in central Europe, particularly near important deposits of copper, tin, and salt. Between these ‘islands’ are wide stretches of land that still continued in the Late Neolithic tradition. The most distinctive culture group is the Aunjetitz or Únětice culture (named after Únětice near Prague) (2300–2200 to 1600–1500 bc). Of more than just regional significance, this culture spreads from the middle Danube (south-west Slovakia, northern Lower Austria) across Moravia and Bohemia to central Germany, and as far away as Silesia and Great Poland."

People of the were present in the so called Sögel-Wohlde culture, this is imo the hub of Unetice and connected R1b U106 lines and the Nordic Bronze age (as mentioned by Mc Donald).

Again Jockenhövel (2013):
"The Sögel-Wohlde culture leads to a distinct cultural development that spreads from the eastern lowlands across Westphalia to Jutland. It is characterized particularly by inhumations in burial mounds and at this stage—unlike the contemporaneous Tumulus culture of central Europe—is only known from male graves. They are identified by their grave goods: short swords or daggers, flanged axes, heart-shaped flint arrowheads, pins, and occasionally small rings formed of spirally wound gold wire.
The Rastorf (east Holstein) burial mound, raised over a megalithic grave, represents a short-lived development at the start of the Nordic Bronze Age. The oldest male grave with its triangular dagger belongs to the EBA; above it there is an early solid-hilted sword (of Sögel or Apa type); the latest burial contains a Wohlde short sword."

alex said...

"GeorgeKatz said...
It's amusing to think that the dominant group of Western Europe started out as a humble refugee people fleeing for their lives before turning into the genocidal maniacs popularized in the press."

Isn't that how many population movements of the Migration Period came to be? Necessity and opportunism are strong historical forces.

StP said...

Old Europe,

A Linderholm,
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63138-w

In Pełczyska, Małopolska (SE Poland) 3 x BBC.

SKRiBHa said...

@Andrzejewski
@Genos “ For example, R1b L151 in west and R1a Z645 in the east, probably spoke different IE languages.”

Satem v. Centum


CWC R1b L151 = Proto-Celtic
CWC R1a Z645 = Proto-Slavic

Where at that time were Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balts, since the oldest CWC comes from Małopolska and the south of it, see ancestors of CWC R1a Z93 Fatianovo = Proto-??? ?

What if the so-called centum was just a secondary devoicing, see CWC R1b L151 = Proto-Celtic contacts with NIE peoples west of Moravia?

SKRiBHa said...

@Romulus
(…) I suspect the rise of the Beaker culture was in some part related to an early CWC group gaining knowledge of copper working from a previous farmer society and then exploiting that to great effect. The rise of Unetice has to do with knowledge of bronze working. Unetice derived bronze work has ties to the British Isles, Italy, and Mycenean Greece, but not Iberia where bronze work arrived independently along the Mediterranean and interestingly they spoke non-indo european language. (...)

It sounds logical and could be very likely! Check this:

(…) My current version of formation of the PIE is logically related to the appearance of the first burial mounds / barrows / kurgans / Go’R+Ka / hill in Varna / Suvorovo, see:

Conflict or Coexistence: Steppe and Agricultural Societies in the Early Copper Age of the Northwest Black Sea Area
Blagoje Govedarica

According to this assumption, PIE would have been a language of the first builders of the hill barrows / kurgans from Varna / Suvrovo,... and even earlier a language of Miners / Górników /, Metallurgists / Hutników and Blacksmiths / Kowali from the Balkans from Vinca, Rudna Glava, or Ai Bunar, etc. (…)

I have presented more data here:

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-pie-homeland-controversy-june-2021.html?showComment=1629812861271#c1763298311345031019

Genos Historia said...

@Davidski,

Btw, a few years ago, you were saying I6561 is a stand in for Sredny Stog. You were saying they had significant farmer admix. You can pardon people's confusion.

But if anyone reads this blog, they should have heard many times Early Corded Ware is basically the same as Yamnaya. Sometimes it takes a few years to update oneself.

It turns out the crazy Russian Archi was right about I6561 the whole time. He is Srubnaya not Sredny Stog. I suspected this too as his farmer ancestry matched Globular amphora too well to be from a period before GAC existed.

Tiger Mike said...

@Davidski

Where do you read that P312 was 100% of Central Europe and what do you define as Central Europe? I'm not sure the Bell Beakers exterminated all other males in any large region Central Europe or anything close to that. It is true the North-Central Bell Beakers themselves were heavily R1b-P312. I just don't see where they were ever completely dominant in what is now Poland.. so why should P312 have ever been dominant in Poland?

P312 may not be seen as a Germanic marker, per se, but it clearly had a significant presence in Germanic tribal areas. Even in today's populations, the Myres "R1b ... Central and Western Europe" study has the modern ratio of P312 to U106 in Germany as 1 to 1.06. Myres shows that U106 and P312 each range from 15 to 25% of the population in Germany.

I guess I just don't see how we can conclude R1b-P312 disappeared or had a sudden decline east of Germany and as we see, 1151>P312 is still significant in Germany along with L151>U106. I'm sure there was a decline of P312 in the south of Germany when the more mixed Germanic tribes pushed south into the Roman ex-Celtic region. Nevertheless, P312 persists until today there.

Rob said...

@ Matt

1. The Beaker Colonisation hypothesis: 2450 bc; vs
2. The Steppe Drift hypothesis; 2700 bc

# 2 would be difficult, given that BB only arrives in Britain after 2500 bce

''This accumulating evidence suggests that people from across many regions of Britain were potentially implicated in the construction and use of such monuments. Indeed, rather than representing a cultural floruit of populous regional chiefdoms, these ambitious construction projects may instead reflect cultural responses to a period of existential crisis for Neolithic communities, drawing on extensive networks of people from small communities dispersed over wide regions.''


