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Thursday, December 23, 2021

When did Celtic languages arrive in Britain?


A new paper at Nature by Patterson et al. argues that Celtic languages spread into Britain during the Bronze Age rather than the Iron Age [LINK]. This argument is based on the observation that there was a large-scale shift in deep ancestry proportions in Britain during the Bronze Age.

In particular, the ratio of Early European Farmer (EEF) ancestry increased significantly in what is now England during the Late Bronze Age (LBA). On the other hand, the English Iron Age was a much more stable period in this context.

I don't have any strong opinions about the spread of Celtic languages into Britain, and Patterson et al. might well be correct, but their argument is potentially flawed because:

- significant population shifts need not result in any noticeable changes in ancient ancestry proportions

- ancient ancestry proportions can shift without significant migrations from afar due to cryptic population substructures

- large-scale population shifts need not result in langage shifts, especially if they're gradual

- small-scale population shifts can result in language shifts, especially if they're sudden.

Indeed, when I plot some of the key ancient samples from the paper in my ultra fine scale Principal Component Analyses (PCA) of Northern and Western Europe, it appears that it's only the Early Iron Age (EIA) population from England that overlaps significantly with a roughly contemporaneous group from nearby Celtic-speaking continental Europe. The relevant PCA data are available here and here, respectively.

See also...

Celtic vs Germanic Europe

Avalon vs Valhalla revisited

R1a vs R1b in third millennium BCE central Europe

434 comments:

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Arza said...

@ Rob

It could also mean that they came from the outside, from a place where such genetic profile was preserved for a very long time (e.g. Scandinavia).

Ric Hern said...

Wonder how close are those Picts to the Rathlin samples ?

Wise dragon said...

@Andrzejewski,

Well, let me put it this way, the ancient historians didn‘t get everything but many things right. And it appears that this genetic study validates the observations and conclusions of Tacitus, Strabo, Jordanes. Without DNA these ancient historians linked the origins of the different British tribes to Gauls/French, Iberians, and Germanics respectively pretty much accurately. I personally think that ancient historians should get more credit and be taken more seriously. Therefore, we shouldn't quickly dismiss what ancient sources say about the origin or phenotype of people they've encountered and solely rely on ancient DNA.

Wise dragon said...

@Rob,

Being swarthy and exotic-looking is very in and viewed as sexy and desirable in our post-modern Western world. Just look at the commercials, pop culture, TV shows, etc. blonds are out and people of color are on a pedestal. In all fairness, the Romans thought that the Germanic tribal people were good-looking people with virtues and a noble warrior spirit. What they didn't like about the so-called Barbarians of the North was the fact that they lacked organization and discipline, and that they weren't advanced and pretty much backward in comparison. However, Caesar was impressed by the martial spirit of the Germans. He wrote that, though in the past the Gauls had been more warlike than the Germans, the Gauls had come to “not even pretend to compete with the Germans in bravery” (Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul, IV. 24). Even the “fierce glance of their eyes was more than they (the Gauls) could endure” (Caesar, I. 39).

Caesar blamed the softening of the Gauls to their trade with Roman provinces, which provided them the luxuries of civilization. In comparison, the Germans maintained their hardiness through their harsher, more primitive lifestyle. In reality, the ethnicity of tribes facing each other across the Rhine was not as clear cut as Caesar maintained although the river did serve as a rough border between Celts and Germans.

According to the ancient Romans, the Germanic tribesmen were tall men, with skin leathered by the elements and scarred from battle wounds. Their limbs were gnarled and muscular, their eyes wild and fierce. Men of war; they were armed with spears and swords, shields and helmets. Some wore their long blond or red hair combed sideways and done up in a knot, after the fashion of their people, the feared Suebi. Others hailed from the Usipetes and from the Tencteri, a tribe renowned for its cavalry.

DragonHermit said...

I think the broader history of Europe has to be seen more than just "Neolithic Farmers/HG invaded by Bronze Age Indo-Europeans".

It's been mostly marked by IE-speaking people taking over other IE-speaking people, wave after wave after wave. We're not going to get a clean "branching" of IE people.

This has severe linguistic implications too. A lot of words attributed to pre-IE peoples, could just be remnants/corruptions of words inherited from earlier waves of conquered IE people.

Samuel Andrews said...

I still haven't looked at the Celtic DNA.

Is Iron age DNA in Southern England very French-like? Is it more French like than modern English?

weure said...

Happy new year!

I double checked it but the R1b U106 Z156>Z304 (>DF96/98) that has a "Dutch- Czech BA connection" rooted in the NW Bohemian Tumulus culture is imo a 'strong case'.

Again the samples I selected the NW Czech and the Dutch one and especially Z156>Z304> DF96/98:
PNL1 U106 shotgun & 1240K 2914-2879 calBCE 25-30 Early Corded Ware Plotiště nad Labem, Hradec Králové, Bohemia, Czech Repuplic
I7196 DF98>S1911(1 read)>S1894(1 read) NextSeq 500 2200-1950 BCE 40+ Older Únětice Jinonice, Prague, Czechia
I4070 U106>>Z381(3 reads)/ (?Z304- 1 read) NextSeq 500 1880-1657 BCE 26-49 Early Bronze Age, ?Elp De Tuithoorn, Oostwoud, Noord-Holland
I11972 U106>>Z381 (-Z301) 1240K 1501-1310 calBCE 50-65 Middle Bronze Age Westwoud, Binnenwijzend, Noord-Holland
I17019 U106>>Z381>Z156>>Z306>>Z304 1240K 1421-1216 calBCE Middle Bronze Age Vlaardingen-Krabbeplas, Zuid Holland
I13788 U106>>Z381>Z156>>Z306>Z304 1240K 1300-800 BCE >50 Late Bronze Age Chouč, Hrobčice, Teplice, NW Bohemia
I23978 U106>>Z381>Z156>S5520>FT221936 1240K 742-400 calBCE infant Early Iron Age Zagorje ob Savi, Upper Camiola, Slovenia
I11149 U106>>Z381>Z156>Z307 [Z8160] 1240K 733-397 calBCE Early Iron Age Teversham, Cambridgeshire, England
I15950 U106>>Z156>>Z304>BY12480>BY12482/Y28944 1240K 480-390 BCE 35-60 La Tène Teplice, Ústí nad Labem , NW Bohemia
I12907 U106>>Z381>>Z306>>Z304 1240K 356-57 BC c8 Iron Age Uitgeest-Dorregeest, Noord-Holland

I checked the literature, I saw this work of Ivan Hásek, in which is underlined that NW Bohemian Tumulus culture is dignified and is somewhat differentiated from the more 'Southern' one.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26293013

And the ancient Bronze Age road from the Northern Netherlands to NW Bohemia is also there:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=de&ll=50.94782102980989%2C9.570944560673901&z=7&mid=155QfTUAn19J3sYO_kFvqkt02EP0

With the MBA Fulda-Werra (Hessen, middle Germany) group as a kind of intermediary, literally and figuratively halfway!

Andrzejewski said...

@DragonHermit “ This has severe linguistic implications too. A lot of words attributed to pre-IE peoples, could just be remnants/corruptions of words inherited from earlier waves of conquered IE people.”

That’s what I said about Proto-Germanic, however Rob disagreed.

Andrzejewski said...

BTW, this is the exact same thing used to be said about supposedly “Old European” toponyms and hydronyms, which used to be thought of as pre-IE, although the recent paradigm about them is to regard them as pre-Celtic IE. Could as well be a BBC remnant language(s).

Arza said...

https://www.academia.edu/65331414/Kristiansen_Heyd

PART #3
Interactions north of the Carpathians and into the Corded Ware
Interactions epilogue

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

@Wise Dragon

"Being swarthy and exotic-looking is very in and viewed as sexy and desirable in our post-modern Western world. Just look at the commercials, pop culture, TV shows, etc. blonds are out and people of color are on a pedestal."

They're trying to push obesity as normal and attractive too, doesn't mean there is any truth to it, it's just globalist propaganda. Blue eyes are a feature like having nice teeth, everyone looks more attractive with it. Blonde hair too, but with blonde hair it has to be natural otherwise it does not complement a person's complexion.

I have brown eyes, my Grandmother had blue eyes. She told me people with brown eyes are full of shit.

Davidski said...

@Samuel

Check this out.

I27379 is currently the oldest confirmed continental Celtic speaker in ancient DNA. He's a Gallic warrior who fled the Romans to England around 50 BCE.

His top 20 matches look rather Celtic. Mostly from Brittany, Wales, and Ireland, and nearby parts of England.

Distance to: England_LIA:I27379
0.02547388 French_Brittany:Rennes_B_8
0.02601260 English:HG01789
0.02613334 Afrikaner:AFR086
0.02649167 Welsh:WalesBK54
0.02677506 French_Brittany:French24400
0.02685051 English_Cornwall:HG00239
0.02689150 English:HG02215
0.02703788 English:English1
0.02705606 Welsh:WalesL42
0.02781414 Scottish:Scottish21
0.02802625 French_Brittany:Rennes_B_98
0.02844787 French_Brittany:French23833
0.02848330 Irish:529
0.02853066 Orcadian:HGDP00798
0.02855020 Irish:Irish59
0.02910564 Scottish:Scottish8
0.02966826 Orcadian:HGDP00796
0.02989417 Irish:Irish13
0.03021901 Welsh:WalesBK33
0.03024841 Danish:501

So now we can try and check which is the most likely early British Celtic-speaking group from the new paper. His top 20 is dominated by England MIA and EIA.

Distance to: England_LIA:I27379
0.02380471 England_MIA_LIA:I19042
0.02548338 FRA_GrandEst_IA2:I19357
0.02564980 England_IA:I6769
0.02588054 SVK_IA_Vekerzug:I11717
0.02611558 England_LBA:I14377
0.02628033 England_EIA:I17259
0.02688666 England_MIA:I19911
0.02695183 England_EIA:I11149
0.02759680 England_MIA_LIA:I20986
0.02764849 England_EIA:I17260
0.02793595 England_EIA:I13688
0.02828799 England_MIA:I21182
0.02844833 England_MIA:I21275
0.02876958 England_EIA:I17258
0.02883193 England_MIA:I21276
0.02935416 England_MIA:I19872
0.02941971 England_MIA:I11147
0.02951374 England_MIA:I20587
0.02958077 England_MIA_LIA:I21309
0.02995135 England_EastYorkshire_MIA:I12412

Rob said...

@ Arza

“ It could also mean that they came from the outside, from a place where such genetic profile was preserved for a very long time (e.g. Scandinavia).”

Do you suggest that Picts could be from Scandinavia, like Norway ? Is there any evidence pointing to this ?

Rob said...

@ Wise Dragon
Don't worry, I'm very familiar what Tacitus stated. In my day job, I'm lucky to be surrounded by women from all around the world, so I'm aware of social trends too, hence I don't need TV ads to tell me what to think
As most people understand, Germanic and people from around the Baltic had high rates of blondism because of a complex phenotypic process which is broadly associated with their specific mix of steppe/HG/EEF mix, not directly with steppe admixture alone.



@ Andrze

'' A lot of words attributed to pre-IE peoples, could just be remnants/corruptions of words inherited from earlier waves of conquered IE people.”
That’s what I said about Proto-Germanic, however Rob disagreed.''

I said I have no reason to not believe what linguists have written about Germanic. Where's the contra-proof that Germanic did not inherit terminology as outlined by aforementioned linguists ?
Proto-Germanic definitely stands apart from early Baltic and “NW IE’isch” population wise

Copper Axe said...

@Davidski

Regarding the Pictish samples, from which era/centuries were they, and will we eventually see them on G25 as well?

CHG Chad said...

@ Rob

EEF has nothing to do with it.Their blondism is coming from HG groups.BHG,SHG etc.That is the reason Balto-Slavs and Germanics are the most frenquent for blonde hair.Also,somewhat more reduced and robust faces.

Davidski said...

@Copper Axe

Apparently late Pictish from northern Scotland.

Yes, you'll see them in the G25 if/when they're published.

Andrzejewski said...

@Cobra “ EEF has nothing to do with it.Their blondism is coming from HG groups.BHG,SHG etc.That is the reason Balto-Slavs and Germanics are the most frenquent for blonde hair.Also,somewhat more reduced and robust faces.”

But SHG & BHG contributed close to nothing to modern pops.

Genos Historia said...

@Davidski,

Gallic warrior in Britain? Nice to see some of the DNA in this study is from prestigious Celtic burials. It makes me want to finally look at the DNA. But I need to edit my video.

But if he were Gallic, wouldn't he be closest to continental Celts not to British Irish? Maybe he is a local warrior.

Genos Historia said...

@Davidski,

Shit, I wish I could look into this British Celtic drift/cluster you speak of. It seems from what you have said, the Iron age Brits firmly cluster together away from the Bronze age samples. Hence, revealing a genetic shift in Iron age.

It seems you are saying I27379 is just slightly more southern shifted than British Iron age samples? If he were Gallic, this would suggest he came from northwest France which could have been especially close to Britain genetically.

Davidski said...

No, the Bronze Age and Iron Age Brits don't form separate clusters.

It's just that there's a signal of a Celtic-like continental admixture into the Early Iron Age English, which more or less persists in later periods.

And what I showed above is that a large proportion of the Early and Middle Iron Age English samples are very similar to this Gallic migrant, even though they predate him by several centuries.

This doesn't prove that Celts first arrived in Britain during the Early Iron Age, but it does show that a relatively distinct genetic signal that is associated with modern and ancient Celts spread into southern Britain at that time.

Genos Historia said...

Ok I get what you are saying. I27379 is a Celt of Celts and he is close to many early iron age Brits.

I have question though about his deep ancestry.

Is he French-like aka more southern shifted than modern British? In other words is he typical for continental Celts or more northern shifted?

Also, are the early iron age brits close to him more southern shifted than modern British?

Davidski said...

If we ignore the Iron Age outliers heavy in EEF and WHG, the deep ancestry proportions are basically identical in the Iron Age and modern English.

So if you were just focusing on ratios of EEF, WHG and steppe, you would have to say that modern English are more or less the direct descendants of their Iron Age predecessors.

But if we look at more fine scale ancestry, then that's only really true for the populations from western England, like Cornwall.

Genos Historia said...

Ok. I had noticed already published Iron age Brits cluster with modern English.

Which doesn't make sense, considering English have significant Anglo Saxon admixture which was more northern than Iron age Brits.

This suggests something, other than Celtic ancestry, pushing modern English south. Maybe Norman French. But, I still want to see if some of the Celts in Britain are extra southern shifted.

Genos Historia said...

It is interesting what you say about Cornwall being extra Celtic. Cornwall clusters with other English samples. So I always assumed they were normal English people not a Celtic refuge.

But if Iron age Bretons clusters with English anyways, this fact wouldn't matter.