Yeah nice.

Rob said...

Essentially, the steppe migration was a second, even wider wave of productive economy

Davidski said...

@Dibran

I've already said as much as I know about this sample. You just have to wait for the relevant paper to come out. There should be another one about Bohemia soon.

Davidski said...

@Genos

Yeah, well that sample was C14 dated, and mixture models actually did suggest that it had less WHG than expected for Sintashta-related samples, so it seemed like it was part Balkan or something.

I can only work with what I'm given, and it's hard to argue with a seemingly reliable C14 date.

Dospaises said...

It's funny how these researchers point out things we have understood for years We observe a closer phylogenetic relationship between the Y chromosome lineages found in early CW and BB than in either late CW or Yamnaya and BB. R1b-L151 is the most common Y-lineage among early CW males (6 of 11, 55%) and one branch ancestral to R1b-P312 (Fig. 4A), the dominant Y-lineage in BB (5). Although it is not possible to determine whether the P312 mutation(s) occurred in one of the early CW R1b-L151 males from Bohemia, we note that most Bohemian BB males are further derived at R1b-L2/S116 (R1b1a1a2b1), in contrast to BB males from England, several of whom are derived at R1b-L21(R1b1a1a2c1), showing that English and Bohemian BB males cannot be descendants of one another, but rather diversified in parallel. A scenario of R1b-P312 originating somewhere between Bohemia and England, possibly in the vicinity of the Rhine (66, 67), followed by an expansion northwest and east is compatible with our current understanding of the phylogeography of ancient R1b-L151–derived lineages. On another note, I wonder if the fools that kept trying to maintain that R1b-L151 originated in Western Europe still can't come to acknowledge the truth.

Dospaises said...

I have been waiting years for a publication like this one and the upcoming study with new Sredny Stog samples from Ukraine on the way that are basically like early Corded Ware.

Dospaises said...

These researchers did something important that previous researchers would not do when analyzing Y-DNA data - they noted when R1b-L151 had no coverage @P312 and @U106. However, they did not mention the phylogenetic equivalents of R1b-L151. It would be a big discovery to find a specimen that is positive for R1b-L151 yet negative for a phylogenetic equivalent. It would also be a big discovery if a specimen is found that is positive for P312 but negative for Z1904/CTS12684/PF6548.

Davidski said...

@JBS

I really wouldn't bother. These sorts of people don't respond well to logic.

You're going to see ever more ridiculous theories from Angela and the gang, especially when they're boxed in by facts with nowhere to go.

And it's not disdain that you're noticing, but panic and hysteria.

Matt said...

@Rob, yes that's the argument, whether steppe ancestry arrives with Beaker burials or precedes it slightly.

Simon Stevin said...

@Davidski

Speaking of facts, that Afanasievo sample I6222, he was positive for R1b-L52 correct? The contamination only affected the identification of the mitochondrial haplogroup I thought. AlfonsoVIII over on Eupedia (bless him he’s fighting the good fight) said that several of I6222’s SNPs had been analyzed by Anthony and Kandell, and they’ve verified it’s authenticity. Doesn’t that right there defeat Gaska’s whole narrative? We have a 100% Yamnaya derived sample positive for a clade directly ancestral to L151/P312. Either way he has Steppe autosomal DNA lol. L51 and Z2103 share a common root in L23, having mutated only 6100 years from each other, what the hell, these people are mental.

Davidski said...

@Simon

Contamination is measured with the data from the mtDNA and X chromosome, but it has the potential to affect any part of the genome, including the Y chromosome.

In any case, it's now obvious that L51 and L151 moved west into Central and Western Europe from the Pontic-Caspian steppe or nearby forest steppe.

See that's probably why we're now seeing a shift from arguments against these obvious facts to some bizarre attacks against the Corded Ware culture, as if it was actually a threat to anyone.

vAsiSTha said...

Progress like ancestry gave a huge chunk of ancestry to Yamnaya, early bohemia CW, early baltic CW, sredni Stog and so on. The extreme samples of bohemia CW early are almost like yamnaya.

We also know from samples like RK1007 and SA6001 (or 6010 cant remember) that this progress like ancestry survived till 3000bce. It is clear to me that this is the type of ancestry which spread far and wide to give rise to all these populations.

When we are talking about 70-80% ancestry, it cannot mathematically all be female mediated.

Target: Yamnaya_UKR
Distance: 3.6949% / 0.03694935
80.2 RUS_Progress_En
10.6 UKR_N
9.0 UKR_Globular_Amphora
0.2 RUS_Karelia_HG

Target: Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
Distance: 3.2745% / 0.03274548
82.0 RUS_Progress_En
12.2 UKR_N
5.8 UKR_Globular_Amphora

Target: Corded_Ware_Baltic_early
Distance: 4.3653% / 0.04365311
67.8 RUS_Progress_En
15.8 UKR_N
12.8 UKR_Globular_Amphora
3.6 RUS_Karelia_HG

Target: Corded_Ware_CZE_early
Distance: 3.2155% / 0.03215453
58.2 RUS_Progress_En
26.8 UKR_Globular_Amphora
12.6 UKR_N
2.4 RUS_Karelia_HG

Davidski said...

Progress EN is at best a proxy for the real source of eastern ancestry in Yamnaya.

Hunter-gatherers like Yamnaya already existed on the Volga far to the north of Progress around 5,000 BCE, and this is the key to understanding the origins of Sredny Stog, Yamnaya and early Corded Ware.

In reality, Sredny Stog is where all of the really important and interesting things begin.

old europe said...