My mom's paternal line is from Cornwall. Her Dad's Y DNA is Anglo Saxon (R1b U106>L48) not Celtic. But his line came to Cornwall in the 1500s from eastern England. This made me think after Cornwall began speaking English, many English migrants went there and erased its Celtic ancestry. Maybe not.

Davidski said...

Nah, overall Iron Age British and northern French Celts were very northern, as northern as modern English and even most Scandinavians.

But in terms of fine scale ancestry (Celtic vs Germanic PCA), they come out very Celtic. That is, they cluster with the Welsh, French from Brittany and so on.

On the other hand, modern English are about 1/3 closer to Scandinavians, thus clearly Germanic shifted.

There probably is some southern ancestry in the modern English that was missing in Iron Age English, because of the Roman Empire, the Normans, and just ongoing ties with France and other parts of Europe, but it's not a huge part of their ancestry.

LivoniaG said...

Happy new year!

Moesan said:
"But the hydronyms of Britain do support an I-E speaking presence before IA, and even before genuine plain MBA. What move of importance took place there outside BB’s?"

Below is the URL.
Once again, there was the production of copper and bronze at the Great Orme mine in Wales, especially between 1600 BCE-1400 BCE. Chemically, contemporary bronze items found in Holland, Brittany and Sweden have been traced to the mine. And there's some reason to think that the mine was connected to the very early Irish copper mines at Ross island that show signs of both Bell Beaker settlement and Iberian mining technology. Plus we don't really know when the very important tin mining started in force in Cornwall.

Bronze age metals needed a lot of people to mine and make it but also to transfer it. And complex activities like these mean that people need to understand each others' language, especially to get copper or bronze objects from north Wales to Holland or Brittany where I guess earlier versions of Celtic or Germanic languages were already being spoken.

It looks like there was a lot going on in Britain before 1400 BCE -- aside from Bell Bekers -- that had long range implications.

(The very early Ross Island copper mines have interesting connections to northwest Iberia, where Celtiberian later showed up as a written language.)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/boom-and-bust-in-bronze-age-britain-major-copper-production-from-the-great-orme-mine-and-european-trade-c-16001400-bc/356E30145B1F6597D8AAA0DDBE69BD51

LivoniaG said...

Genos Historia said...
"This suggests something, other than Celtic ancestry, pushing modern English south. Maybe Norman French. But, I still want to see if some of the Celts in Britain are extra southern shifted."

Just to point out William didn't just bring Normans with him on the Conquest. There were a lot of Bretons fighting for the Conqueror at Hastings -- and they probably spoke Celtic. And they were given land for their service,
More importantly, in just three generation, the King of England was HenryII who reigned over western France to practically the Spanish border with His Queen Eleanor of Aquitane. Trade and settlement was opened up to southern types in England because the king found allies where he found them among many allies

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

The oldest British R1b-Not-L21 in the paper is I21306 , a DF27+ from ~1800 BCE. This person was buried with a copper bead.

The second oldest R1b-Not-L21 is I5516 a U152+ Sample from ~1691 BCE. No burial context for this one.

I went off Supp table S9 for this.

Ryan said...

I'd just point out that because Celtic languages don't follow a tree structure, there was probably at least 2 waves of Celtic into Britain/Ireland. What I mean by that is that the p/q Celtic distinction and the Insular/Continental Celtic dichotomies don't line up with each other.

Davidski said...

It's possible that there were a couple of different Celtic expansions into Britain.

But the modern and ancient DNA that we already have can accommodate one or more expansions with the Celtic genetic signature basically being like Gallic warrior I27379.

That's because there's that pulse of continental Celtic-like admixture into Early Iron Age England, and then also substructure within modern Ireland with some people (and thus probably populations) clearly of this type of origin.

If so, this means that Bronze Age Britons and Irish didn't speak Celtic, but it's very likely that British Beakers didn't speak Celtic either, so extending this problem to the Bronze Age isn't a big deal IMHO.

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

Looks like they found the composition of the Belgic Tribes who apparently were more Germanic like, according to Julius Caesar(Northern Shifted?) than Celts from other parts of Gaul. Maybe insular like Celtic was spoken over a much bigger range than just the British Isles...

Moesan said...

Thanks LivoniaG
I didn't link British/Irish BBs from the Rhine mouthBBs to Celtic but(possibly) to IE.
Surely BA echanges played some role in spreading a franca lingua.
concerning "celtic" DNA, if we accept an origin older than IA (my fealing)nothing proves us their composition didn't evolve a bit between their first genesis and later times, by deeper "immersion" in pre-IE pop's (always a partly sexually biased mating systeme + what arises lately: some incorporation of other Y-lineages.

CHG Chad said...

@ Andrze

And what type of HG modern Scandinavians and other Germanics have?Also Baltics and even Slavic groups?

Most of WHG groups were dark skinned but there were northern HG people being light and blonde.BHG was like this and SHG.Now, there is a debate if they adopted their blondness and lightness from ANE/EHG people.

Copper Axe said...

Was I27379 a proper Gaul, rather than someone of Briton origins coming overfrom Gaul? He was listed as having y-dna DF13 > R-Z251.

Ric Hern said...

Then the question is: When did this IA signature become visible or dominant in parts of France ?

Rob said...

@ Ryan

''I'd just point out that because Celtic languages don't follow a tree structure, there was probably at least 2 waves of Celtic into Britain/Ireland. What I mean by that is that the p/q Celtic distinction and the Insular/Continental Celtic dichotomies don't line up with each other.''


Who says that Celtic languages cannot be depicted phyolgenetically ?

Wastrel said...

Sorry, distracted over New Year's and didn't check back for responses...

Rob: "Not that I necessarily disagree, however names & words in general might not be the best way to uncover language layers"

- it's certainly true that a sufficiently traumatic invasion can wipe out the local toponyms, as you point out with the arrival of the Saxons. If you expand so quickly that you kill the locals before you learn what they call the local river, you need to think of a new name for it. Although, of course,it's not as though there are no pre-Saxon names in England! And indeed, Western Europe must have had pre-IE languages. But we know that toponyms often ARE able to endure long periods of time, and to withstand major population changes. So the absence of an obvious, widespread, uniform, clearly non-IE, pre-IE layer in Western Europe does make the idea of there being a widespread non-IE invasion of western Europe immediately before the Celtic expansion rather less attractive. Conversely, the fact that there arguably IS a layer of non-Celtic, IE toponymy makes the idea of the Bell Beakers speaking an IE language more attractive. But you're absolutely right that this in no way settles the matter or definitively rules anything out.


Andrzejewski:

- Celtic undoubtedly DID have a substrate!

Firstly, all expanding languages have substrates virtually by definition, unless they utterly and immediately exterminate the previous inhabitants of the area, which is rare. [of course, the influence of the substrate may be greater or lesser in different languages]
More specifically, Italo-Celtic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic share a tranche of loanwords from non-IE languages, particularly relating to European plants and animals, and to agriculture. Some of these could potentially be traced to a common dialect of PIE or a common ancestor within PIE; but others must have been borrowed independently into the different branches, probably from different donor languages. The assumption is therefore that related languages within one large expansion area (IE) repeatedly borrowed terms from related substrate languages within a preceding large expansion area (presumably LBK, though it doesn't really matter). Celtic itself then went on to take up numerous substrate loanwords not found in other branches.
Words for oats, barley, apples, furrows and fallow ground are found in all three branches; Celtic also borrowed words for berries, garlic, wolves, strawberries and the sea, among others (that's just from a quick flick through Matasovic). [some of those are shared with Germanic but not BS].