@Vasishta

Yes PIE is from Progress or the Ukraine neolithic/Skeyla/ Sredni Stog/Mariupol cultural horizon.
These are the two only contenders left I think.

vAsiSTha said...

@rob

Progress has no Anatolian and no WHG. It did not come from sredni stog and you will not find anything like it in sredni stog.

Rob said...

We need to have a clear understanding of what the Progress/Vonuchka people actually represent - a brief epiphenomenon related to eastern Sredni Stog. That is, they moved down from the Volga-Don region toward the Caucasus ~ 4300 bce, and might have been there for a few generations. They even represent monuments of people who died during seasonal trecks. Whatever the case, they dont seem to have persisted past 3800 bce.

IMO, the ultimate genesis of PIE, if one agrees with a version of the steppe hypothesis, is the Mariupol horizon, representing a variety of hunter-gatherer groupings from the Dnieper to the Volga who came to share some common ideologies in the wake of Neolithic advance, adopting certain elements but nevertheless maintaining distinctive, even oppositional, identity. The interesting thing is, until late CT and GAC, they weren't in direct physical contact with Farmers, but might have received the aforementioned influences via another network of semi-neolithicized hunter-gatherers - Grebeniki, Bug-Dniester, etc. The latter were eventually swept up or incorporated in the Farmer advance after 5000 bce.
Although Mariupol begins in the Dnieper, the bulk of it lies further east. Hence the the main autosomic component is the oft-quoted CHG/EHG, and the indirectness of Farmer contact explains the modest EEF admixture
But this is quite a different model to past visions of pastoralists just emerging in the distant Volga out of the blue and sweeping across Europe

Davidski said...

Progress does seem like it has admixture from the north, because the two Progress samples and the one from Vonyuchka show variable levels of EHG.

So progress might be a very recently mixed population, and if so then probably between Volga foragers, North Caucasian foragers, and also Meshoko.

Rob said...

@ Vasistha

“Progress has no Anatolian and no WHG.”

That’s stating the obvious. But whilst interesting; the Progress population itself is ultimately a dead end


“It did not come from sredni stog and you will not find anything like it in sredni stog.”

Yea it has something unique about it perhaps; but the bulk of it is from the north

Matt said...

@Rob, just to flesh my comment on the "Steppe Drift" idea, I think the suggestion from Armit and Reich is that steppe ancestry rich migrants might have been arriving before the Beaker Complex arrived 2450BCE, and perhaps as early as 2700 BCE. Pre-2450 BCE people being somehow a bit more invisible in the archaeological record of burials so far because they either got assimilated into the late neolithic British culture which practiced cremation, or they continued single burial (without later full Beaker package additions and more like the early SGC/CWC package) but avoided obvious burial sites. Then in that Beaker proper is a phenomenon around 200 years (only about 6-8 generations!) later that is the expansion of this specific patrilineal clan with specific prestige goods, religion and alliances that make it strong/culturally dominant and it "mops up" earlier steppe ancestry.

I have no idea if any of this is plausible or not though, frankly. The simplest hypothesis would be that if the burials aren't found yet, they just aren't there of course.

On the other hand in defense the early Beaker period in Britain when it does become archaeologically visible does seem to have disproportionate numbers of outliers who would be modelled as 1/2 or 1/4 between EEF and the rest of Beaker complex, and one of these that's published, I2416 does fit pretty well as between Atlantic farmer and other BBC (though this doesn't necessarily mean local ancestry) and the Amesbury Archer might too. And the earliest Beaker samples in Britain have mean dates from 2350 BCE onwards, a couple hundred years later than the first supposed Beaker samples in France and Czech Republic, CBV95 and the three females here, mean dates all around 2500 BCE. Albeit these are mean dates only. There just is little adna in Britain between 3000 to 2400 and less in Southern Britain.

(Another sort of visualization of these trends: https://imgur.com/a/jLTke4r)

vAsiSTha said...

@rob

"Whatever the case, they dont seem to have persisted past 3800 bce."

They did persist past 3800bce. Check samples rk1007 and sa6001(or 6010). Date between 3500-3000bce iirc

EastPole said...

“The genetic and cultural impact of the Steppe migration into Europe” Kristian Kristiansen

https://www.academia.edu/51082974/The_genetic_and_cultural_impact_of_the_Steppe_migration_into_Europe?email_work_card=title

Rob said...

@ Vasistha
Progress ancestry also persists in Steppe Majkop, and Yamnaya of course, I meant to say as an independent cultural entity.

Rob said...

@ Matt

It's certainly possible, because the CWC-BB complex arrived to lower Rhine ca2800 bc. Early contacts with Brittany & north/western Iberia is fairly clear, whether it also reached the west Atlantic coast at this early juncture is more difficult to say.

SKRiBHa said...

@EastPole (and All except ‘Rob’)
“The genetic and cultural impact of the Steppe migration into Europe” Kristian Kristiansen

https://www.academia.edu/51082974/The_genetic_and_cultural_impact_of_the_Steppe_migration_into_Europe

Quote:

(…) The availability of new materials and pastures stimulated the swift spread of the Yamnaya culture from the Pontic Steppe through the Carpathian basin into Western Europe and towards the Urals into Western Eurasia. (…)

End of quote.

For Kristiansen Yamna(ya) still is CWC / Fatyanovo / Abasevo / Balanovo / Sintashta / Andronovo and so on...

Is R1b U106 Proto-Germanic?

CWC R1b L151 = Proto-Celtic (Centum)
CWC R1a Z645 = Proto-Slavic (Satem)

Where at that time were Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balts, since the oldest CWC comes from Małopolska and the south of it, see ancestors of CWC R1a Z93 Fatianovo = Proto-??? ?

What if the so-called centum was just a secondary devoicing, see CWC R1b L151 = Proto-Celtic contacts with NIE peoples west of Moravia?