[there also seems to have been a different substrate family in the Mediterranean area, which contributed to Greek and Italic]


Romulus: there are almost no loanwords from Germanic into Celtic. But there are many loanwords from Celtic into Germanic, and their meanings make the direction of power clear: ruler, kingdom, armour, fortification, iron, leather, spear, horse, holy grove, holy altar, true, worthy, etc. This should come as no surprise, given that PGmc archaeological cultures are clearly heavily influenced by Celtic cultures (like that whole 'introduction of iron' thing).

The situation nearly a thousand years later, at the time of Caesar, is hardly relevant here - it only takes a map of the UK to realise that eventually the Germanic tribes became dominant over the Celtic ones, but the point is that that is a late development. [it's not even clearly, incidentally, that Caesar's 'Germans' spoke Germanic - at least some of the people he identified as Germans were clearly Celtic-speakers. Ethnonyms can be complicated]

Wastrel said...

Livonia: "Can I ask how you know that with such certainty?

It's possible the different Bell Beaker types spoke different languages in Holland, Iberia, Sardinia, Sicily and Poland. We have no written records of any languages in most of those places till more than 2000 years later"

Well, we can break it into two parts.

First, BB speakers cannot have spoken Celtic for a very simple reason: it didn't exist yet.

AIUI, Bell Beakers probably arrived in Britain around 2,500BC, and the culture lasted here until around 1,800BC. Proto-Celtic, on the other hand, was spoken around 800BC, an entire millennium later. If PC had been spoken 2000, or even 1000 years earlier than it was, then by the time of attestation Celtic languages would have diverged FAR more extensively from one another than they actually did. Instead, celtic languages around 0CE are clearly very closely related to one another. Conversely, if PC had broken up so much earlier, there would not have been time for the Celtic languages as a whole to have diverged so much from non-Celtic languages. It's not possible for Proto-Celtic to have been spoken SO much earlier than we think it was, which means the Bell Beakers could not have been speaking Celtic (i.e. a language descended from Proto-Celtic). [it is possible to suggest an earlier date than 800BC, and some have, but we're talking a few hundred years earlier, not a thousand or two thousand]


The second part is slightly less absolute, I'll admit, but still very secure, in my opinion: the BBC language cannot have been the ancestor of Proto-Celtic either.

Archaeologically, the Celtic expansions originated in central Europe. And even if this isn't true, Celtic did expand over a huge area (from the Atlantic to Anatolia) centred on central Europe. It's already a remarkable expansion, and it becomes even more remarkable if we have to assume that people migrated from Britain to central europe FIRST, and THEN expanded everywhere! To the best of my knowledge, there is no archaeological or genetic reason to theorise a mass migration of this sort from Britain to Central Europe in this time period. In particular, Celtic developed within a clear archaeological/cultural progression: Unetice>Tumulus>Urnfield>Hallstadt. The history of Britain prior to the Celtic expansions, on the other hand, follows a different route through the Atlantic Bronze Age. This makes it rather unparsimonious to assume that a British group would have re-invaded Europe, adopted the local culture entirely, and then re-expanded.

And it's made worse when you bring Italy into the conversation. By the 7th century, when the Italic scripts appear, the Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian branches of Italic were already clearly distinct from one another, and both were clearly distinct from Celtic. This supports the idea that the Italic-Celtic split must have been in the middle of the preceding millennium if not earlier. This considerably narrows the window for the British Bell Beaker culture to have zipped back onto the continent to have given birth to Celtic (and presumably also Latin, eventually!).

So that part of it isn't exactly impossible, but it's incredibly unlikely and there's no evidence at all for it.

Wastrel said...


...Finally, it's really important for people to realise that when you go back that far, modern linguistic classifications become fairly meaningless. You can ask, say, "was the BBC language closer to Celtic than to other branches?", but it's hard to give a meaningful answer, since literally everything about Celtic evolved much later than that.

Late British Bell Beaker Language would have been spoken a similar time to Sintashta (presumably the Indo-Iranian ancestor). But they would only have been separated from their common ancestor by... what, 500 years? 1000 years? 1500 years at most? For context, English and Scots are separated by 500-1000 years, and German and Dutch (and English) are separated by 1500-2000 years. The BBL probably wasn't exactly mutually intelligible with other IE languages of its day, but it would have been very similar grammatically, and with a lot of very similar vocabulary. None of those languages would have had anything more than the slightest suggestion of the features that - thousands of years later! - would come to be seen as distinctive of different families.


------------


Ryan: it's not certain, but it looks very much as though P/Q is a small but genuine split between Celtic dialects, while 'Insular Celtic' is a subsequent grammatical development in the islands, an areal influence that encompassed both branches. P Celtic COULD have migrated later than Q, but given how close the branches are (i.e. how few and superficial the shared P-Celtic changes are) the migrations would have been close together in time. And there may only have been one - a gradual migration of both groups together, with sorting out into distinct areas later on (areas with P-speakers dominant all become P-speaking and vice versa). In particular, Britain was clearly culturally tied to France, and it could be that P-speaking in Britain was reinforced by continued trade with France, while more remote Ireland remained Q-speaking. Indeed, it's possible that there was NO P-Celtic migration, and that it's purely a dialectical feature that spread culturally from France.

[a modern equivalent: should we posit distinct R-English and Null-English migrations to the US at different times to explain why N-Anglic dialects are spoken in New York and New England and by African-Americans, and R-Anglic by most other Americans? Well, maybe, maybe not... and rembember, the British-American split is older than the British-Gaulish split at the time when P-Celtic is first attested in Britain!]

We CAN probably say that there were at least two Celtic migrations, though - historic sources speak of a Belgic migration much later (assuming Belgic is Celtic - some people think it's para-Celtic or the like). But this would have been later than the spread of the P-feature to England.

Wastrel said...

One really small final (honestly!) point, about Gaul and Britain in early historic times: they were really close, not just culturally but politically. During Caesar's wars, not only did defeated Gaulish leaders seek asylum in Britain, but British leaders sent military forces to Gaul to reinforce the Gauls against the Romans. Given that neither the Gauls nor the Britons appear to have had political unity amongst themselves (at least until Caesar appeared to fight against!), and indeed that the Britons weren't exactly a powerhouse themselves, this sort of bilateral political unity between Britain and Gaul is really striking.

This doesn't say much about long-term histories, but it should alert us to the fact that it wasn't just trade going on across the channel: there was also clearly migration back and forth, both of groups and of individuals. A warrior from one side of the channel could feel motivated to defend the people on the other against a far superior military force, while a warrior from the other side could feel safe fleeing their home and seeking refuge on the other side - and in both cases seemingly not just as one-off events, but as a repeated pattern.[the stated reason for Caesar's invasions of Britain were because this bilateral migration was widespread enough to become a problem for the subduing of Gaul].

So we shouldn't be surprised when we see people in Gaul who look very British at a late date, or in Britain who look very Gaulish at a late date!

J.S. said...

@Wastrel
From peoples to cities : political life and institutions in Comatan Gaul from independance to the end of the Julio-Claudians

Protohostoric Gaul is traditionally seen as devoid of unity, torn apart by continuous wars between its peoples. The Gallic entity described by Caesar would be a creation of his own in view of Roman politics goals. Nonetheless, the institutions of Gallic peoples are seen as a coherent whole obeying to the Aeduan model. The renewed study of the sources, particularly the "Bellum Gallicum", invalidates these views inherited from passed centuries. ln fact, Gaul is a reality that precedes the Roman description. It is a coherent political space with common political practices: assemblies at different levels, among which one for Gaul, the recognition of a hegemonic people, the use of general coalitions headed by a war leader. These practices, well established already during Caesar's time, provided for a part of the basis of the Roman administrative system in Gaul. Thus the Gallic entity is perpetuated though the cult at the Confluent which ignored the provincial tripartition and partially obeyed criteria inherited from the independence. As for the peoples' institutions, they are here considered as many of independent entities therefore revealing their diversity in spite of their convergences. The Roman conquest did not entail an immediate institutional upheaval and civil wars delayed the establishment of a "forma provinciae". Rome then relies on men it maintained to power. It is only in 16-13 BC that Augustus completed the provincial cutting and triggered civic mutation in Gaul which leads to more institutional homogeneity. But diversity endured and the Latin right doesn't put an end to situations inherited from the past either.
http://www.theses.fr/2013PA010549
https://www.amazon.fr/politique-gaulois-institutions-chevelue-siècle/dp/B072ZLN4NL

Genos Historia said...

Survive the Jive reiterates and references Davidski's view in his talk on this study. He references.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epGMliPvkk&ab_channel=JiveTalk

An interesting thing he says is the Bronze age migrants are women from the continent who were brought to marry men in Britain. Basically, long distance marriage was "common."

This isn't a bad idea, because we in fact have prove of this type of female geneflow in Bell beaker Bohemia. And it was substantial geneflow. Many Beaker folk there have maternal ancestry from "SE Europe" (maybe Slovakia, Hungary).
We even have an example of prestigious female burial, with woman whose DNA seems to be completely SE European. She had two sons in the cemetery from the same Beaker father.
Some also have paternal ancestry, eg Y DNA R1b Z2103 and G2a2.

If Bell beaker Bohemia did this, it would be believable their relatives in Britain did too.

Genos Historia said...

Also, yeah he says wife migrants aren't going to change the language so this is major argument against the idea Celtic comes from the Bronze age geneflow.

Does the paper suggest immigrants changed the language of Britain? Immigrants as a rule can't change language. Jive seems to say this is what the paper claimed. If so, it is a bad argument for Celtic coming in the Bronze age.

*I don't have time to read the paper. ;).

LivoniaG said...

Genos Historia said:
"Does the paper suggest immigrants changed the language of Britain? Immigrants as a rule can't change language. Jive seems to say this is what the paper claimed. If so, it is a bad argument for Celtic coming in the Bronze age."

Sorry. I don't understand. If immigrants can't change the language of Britain in the bronze age, then what changed the language of Britain in the iron age?

Or did it not change in the iron age either? If immigrants can't change the language, how did it change?


LivoniaG said...

Wastrel said...
"Bell Beakers probably arrived in Britain around 2,500BC, and the culture lasted here until around 1,800BC. Proto-Celtic, on the other hand, was spoken around 800BC, an entire millennium later. It's not possible for Proto-Celtic to have been spoken SO much earlier... which means the Bell Beakers could not have been speaking Celtic (i.e. a language descended from Proto-Celtic)."

Just checking the idea here. Ok if Proto-Celtic is descended from some earlier IE language, what language was that? Pre-Proto-Celtic? Is it possible that Bell Beaker types spoke Pre-Pre-Proto-Celtic?

Unless the language went straight from PIE to Proto-Celtic, there must have been some intermediate language that would become Celtic. Is it possible that Bell Beakers spoke that intermediate language in Britain?
Especially given that there is really not much evidence of any other IE or non-IE language in Britsh toponyms

LivoniaG said...

Below is Romulus's idea how RH+ and RH- blood types could have affected reproduction rates between EEF and CWC/BB males and why we see the prevalence of R1b and R1a (if I got that right). It is really a stopper. I don't how how this idea would be researched.

A different but related idea is the degree to which these ancient people were aware of the dangers of in-breeding and how it fostered deleterious traits in the children of in-bred parents.

If you wondered why local women did not object to foreign wives, one reason might have been a ritualized avoidance of in-breeding with local men. The Navaho, for example, have since the most distant memory required men to choose wives outside of their own clans. This kind of cultural awareness encourages a lot of gene mixing to avoid deleterious recessive genes becoming dominant in the next generation.

Romulus said:
@Matt

The Rhesus factor could explain it, because RH - only appears when the individual is Homozygote for the RH - allele. Heterozygotes are RH+.

Homozygote RH Negative Beaker man + Homozygote RH Positive farmer woman = Lots of Heterozygote RH Positive Children, boys and girls. No issues.

Homozygote RH Positive Farmer Man + Homozygote RH Negative Beaker woman = 1 child , or relatively very few, or none. Mother's immune system attacks and kills child, miscarriage. 

Beaker women are still having lots of offspring with RH - men, as many as farmer women, so no bias on the X. The compound interest effect over time of RH + Farmer men being unable to reproduce with RH - women leads to a sharp decline in farmer Y-Chr as when the two groups mix. After the 4.2 kya event the peninsula is repopulated by a small founder population

Davidski said...

I haven't looked closely at the EEF-rich British Bronze Age outliers from this paper yet.

But yeah, if the people who spread southern ancestry into Britain during the Bronze Age were overwhelmingly brides from different places, rather than a coherent migrant population, then they can't be reliably implicated in the spread of Celtic languages.

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

When did this IA signature become visible in France ? Did it arrive from elsewhere or was it local development out of the Early Bronze Age population ?

Davidski said...

I don't know yet.

Genos Historia said...

@LivoniaG,

Immigrant as I use the word doesn't include all kinds of migrants. A migration of new people is usually needed to change language. But immigrants are a specific kind of migrant which imo usually can not change language.

Immigrants represent individuals who join a native society. *and henceforth learn the native language.
Population migrations represents a whole population who acquires their own piece of land and creates their own society. *and henceforth bring their own language.

Population migrations are typically the language of a region.

If the continental geneflow in Britain in the Bronze age came from immigrants then this should be seen as evidence against the idea this geneflow changed the language to Celtic.

Matt said...

I guess one of the issues here of comparing LBA and IA/EIA samples directly is imbalanced sampling. If we end up saying "Although there are few overlapping samples, of the samples in Set A / B, B has a few more which overlap C", then numbers of samples matter. Because if B just has 2x the samples, you'd expect more to show up which are close to C. (In this case if we compare the "main" LBA set to the "main" IA from 600-400 BCE then its 13 samples vs 27, and the rest of the IA has 220 samples).

So it seems like its probably better to compare the distance between the centroid (average) of the populations to get around the issues of this unbalanced sampling.

Here's a quick set of plots that try to map this against time, using only the "mainstream" samples (those not marked "_o" or "low_res" or "high_(X)"): https://imgur.com/a/Dresq4S

What these do is compare the distance on Global 25 of individual GBR_England samples to either the average of FRA_Grand_Est_IA1, or the difference between the average of modern Irish - France_Pas_De_Calais (as in theory a maximum Insular vs close Continental source population).

The positions of the labels have been placed by PAST at the average for the samples.

It does seem like here, looking at the spline, differences in the distance to FRA_Grand_Est_IA1 or the modern Irish - modern France_Pas_De_Calais, are again located at the MBA-LBA boundary. The LBA to EIA to IA to Roman period looks very smooth and unchanged here, with a shift again in the post-Roman period. So this seems to be talking the same language and showing same picture as the shift in EEF proportions that Patterson and Isakov (et al) are talking about.