Davidski said...

@All

I haven't looked closely at the new Unetice data yet.

Can Bohemian Unetice be described as more or less a mixture of Bell Beakers and local Corded Ware-derived groups?

Matt said...

In terms of the y-dna not really (no I2a? I don't know the specific subclades). In my 3-way models, in terms of fit of steppe ancestry then average for whole Unetice set is about 60:40 between Bell_Beaker_Late and Corded_Ware_Late, but slightly richer in WHG (60:40 Bell_Beaker_Late and Corded_Ware_Late is 14% Iron_Gates, while Unetice is 16% Iron_Gates in my model).

Davidski said...

The extra WHG in Unetice is probably from some non-Beaker near and far migration into Bohemia.

There's I2a in early Bohemian Corded Ware, and also R1b-U106. But the Unetice R1b-U106 may or may not be from early Bohemian Corded Ware.

Matt said...

The I2a seems to not really be present through that period. I think there's one minority G2a as well but that's not massively important. IDK, they could be from local groups, but its not like they'd have to be; it could be like the autosomal ancestry is mostly local and lots of the patrilineages are from the south and east or something. It doesn't seem like there's any reason it must be one way or the other to me, but perhaps other commentors will see some clear signal of something.

Dibran said...

Hi David,

Thank you for the quick response. Hopefully it's legit. I'm sure you'll post about it here on your blog once it's released. Thanks!

Davidski said...

@Matt

The I2a seems to not really be present through that period.

Which period?

Matt said...

The Czech Late Corded Ware set, although there are a couple in the HG rich Poland Corded Ware boys around 2370 BCE.

Matt said...

I wouldn't discount it though (Unetice being late CWC+late Bell Beaker); it could well be that the shifts in y-dna just reflects shifts in which lineages have the elite status and actually there's a wider set of populations living in these regions in the time.

Then the shift from CWC->Beaker then Beaker->Unetice lineages just reflects that at some point the Beaker R1b comes to dominates the archaeologically visible grave sites, and then it comes to be Unetice with this more even mix of I2a, R1b and R1a and some G2a. Which might reflect that its change from narrower networks to wider ones where there's more potential for specialisation in trade and bronzeworking and cross lineage alliances in war and such.

weure said...

Can Bohemian Unetice be described as more or less a mixture of Bell Beakers and local Corded Ware-derived groups?

Fully: yes.

See the works of Harald Meller (the guy of Nebra Sky Dic).

This recent book gives a nice overview:https://www.amazon.nl/Die-Welt-Himmelsscheibe-von-Nebra/dp/3806242232

Meller states that in the biggest graves of the Mittel Elbe Saale kings in Diekau for example there are reference to Corded Ware cultures and Bell Beaker. So seems like an ultimate blend of the two culture.

Slumbery said...

@Davidski

"The extra WHG in Unetice is probably from some non-Beaker near and far migration into Bohemia."

Beaker Netherland seems to have even more extra HG ancestry than Bohemian Unetice, so Beaker groups like that were around. It has the wrong Y-DNA composition however.

At the other hand Unetice Poland is nearly identical in HG ancestry to Unetice Bohemia and the samples labeled as POL_EBA have a lot more. Particularly I6579 packs a ton of HG ancestry and that sample from nearby Silesia.

Ryan said...

I think Unetice is probably the ancestor of Proto-Italo-Celtic, which would then have broken up into Italic, Celtic, Ligurian and Lusitanian under the Urnfield culture. I'm not convinced Unetice spoke a Beaker-derived language though given the external inputs mentioned above and the antiquity of the initial Beaker expansion. Thoughts?

Rob said...

Seems like quite a bit of flux going on

From R1a-M417+/-L664 -> Z280+
L151 * -> U106

Big shift to various I2 lineages, combining data from all studies, incl
I2c (? Boleraz/ Baden origin)
I2a1a1a (Baden -Remedello - Swizz LN type)
I2b - relatively rare in ancient & modern Pops
I2a2a - they havent clarified the exact subclade, could be Wartberg or GAC type, for ex.

Genos Historia said...

Is the R1a M417 (xZ645) actually L664? I recall the M417* samples in Germany and Poland came out being in the L664 lineage.

Has anyone tested whether these new Czech samples are L664?

I remember Davidski saying L151 and L664 were in Western Corded Ware. He must have had news of this ancient DNA. It is interesting L664 still exists in Western Europe.

Davidski said...

Yeah, these markers from early Corded Ware Bohemia and Germany later ended up in Northwestern Europe, especially in Germanic populations.

That includes both the R1b and R1a lineages.

So I would caution against these bold hypotheses based on a few samples about Corded Ware groups with different lineages exterminating each other, when in fact, it looks like they migrated together.

ambron said...

At least now it is no surprise that the Czech L1029 from the Iron Age was autosomal Scandinavian, since in this study the Czechs from the Bronze Age proved to be autosomal Scandinavians.

Draft Dozen said...

OT
Cosmopolitanism at the Roman Danubian Frontier, Slavic Migrations, and the Genomic Formation of Modern Balkan Peoples
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.458211v1

Tiger Mike said...

@Simon

"Speaking of facts, that Afanasievo sample I6222, he was positive for R1b-L52 correct?"

L52 is in the P310 phylogenetic equivalent block. This sample has been called positive for three SNPs in the R1b-P310 block.

This sample was ancestral for downstream SNPs and positive for upstream SNPs. Everything is phylogenetically consistent with an R-P310* call although I think L52 itself was actually a no call.

A modern day P310* person is rare, rare thing so that makes contamination very unlikely.