But this may not really partial out for all the differences in deep ancestry proportions! It's pretty unlikely that any of the PCA really do so. Perhaps shotgun genomes with specific rare alleles or haplotype/IBD chunk sharing will be required, and perhaps these methods where alleles can be specifically dated in time like SFS. And whether this says anything or not about language at all is not at all clear.

Garvan said...

Genos,
Just look up the meaning of migrant and immigran, and use the same meaning of everybody else.

Davidski said...

@Matt

Keep in mind that only a subset of the Iron Age samples show that Celtic-specific affinity that I'm talking about here.

The rest are very much within the Bronze Age spectrum of diversity. That's possibly why you're seeing such a smooth transition from the LBA to EIA.

I think the focus needs to be on this EIA and MIA Celtic-specific subset. It might be worth checking out their uniparentals and isotopes. And perhaps soon we'll also be able to check out their IBD affinities.

Genos Historia said...

@Garvan,

I don't see why it is wrong to make one's own definition for words which don't have a broad unoffical definition.

If the word immigrant is commonly defined as every type of person who is new to a piece of land, then the definition of the word immigrant needs to be changed.

Because we need to be able to differentiate the different types of "immigrants" that exist.

This umbrella definition enables people to distort what migrations in history actually represented.

For example, an upcoming ancient DNA study is calling Anglo Saxons; "immigrants."
It is also saying Britain is the product of a long line of "immigrants."
We all know what they mean by immigrant. We all know it is the wrong word to use.

Matt said...

@Davidski, fair enough - I guess that would be particularly compelling if like you suggest those already have or do get found to form a natural subset united by something archaeological, like their dating / location / burial customs / isotopes, etc. that fits well with what would be predicted by a particular archaeological model.

(I guess it's less compelling if it's more like "We've got a lot of samples from the EIA, so we can look at their genetics and then pick out a subset that overlaps more, but there isn't really any natural reason from archaeology you'd identify them together apart from their genetics". Because that could just be that its easier to select a particular grouping with higher affinity from a larger set of samples).

The uniparentals do matter as well.

...

Just as another followup to last comment, another way to do what I did in my last comment but which I think should isolate more away from deep ancestry proportions is to compare the distance of samples to FRA_Grand_Est_IA_2 to distance from a model of FRA_Grand_Est_IA_2. Being closer to the real population than the model should indicate more shared drift that is not attributable to deep ancestry.

So doing that: https://imgur.com/a/RuVFcLa

At the start of the sequence, GBR_England_Bell_Beaker doesn't have much reduced distance to either FRA_Grand_Est_IA_2 or the model (which was 13/41/46 of WHG/Yamnaya/Barcin_N), while favouring FRA_Grand_Est_IA_2 over the model peaks at IA.

This shows a gradual tendency for reduced distance to FRA_Grand_Est_IA_2 compared to the model through the entire period of 1000 - 400 BCE, without any sharp pulses (as found in other models and due to shift in deeper ancestry proportions). This is based on very close comparisons, so there is a lot of variation relative to changes in mean.

So maybe that's more compatible with shifts / drift still going on through into EIA.

weure said...

@Davidski is NLD_EIA I12903 also available in GvsC format? Thanks in advance!

Davidski said...

Not enough data.

Rob said...

The issue is the Celts - the historical Celts of Gaul - might be Atlantic.

The Urnfield system ended due to the advent of Iron. What is interesting is that the Halstatt chiefs of France were buried with Gündlingen swords originally made in Britain and northern Gaul.
More transects from France might a movement from west to east during the Halstatt period.
Overall, however, Hallstatt is just a heterogeneous horizon. The French Hallstatt doesnt come from Austria, nor the other way round. They just came to share similar attributes as peri-Alpine elites prospered form trade with Greek colonies & Etruscans

Rob said...

@ weure

Any patterns / updates on U106 ?

weure said...

@Davidski thought, but enough for G26 obviously, was curious where he would plot....

Slumbery said...

@Rob


The Urnfield system ended due to the advent of Iron. ... They just came to share similar attributes as peri-Alpine elites prospered form trade with Greek colonies & Etruscans.

Isn't Hallstatt started (so Urnfield ended) pretty deep in the Bronze Age? The Urnfield system ended centuries before iron really kicked in.

Also during most of existence of Hallstatt there were no Greek colonies (Greek colonization started around the same time as the Iron Age and Hallstatt C) and the Etruscan civilation in Italy did not exist during the Hallstatt A and a good part of Hallstatt B period.
So Late Hallstatt might had extensive and lucrative trade with Greek Colonies and Etruscans, but the original Hallstatt was not built on that.

Of course it could be still a trade network, but originally not with those partners.

LivoniaG said...

Here's the report about the paper from New Science.
The equation here is that because EEF ancestry starts increasing about 1000 BCE, a Celtic speakers were already in Britain before 800 BCE.

The key point would be that increased EEF ancestry signaled Celtic speakers coming into Britain at that time more so than afterwards in the iron age. That Celtic or pre-Celtic was not being spoken in Britain before 1000 BC. Another key assumption is that these speakers came from France. And not, for example, from Iberia or Northern Italy.

"The team found evidence of a third mass migration into Britain from France that took place between 1000 BC and 875 BC, during which Early European Farmer ancestry increased from around 30 per cent to roughly 36 per cent on average in southern Britain by the late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, this stabilised at nearly half of the ancestry in populations of England and Wales.
“Prior to this study, we would have thought of the movement in terms of individuals and small groups, traders ,…
The findings help shed light on a debate about when Celtic languages were first spoken in Britain. “The most established theory, based on the analysis of ancient object styles, is that Celtic languages came in during the Iron Age with Celtic speakers from continental Europe,...
But the new evidence supports a competing idea, based on linguistic studies, that Celtic languages expanded into Britain earlier, in the middle to late Bronze Age"
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302954-bronze-age-migration-may-have-brought-celtic-languages-to-britain/

Davidski said...

Well, I wouldn't settle for comparing deep ancestry proportions, like EEF, when looking for an expansion during the Iron Age. I'd focus on more recent drift.

But what the hell would I know anyway...

Rob said...

@ Slumberry

'Isn't Hallstatt started (so Urnfield ended) pretty deep in the Bronze Age? The Urnfield system ended centuries before iron really kicked in..So Late Hallstatt might had extensive and lucrative trade with Greek Colonies and Etruscans, but the original Hallstatt was not built on that.''


In periodology ''Ha- A & B" are actually Urnfield. 'The halstatt culture'' is Ha C & D.
Eg Wikipedia summarises- Hallstatt A–B are part of the Bronze Age Urnfield culture. .. The "Hallstatt period" proper is restricted to HaC and HaD (8th to 5th centuries BC), corresponding to the early European Iron Age. '

I did not imply their existence is solely related to colonies, quite the contrary my main point was that Iron Age Halstatt groups were distinctive (French, Sth German, East Alpine), and that French Hallstatt kinda looks Atlantic. Im not sure exactly how they would sit in relation to preceding BA groups of same locale aDNA shift wise.

Matt said...

I think the good thing here is that, if we do propose a Celtic shift from large scale migration (and that's not necessarily something we're obliged to do; there could be other things* as Davidski notes) in the Iron Age, then there are lots of regions we can look at. If we think that the reason might not show up in Britain was the the LBA proportions of ANF:WHG:Steppe were the same between proto Celts and LBA British, then no problem, let's look in Spain, where a pulse of ancestry proportions like this would be obvious.