R1b-P310 in Mongolia at 3100 BC with Afansievo is indeed interesting. It would lead one to think that the R1b-P310>L151 in Early Corded Ware at 2900 BC have a source in common with Afansievo.

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/y-dna-haplotree/R;name=R-P310

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

Blogger Draft Dozen said...
OT
Cosmopolitanism at the Roman Danubian Frontier, Slavic Migrations, and the Genomic Formation of Modern Balkan Peoples
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.458211v1


Between this data and the new Croatian data, it's becoming evident that I2a-L621 was absent in the Balkans until Slavic migrations.

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

There is a ton of E1b in this study:

. Consistent with this, we model the ancestry of this Balkans Iron Age Cluster
as predominantly deriving from Iron Age (IA) groups from nearby areas in the Balkans, with
67% Aegean Bronze Age-related ancestry and the remainder Slovenia Iron Age-related ancestry
(Figure 2; Supplementary section 12.1). A local origin is supported by a high frequency of Ychromosome lineage E-V13, which has been hypothesized to have experienced a Bronze-to-Iron
Age expansion in the Balkans and is found in its highest frequencies in the present-day Balkans
17. We interpret this cluster as the descendants of local Balkan Iron Age populations living at
Viminacium, where they represented an abundant ancestry group during the Early Imperial and
later periods (~47% of sampled individuals from the 1-550 CE).

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

Uh Oh , R1b-U152 crew and their near eastern slave theory is not going to like this:

. These results suggest that immigration from
the east was a common feature across urban centers in the Roman Empire, including in border
areas and large cities/military outposts such as Viminacium. Individuals with Eastern
Mediterranean ancestry could have high social status: 3 out of the 4 individuals buried in two
sarcophagi (each containing a male-female pair) with exceptionally rich grave goods at the Rit
necropolis in Viminacium belonged to the Near Eastern-related cluster, while the remaining
one belonged to the Balkans Iron Age-related cluster. This kind of burial was common in the
Eastern Roman settlements for aristocratic members of society 20. Individuals from this cluster
were also more likely to be inhumated in a wooden coffin rather than freely buried, which could
also be an indication of higher social prestige.

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

Goths bring I1 to the Balkans but first the mixed with Sarmatian related R1a on the Steppe.


A cluster of 10 individuals from these necropoli is shifted in PCA from the Balkans
Iron Age-related cluster toward Central/Northern European ancient and present-day populations
(Figure 1B). This group which we refer to as Central/Northern European cluster, could be
modeled as deriving from two main sources: ~38% related to the local Balkans Iron Age
substratum (we use the Balkans Iron Age-related cluster as a proxy for this type of ancestry)
and 50% Central/Northern European ancestry (we use as a proxy individuals from a roughly
contemporaneous Langobard-associated cemetery in Hungary 25). To obtain a fitting model, a
significant proportion of ancestry (~14%) related to contemporaneous nomadic steppe groups
(proxied in our analysis by Late Sarmatians from the Eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe 26) is also
needed (Figure 2; Supplementary section 12.6). This is even more evident in two individuals
from the Pecine necropolis in Viminacium (referred to as Steppe cluster), who could be
modelled as deriving ~43% of ancestry from the Balkans Iron Age-related cluster and 57%
ancestry from Late Sarmatian-related Steppe groups (Figure 2; Supplementary section 12.7). Ychromosome lineages also provide evidence for gene-flow, as 5 of 7 males in the
Central/Northern European and Steppe cluster belonged to two lineages not found in the
Balkans earlier: haplogroup I1 with a strong Northern European distribution and haplogroup
R1a-Z645, common in the Steppe during the Iron Age and early 1st millennium CE 26–28.


I1 296803 CNE cluster
.. 190117 CNE cluster
.. 44962 CNE cluster
.. 27924 CNE cluster
R1a,R-M459,R-M198,R-M417,R-Z645 560025 CNE cluster
.. 383445 CNE cluster
I1,I-Z58,I-Z59,I-CTS8647,Z60,Z140,Z141 445842 CNE cluster
I1,I-Z58,I-Z59,I-CTS8647,Z60,Z140,Z141 669834 CNE cluster
R1b,R-M269,R-L23,R-Z2103,R-M12149,R-Z2106,R-Z2108,R-Z2110,R-CTS7556,R-Y5592,R-CTS1450 333954 CNE cluster

R1a,R-M459,R-M198,R-M417,R-Z645 228598 Steppe cluster
.. 142712 Steppe cluster





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

@Davidski

You will like this from page 17 of the supplementary info:



3. One for which PCs were computed using 407 present-day North-Europeans genotyped on the HO array (Figure S9). We designed this PCA to reveal more recent drift that could separate 3rd-6th centuries CE individuals from the 10th century CE individuals. These two groups of individuals yielded a similar position in the Western-Eurasian PCA (Figure1; Figure S7) but had significantly different ancestral origins when modelling using qpWave/qpAdm (Supplementary Section 11 & Supplementary Section 12). The design of this PCA was inspired by the Eurogenes blog:

(https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/10/tollense-valley-bronze-age-warriors.html)

Arza said...

@ Davidski

Congratulations!

(Supplement, page 17 & 18)

@ Romulus

Bulgaria_EBA, Kazanlak, Tell Kran, Y-haplogroup I2a1a2b (I2a-L621 or equivalent), mtDNA U8b1b (courtesy of Svetoslav Stamov).

Copper Axe said...

Little shoutout to the big man himself in the supplementaries:

"We designed this PCA to reveal more recent drift that could separate 3rd-6th centuries CE individuals from the 10th century CE individuals. These two groups of individuals yielded a similar position in the Western-Eurasian PCA (Figure1; Figure S7) but had significantly different ancestral origins when modelling using qpWave/qpAdm (Supplementary Section 11 & Supplementary Section 12). The design of this PCA was inspired by the Eurogenes blog:
(https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/10/tollense-valley-bronze-age-warriors.html).
"

Genos Historia said...

Interesting. I think it came from I2a rich groups in Bronze age Central Europe. Slavs have ancestry from them so it would make sense Slavs got it from them.

Looks like E-V13 was most common haplorgoup in Serbia right before Slavs. This was expected actually.

Genos Historia said...

@Davidski,

Yeah, I like how Western IEs derive from Western Corded Ware and Eastern IEs derive probably from Eastern Corded Ware. It is simple.

Michalis Moriopoulos said...

David got a shout-out in the Danubian Limes paper!

"3. One for which PCs were computed using 407 present-day North-Europeans genotyped on the HO array (Figure S9). We designed this PCA to reveal more recent drift that could separate 3rd-6th centuries CE individuals from the 10th century CE individuals. These two groups of individuals yielded a similar position in the Western-Eurasian PCA (Figure1; Figure S7) but had significantly different ancestral origins when modelling using qpWave/qpAdm (Supplementary Section 11 & Supplementary Section 12). The design of this PCA was inspired by the Eurogenes blog:
(https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/...-warriors.html)."

How cool is that?

weure said...

@Ryan the Russian linguist Prof. Kuzmenko, specialized in Germanic, has written a nice paper about this (2011)

Link:
https://iling.spb.ru/pdf/alp/alp_VII_1.pdf

It's in Russian, the summary is in English (page 30), I made a snapshot:
https://postimg.cc/ZC6L5VGt

Rob said...

Interesting, the Twins from Slavic period Kuline R1b-DF99 (under L51) had southwest European ancestry.
Others were were I2a1b-CTS10228, J2a1, E-V13

Rob said...

@ Arza

''Bulgaria_EBA, Kazanlak, Tell Kran, Y-haplogroup I2a1a2b (I2a-L621 or equivalent), mtDNA U8b1b (courtesy of Svetoslav Stamov).''

The I2a in Tell Kran is not equivalent to L621
Rather, it is the same as the I2as (but shifted nomenclature from 2016 -> 2020 ISOGG) seen in Bulgaria LC/EBA/ Yamnaya, Ukraine N, Mariupol, BB Hungary, Iron Age Daunians.
Seems to be a Balkan-Anatolian IE-assoc marker, but not became uncommon by modern Era

ambron said...

Interestingly, neither the early medieval West Slavic (RISE569) nor East Slavic (RISE568) genome was a good proxy for the early Slavs.

Davidski said...

@All

I'll check out that Balkan/Danubian preprint tomorrow and start a new thread about it.

Arza said...

@ Rob

He's using anno file with 2020 ISOGG nomenclature.

v37.2 Bul6 Bulgaria_Beli_Breyag_EBA I2a2
v42.4 Bul6 Bulgaria_BeliBreyag_EBA I2a2
v44.3 Bul6 Bulgaria_BeliBreyag_EBA I2a1b1

Stamov's anno file - Bulgaria_BeliBreyag_EBA I2a1b(xI2a1b(...).

sds said...

@ ambron,
"Interestingly, neither the early medieval West Slavic (RISE569) nor East Slavic (RISE568) genome was a good proxy for the early Slavs."

Maybe our perception of what is a good proxy for Slavs is wrong, or perhaps there is no one good proxy for all early Slavs?
Here's David's post on these two,
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/05/two-early-slavs-from-bohemia.html

What I find interesting is the inference that these two female samples (too bad no y-dna) so closely resembled samples from the Bell Beakers that they were initially mistaken as such. Now, we hear rumors of an Iron Age sample of L1029 from where? Surprise from Bohemia and by extension, the LaTene Culture. Perhaps there is something about these two females' autosomal dna that is actually indicative of some early Slavs. After all, both of these sample could possible date to the 7th century. That should be examples of early Slavs.

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

I15524

This guy is an interesting sample. His Y-chromosome is listed is I2a2b and he belongs to the Near Eastern cluster.

I2,I-L596,I-Y16649,I-Y16419

I2a2b is previously found in SHGs from Motala Sweden, Unetice, Urnfield, and
MLBA Armenia. Is I15524 related to this Armenian? His place in the Near Eastern cluster suggests that.

Armenian:
Sample DA31 - 1400-1100 BCE - I2a2b+

Here is a model of him by a poster here named CrM from 2019:

Target: ARM_Lchashen_MBA:DA31
Distance: 2.0692% / 0.02069208
66.8 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kalavan
17.4 RUS_Steppe_Maykop
15.8 GRC_Mycenaean

SHG->Unetice->Urnfield->Anatolia->Back to Balkans in Roman Imperial era

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

Congratulations.

Rob said...

@ Arza
modern Slavic/ Balkan L621 is missing until migration/ Middle Ages
I’ve not seen anything to the contrary yet

Dranoel said...

@ Romulus

I will quote an excerpt from your speech (episode about I1 in the Balkans):

"I1 296803 CNE Cluster
.. 190117 CNE cluster
.. 44962 CNE cluster
.. 27924 Cluster CNE
R1a, R-M459, R-M198, R-M417, R-Z645 560025 Cluster CNE
.. 383445 CNE cluster
I1, I-Z58, I-Z59, I-CTS8647, Z60, Z140, Z141 445842 Cluster CNE
I1, I-Z58, I-Z59, I-CTS8647, Z60, Z140, Z141 669834 Cluster CNE
R1b, R-M269, R-L23, R- Z2103, R-M12149, R-Z2106, R-Z2108, R-Z2110, R-CTS7556, R-Y5592, R-CTS1450 333954 Cluster CNE

R1a, R-M459, R-M198, R-M417, R-Z645 228598 Steppe cluster
.. 142712 Steppe cluster "


This Z2103 - CTS1450 what sample is it for? Related to what?