*It could be that Celtic is a spread without significant turnover anywhere, and the language spread through a mild intensification of links between more isolated populations and a decline of isolation by distance. I get the impression Nick P wants to solve most of the problems and questions related to the part of the world his ancestors come from (as a personal interest that entwines with adding new scientific value). But maybe this one can't be with those methods.

Slumbery said...

@Rob

Thank you for the explanation. I feel a bit silly, because I ignored things I cetually knew. I confused Hallstatt the site with Hallstatt the culture and forgot to think about the context (context like what was actually the time period of Urnfield...).

What defines "Atlantic" for you? On Davidski PCA France Grand_EST IA2 is pretty distinct from Bronze Age Britain. It is of course La Tene period, not Hallstatt, but there was population continuity supposedly.

Slumbery said...

BTW, I just had a look at the Eastern La Tene samples and I am quite surprised by their diversity. They are all over of the PCA, from Baltic-like (with even Balti-Finn like outliers) to straightforward Mediterranean. They seem to be much more heterogenous than the population of the same region today.
And quite a lot of the samples from Hungary and some from Austria and Czechia are Mediterranean. I assumed the pre-Roman population would be more northern.

SKRiBHa said...

I made a compilation of archaeological cultures related to Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic:

Proto-Celtic = WGH + EHG

La Tène culture (450 - 1 BCE)
Hallstatt culture (1200 - 500 BC)
The Urnfield culture (1300 - 750 BCE)
Tumulus culture (1600 - 1200 BCE)
Unetice culture (2300 - 1680 BCE)
Bell Beaker culture (2800 - 1800 BCE)
Corded Ware culture (2900 - 2350 BCE)
Yamnaya culture (3300 - 2600 BCE)

Proto-Germanic = WGH + EHG = SHG

The Jastorf culture (750 – 1 BCE)
The Nordic Bronze Age / Northern Bronze Age / Scandinavian Bronze Age (1750 - 500 BCE)
The Battle Axe culture / Boat Axe culture (2800 - 2300 BCE)
Corded Ware culture (2900 - 2350 BCE)
The Pitted Ware culture (3500 - 2300 BCE)
Funnelbeaker culture (4300 - 2800 BCE)
The Ertebølle culture (5300 - 3950 BCE)
The Kongemose culture (6000 - 5200 BCE)
Maglemosian (9000 - 6000 BCE)
Swiderian culture (11,000 – 8200 BCE)
The Ahrensburg / Ahrensburgian culture (12,900 - 11,700 BP)
The Magdalenian culture (17,000 – 12,000 BP)

Before I write my conclusions from this data, first I ask: Is this data correct?

Nick Patterson (Broad) said...

Reasonable trees for Celtic phylogeny surely do exist

See Eska: Dialectology of Celtic (2017)
I'm not sure how accessible that is to readers of
the blog. Is there some way I can post a pdf of the tree? (David??)

It's relevant that Eska puts Goidelic and Britonic as clade at
the bottom of the tree. In my opinion that makes it unlikely
that P and Q Celtic are the result of 2 separate migrations.

Also if you want to comment on the linguistics read Sims-Williams (2020)
A recent article by a real expert.

Davidski said...

Yep, here it is...

https://www.academia.edu/44813439/The_dialectology_of_Celtic

The tree is in the conclusions (part 11).

Ryan said...

Re: tree for Celtic - there are lots of reasonable proposed trees for Celtic, either based around an Insular vs Continental dichotomy or a P vs Q dichotomy. The fact that these trees contradict each other is what I'm getting at. I'm suggesting that both sets of trees are partly correct rather than favouring one over the other. I'd be curious if others strongly favour one interpretation over the other though, and for what reasons.

@David - do you see the same southern genetic signal in Irish samples as in these British (excluding Pict) ones? I'd be curious if both islands were "Celtified" at the same time.

Tiger Mike said...

Please consider that Proto-Celtic may have developed over a wide area over a period of time, much like PIE itself. Likewise, there may be Early Proto-Celtic before full or Late Proto-Celtic.

It's quite plausible for Early Proto-Celtic (use the the term Pre-Celtic if you are more comfortable with it) entered the British Isles with the EBA Northwest Bell Beakers.

Look at page 29 of the Tandy Warnow's time analysis of the IE tree.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/tandy/Swadesh-Warnow.pdf

Italo-Celtic broke away from PIE about 3200 BC. This would have been about the time R1b-P312 formed. Celtic broke away from Italo-Celtic about 2500 BC. This would have been about the time the Northwest Bell Beakers entered Britain and brought newly formed R1b-P312>Z290>L21 with them.

This paper concludes there was there was a 50% replacement of the autosomal DNA in Southern Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age. R1b-L21 barely blipped downward during this period. One reasonable conclusion is that in-migration was just more descendants of the Northwest Bell Beaker province coming across the Channel from France and possibly Belgium. There was probably pressure from Central Europe.

Meanwhile, in Ireland and Scotland the human genome remained steady according to Lara Cassidy's research. It's been that way since the Early Bronze Age. R1b-L21 frequencies are still very high.

This is why Barry Cunliffe had to throw in the towel on Koch's Celtic from the West theory. To me this has been fairly obvious all log.

Per Barry Cunliffe as posted earlier,
"If the Mid-Bronze Age move had any effect at all on language, then the simplest hypothesis would be to see it as a vector for introducing, or strengthening Brythonic,"
"If so, then Goidelic had to have arrived earlier, either with Beakers, or earlier."

Goidelic is Q-Celtic from where Old Irish came. The Northwest Bell Beaker province probably spoke an Early Celtic.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59741723

Dranoel said...

@weure

Referring to previous posts, one thing becomes noticeable - Z2103 appears relatively more often not only from the P312, but also from the U106 or in the area where U106 was registered.

We have Z2103 in CWC / BB Czech and later also U106. Romulus mentioned a putative Z2103 alongside another U106 in the Netherlands. UK studies also show several Z2103-M12149 and U106, including the Z156.

Somewhere, I came across the opinion of Mr. McDonald that MAY BE some of the Z156 seen in Scandinavia come from some migration in the Bronze Age / Unietic culture that had an impact on the NBA.

The division of modern Z2103 samples in Central Europe and NW in my opinion coincides with everything that has happened in history and it seems to me that at least up to some point Z2103 accompanied U106 migrations.

@ SKRiBHa

It probably won't be that simple. The "core" or home region of some of these cultures may match, but people's movements / migrations / influences etc. do not. For example, in the case of Germanic cultures you do not mention Unietice / Tumulus, and we can find a lot of works that show the connections and influences of these cultures with Northern Europe, or at least its southern part. It is known that Central Europe from the Bronze Age was the impetus for other regions

By the way, hello to everyone in 2022! May it be better than the previous one. Or at least it was not worse :)

Rob said...

The relevant tree from 'Dialectology.." can be hyperlinked here

Its in agreement with the order I posted earlier, which was from 'Celtic Languages' Ball & Muller.