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

@Dranoel
That is sample I15551

I15551 Grave No. 91 tooth Timacum Minus, Slog Necropolis 242-375 cal CE (1750±20 BP, PSUAMS-8561) 1645 36 M 0.419118147 137.3 T1a [0.995,1.000] R1b1a1b1b R1b,R-M269,R-L23,R-Z2103,R-Z2105 378645 NE outlier 1 n/a (no relatives detected) n/a (too few SNPs) n/a (too few SNPs) 428 0.00402 0.838 [0,0.013] ds.half S15551.Y1.E1.L1 0.01092879 0.444565 0.132


12.3 Near Eastern outlier (I15551)
This individual dated to 242-375 calCE (1750±20 BP, PSUAMS-8561) is the only one from Timacum Minus with Near Eastern genomic affinity, falling right onto the Near East cline in PCA. For the same set of outgroups, a one-way model works having as a source Alalakh_MLBA (P-value = 0.3588). When we tested one-way models using the same Anatolian groups as for the main Near Eastern cluster (Supplementary section 12.2), we found good fits for Anatolia_Arslantepe_LC and Anatolia_Arslantepe_EBA [Table ST7]. We interpret these results as evidence for this individual having Eastern Anatolian/Northern Levant-related ancestry.
Table ST7. Results of one-way modeling of the NE outlier I15551 with ancient Anatolian populations as sources. (Abbreviations: LC;Late Chalcolithic; EBA:Early Bronze Age)
Source P-value

Anatolia_Barcin_LC 0.00014
Anatolia_Gondurle_EBA 2.53E-05
Anato-lia_CamlibelTarlasi_LC 8.03E-07
Anatolia_Ikiztepe_LC 0.048
Anatolia_Arslantepe_LC 0.273
Anatolia_Arslantepe_EBA 0.338

Arza said...

@ Rob

There is no such thing as "modern Slavic / Balkan L621". Either it's L621 or it's not.
Annotation file presented by Stamov states that it is. Nothing more, nothing less.

Do you have any information that Harvard has changed this designation?

Rob said...

@ Arza

in Isogg 2020. I2a1b1 = I-M223 (I2a1b1 M223, L34/PF3857/S151, L36/S152, L59, P219/PF3859/S24, P220/S119, P221/PF3858/S120, P222/PF3861/U250/S118, P223/PF3860/S117, Z77)

This is the same lineage that has been found time & again in Balkan & Steppe Chalcolithic-EBA samples

C.f. L621 = I2a1a2b (ISOGG 2020); ''The Kuline individuals are more shifted towards present-day Slavic speaking populations as compared to individuals in the Central/Northern European cluster, agreeing with the presence of Y-chromosome lineage I2-L621 in Kuline, which is common in present-day Slavic-speaking groups and absent in earlier periods''

ambron said...

sds, Arza wrote on his blog that this modeling failure is most likely due to technical reasons - small sample size and poor genome quality.

Today, at least we know that people similar to RISE569 and RISE568 already lived in the Czech in the Bronze Age.

Andrzejewski said...

OT News about Afghanistan withdrawal made me question what is the Afghans’ genetic make-up? Are they overwhelmingly Iran_N with ~ 20% Andronovo and a dash of Botai? Or are they almost identical to BMAC? What’s their affiliation to the Kalash?

Arza said...

@ Rob

That's correct.

In ISOGG 2020 I2a1b1 = I-M223 and in Stamov's spreadsheet Bul6 Bulgaria_BeliBreyag_EBA (published in Mathieson Nature 2018) is marked as I2a1b.

On the other hand one of the unpublished Bulgaria_EBA samples from Kazanlak in the same spreadsheet and in the same column is marked as I2a1a2b(xI2a(...), so L621 = I2a1a2b (ISOGG 2020).

Genos Historia said...

The Bohemia study didn't test them for phenotype SNPs.

Arza, Davidski are you guys willing to test the Bohemia samples for these phenotype SNPs....

rs4988235
rs16891982
rs12913832
rs1805007
rs1805008

sds said...

Bronze Age? Aren't the RISE samples from the early medieval period?

Wastrel said...

Romulus: I can't address your mental stability, but if you said all centum languages derived from Unetice you would undoubtedly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, be wrong.

Centumness and satemness aren't opposite processes: 'satem' is simply palatalisation, followed by assibilation, of velars. 'Centum' is then simply the absence of that sound change. Satem developed in Indo-Iranian (or some lost relative of it), and is only entirely 'complete' there; satemisation is also not quite the same change everywhere, so it's not an ancestral split. Instead, satemisation must have spread areally into nearby groups: most strongly (so probably earliest) into Balto-Slavic (though some roots with assibilation in II have avoided it in BS), and less completely into Albanian and Armenian. Among lost languages, Dacian and Thracian also had some satemisation though it's hard to tell how much, or when it happened. This fits with what we know of II's contacts with other languages: it probably originated near BS, and later heavily, heavily influenced Armenian, and also at one point was very influential in southeast Europe (Albanian, Dacian, Thracian).

'Centum', meanwhile, is simply the absence of satem. This includes the northwestern languages, but also the two oldest branches - Anatolian and Tocharian - as well as Greek, probably the third-oldest. Assibilation is also resisted in Albanian and Armenian in certain contexts.

It could be argued that true 'centum' requires the merger of the uvulars with the velars, assuming the uvulars ever really existed. Even this, though, probably didn't occur just once - it's a very common change, and it's almost impossible that Greek would be so closely related to the northwestern languages.

It is, however, entirely possible that Celtic, Italic and Germanic had a common origin, which could be Unetice - though it wouldn't be the mainstream view. Germanic must have had early contact with BS. Germanic does share some subtrate words with IC... but given that all of non-coastal Europe would have been speaking relatively closely related LBK languages, it's possible Germanic could have gained these vocabulary items independently.

Wastrel said...

Just to address another issue, by the way: no, Corded Ware groups would not really have been speaking different languages. CWC is just too early - we're talking two thousand years before Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic. It undoubtedly makes no sense to talk about distinct Celtic, Italic, Germanic or Balto-Slavic languages at such an early date. Anatolian must already have broken off (I don't think anyone has claimed that derives from CWC), and maybe Tocharian, and possibly even Greek, but even these 'broken off' language must have remained close to the rest, in terms of intelligibility, and in any case wouldn't have been CWC languages.

What would probably have been the case would have been that different tribes spoke noticeably different dialects, but these dialects would have been mutually intelligible, and continued to influence one another, with migrant tribes still largely adapting to the speech of the CWC communities they came into contact with. There would probably have been noticeable areal feature - eastern CWC languages may have undergone at least the early stages of satemisation, and the ancestor of II (presumably on the edge of the steppe) may have shared areal features with the nearby ancestor of Greek (i.e. optional use of the augment). But there probably wouldn't have been clear, discrete "language" boundaries at this point. And if there were, we're talking at most somewhere between a few centuries and a thousand years of separation - in other words, somewhere between "General American and Australia" and "English and Scots" - somewhere between understand-easily-but-they-sound-odd and can't-understand-at-first-but-you-can-get-the-hang-of-it-if-you-try...

Arza said...

@ sds

RISE569 is medieval (although I've seen it labelled also as "Iron Age"), but RISE568 hasn't been radiocarbon dated. Originally both were dated to the Bell Beaker period.

As the latest data (discussed in this post, especially VLI051) has shown, RISE568 indeed can be dated to the Bronze Age or some later period.

And Ambron was rather talking about the VLI051 and other Baltic_BA-shifted samples (or even about the whole population as per models from the publication).

Desdichado said...

@ Wastrel

Totally agree; I think in general there is a tendency to push known language branches into unrealistic levels of breadth and depth. Unetice couldn't have been "Celtic" yet Celtic could have developed much later from a people descended from Unetice, for example.

Everywhere for which we DO have some inkling of what was going on in Bronze Age Indo-European territory, i.e. the Iberian and Italic peninsulas, the Balkans, Anatolia and to some degree Greece, we see a diverse patchwork of Indo-European languages, lingering (or even intrusive, especially in the case of Iberia) non-Indo-European languages, linguistic dead ends, mysterious branches that we can't connect to anything else, and in general much more diversity of language. I strongly suspect that if we had information on the rest of Europe, we'd see exactly the same thing.

Most of the language groups that we know of are probably more recent and derive from a much smaller area or material culture than what people seem to often suspect. Because for all of the language groups that we DO know, that's exactly what happened. And even this study which the OP is discussing seem to imply that same situation; i.e., language spread quickly from very small areas to cover territory that was (often) autosomally very similar, i.e., probably spoke some kind of related language. Indo-European cannibalized other branches of Indo-European with some regularity, and the number of branches that we don't know anything about because they developed and disappeared without ever being written down, is probably relatively high. Linking archaeological/genetic groups to much later appearing linguistic groups is probably a bit of a fool's errand, because it produces a picture that has much more homogeneity in the deeper past than we see in every case where we have better info.

ambron said...

Arza, yes. That's exactly what I meant.

But genomic dating actually shifts sample RISE568 to the Bronze Age and sample RISE569 to the Iron Age:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/828962v2

vAsiSTha said...

"Just to address another issue, by the way: no, Corded Ware groups would not really have been speaking different languages. CWC is just too early - we're talking two thousand years before Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic. It undoubtedly makes no sense to talk about distinct Celtic, Italic, Germanic or Balto-Slavic languages at such an early date"

@wastrel I agree.

Slumbery said...

@Andrzejewski

There is no such ethic group as "Afghan". If you mean the Pashtun (the biggest ethic group in Afghanistan), they are something like 3:1:1 - BMAC : Steppe MLBA : ancient Indian.

With a lot of give or take. G25 nMontes probably underestimates ancient Indian when Onge is used in the model. At the other hand the Pashtun probably have regional variation, and as far as I know the HGDP Pashtun samples are actually from Pakistan.

The Kalash are somewhat similar, but have a bit less Steppe MLBA and ancient Indian and instead have some more BMAC-related and a tad of pre-Sintashta Central Asian (Tarim EMBA is a better proxy than Botai).

Other ethnic groups in Afghanistan (like Hazara, Tadjik, etc., can be very different.) For example the Hazara have a way more East Asian ancestry, around 40% (again, give or take).

Matt said...

@Wastrel, always appreciate your common sense and knowledge in your comment interventions on matters linguistic. I think many peeps here have just become enamoured with the idea of "Different clans speaking different languages" or "Debunking that Yamnaya spoke proto-Indo European; Corded Ware language *NOT* Yamnaya" and draw conclusions of massive IE subfamily diversity at this time directly from that. There is no common sense check against what we know from linguistics about IE or what seems likely from what we know of the history of language generally...

rozenblatt said...

@Andrzejewski

As Afghanistan is not ethnically and culturally uniform, one may also expect it to be genetically not uniform. I guess you meant Pushtuns and Tajiks, main ethnic groups in Afghanistan? Because groups like Hazara and Kyrgyz definitely have significant East Asian ancestry.

Arza said...

@ Genos Historia

I just hope I didn't make any mistakes.

https://pastebin.com/raw/9i1BtSxM

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