These are idealizations of course, so the 'people' correlate might not be quite so clean splits c.f. relative waxing & waning of connectivity


@ Slumberry

''What defines "Atlantic" for you? ''

I mean that culturally, from the MBA onward France is broadly split into an Atlantic zone and central European/ Alpine zone. It is during the LBA that Central European 'Urnfield warrior' influences (e.g. wagons, horsegear) make their appearance in the Atlantic region. So the two main systems were partly co-interacting during the LBA (and in fact the Atlantic system spread as far as western Iberia and Scandinavia)

After the ''collapse'' of the Urnfield system (for various reasons, incl. adoption of Iron which disempowered previous monopolies, adaptation of 'Cimmerian' accoutrements), the core of the Atlantic system (northwestern France & E Britain) was relatively unscathed. In search for new 'cultural templates', the elites in eastern / Alpine France looked to Atlantic representations, including but not limited to the Swords I mentioned.
Hence, in cultural terms, French archaeologists point out that during the start of the Iron Age, influences were moving from the Atlantic. But in paleodemographic terms, we would need aDNA to highlight what people movements were responsible for generating that apparent cultural current

LivoniaG said...

Davidski said...
"Well, I wouldn't settle for comparing deep ancestry proportions, like EEF, when looking for an expansion during the Iron Age. I'd focus on more recent drift. But what the hell would I know anyway..."

First, let me compliment your work and this blog. It's actually pretty amazing. You've brought a whole new light to the subject of IE. I don't think you get enough credit. Also I think I understand what Matt did by flattening the bronze and iron age pulses.

Taking a look from a different perspective than bronze vs iron age gene flow, could some Celtic languages have already been in Britain before historical Celtic languages and could those pre-Celtic languages been spoken by some Bell Beaker types? (And NOT BECAUSE EEF ancestry increase.

Bell Beaker satisfies the need for a vast migration, if one's needed for a language family to spread. A language family is the word because a language family will split up quite a bit if there's no way to maintain mutual intelligibility. If an ancestor spreads daughter languages over distances they will become different languages and will not be understandable to one another. If there was ONE Proto-IndoEuropean langauge, this is what happened to it. Icelanders don't speak Greek. Befor writing, the drift towards incomprehensibility can be slowed by gathering the outliers together for a fair, a Thing, a school, a church, an agora, and maybe best of all a market.

The article Nick Patterson (Broad) mentions (Sims-Williams (2020) is not bad, but it takes a weak shot at the lingua franca/second language view of Celtic languages. The Bell Beakers were in a great position to ask someone to use a language of trade and warfare because they were everywhere. Yes, it might be a second language, but it was a universal and apparently a full formed language that could easily become a first language after a few generation. I watch Swedish TV and watch a Swedish detective have a long ENGLISH discussion with a Nigerian and later another one with a Russian gangsta. English is a lingua franca, so we can see how it works. Later Celtic languages in historical times may just be the Celtic languages that stuck. This doesn't seem too discreditable.

They might have been speaking a different Celtic language back in Britain back in 1860 BCE, consistent with the archaeological record and the genetic record.



Davidski said...

@LivoniaG

I think the problem with attributing the origins of Celtic to the Bell Beakers is that it's too early.

That is, unless you subscribe to a significantly more ancient origin of Proto-Indo-European than most linguists, then it's a problem, because it pushes everything back in time.

Also, another issue with Matt's graph is that it doesn't pick up Celtic-specific drift very well, because it's based on PCA distance to one population which may or may not have been of Celtic origin, while the Celtic-specific drift shows up best across certain PCA dimensions.

Ric Hern said...

Where and when did people who eventually became Italic and Celtic speakers split from one another ? When did the Italic speaking tribes reach Italy ?

Ric Hern said...

@ Davidski

Are there any close relations between those Iron Age samples and Iron Age samples from Italy ?

Davidski said...

No idea.

I haven't had time to really look at all the data yet.

Davidski said...

@Ryan

I just saw your question.

Yes, some Irish show the continental Celtic signal, while others don't, but they're still very Celtic, I suppose in that Pictish northern way.

But currently it's hard to know what this means, because the former might just have significant recent Welsh or Cornish ancestry.

So what we'd need to do is to check whether this signal was present in some of the Irish populations from the Iron Age, or at least the Middle Ages.

weure said...

Davidski:

"Well, I wouldn't settle for comparing deep ancestry proportions, like EEF, when looking for an expansion during the Iron Age. I'd focus on more recent drift."

Ok let's do it.

https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?24962-50-replacement-in-GB-Patterson-et-al-in-review&p=824904&viewfull=1#post824904

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

My view is that the Proto-Italo-Celtic-Germanic language spread through Europe as a consequence of the emergence of the Bronze trade network coming from Bronze manufacture by the Unetice culture. Germanic and Italic diverged when people in these areas began manufacturing their own Bronze rather than importing it. Celtic developed out of the original Bronze manufacturing center North of the Alps.

Simon_W said...

@Romulus

"They're trying to push obesity as normal and attractive too, doesn't mean there is any truth to it, it's just globalist propaganda. Blue eyes are a feature like having nice teeth, everyone looks more attractive with it. Blonde hair too, (...) my Grandmother had blue eyes. She told me people with brown eyes are full of shit."

Facts are: Some men don't find mildly obese women attractive. But some men do, very much in fact. What's it got to do with globalism? That's crazy talk. I think a little fat is sexy, that's it. But sure, if a man wants to reject every woman that is not perfectly slender, that's his own decision and not my problem! But women should avoid believing that only a very slender body can be viewed as attractive, because that's clearly not the case.

About blonde hair and blue eyes I think you're misguided. Women with brown hair and dark eyes can be very attractive too. Dark hair makes a nice contrast to fair skin. Dark eyes can look like a doe's or antelope's. And not every blonde blue eyed girl looks that nice. In short: It's not a crucial trait in my opinion. Not to speak of your grandma's opinion which was just dumb. It's obvious: Hitler with his blue eyes must have been a fair fine person and Einstein with his brown eyes full of shit? Come on...

Simon_W said...

Re: sexyness, it's very much a matter of subjective taste. There's also variation between wide tastes and narrow tastes. Some people like many styles of music and food and women - others only like one style. I'm rather on the former side. I'm not saying this is the only right side. It simply varies between people.

Davidski said...

I won't be approving any more comments about pigmentation vs attractiveness.

Simon_W said...

@Davidski
Alright, I was just browsing through the latest comments and as soon as I had started reading, Romulus' weird comment aroused my passion to reply. But actually I want to write about more important things, about the DNA of the Celts in continental Europe. I will delay that to later, because it's late in Europe.

Copper Axe said...

"I won't be approving any more comments about pigmentation vs attractiveness."

The daily struggles of Davidski...

Ryan said...

Thanks David. Maybe things will be clearer with more sampling.

LivoniaG said...

Davidski said...@LivoniaG
"I think the problem with attributing the origins of Celtic to the Bell Beakers is that it's too early. That is, unless you subscribe to a significantly more ancient origin of Proto-Indo-European than most linguists"
That's the part I don't get. There are supposed to be intermediaries between PIE and Celtic. Was Single Grave were still speaking PIE? The Wiki dates (if they're right) are 2800-2200 BCE. 600 years is the distance between Legionaire Latin and Norman French. So at least when Bell Beakers emerge, there was enough time for the Single Gravers to be speaking a daughter language. And that language could have been pre-Celtic. Not Welsh poet Celtic, but a language that would become Celtic.
Time doesn't seem to be a problem when you see it that way.

The Sims-Williams 2020 article that Nick Patterson endorsed is about how central France is a best estimate for the origin of Celtic. The problem with a west or an east origin for Sims-Williams is not really linguistic, it's more the dating and validity of written artifacts.

And the Celtic language family issues are almost an overlay of the same issues as Bell Beaker as a archaeological culture. They are in too many places and they don't always look like the same people from place to place.

After PIE splintered, one of those languages MUST have been pre-Celtic. If there is a culture that explain how pre-Celtic ended up in so many places, that would be the middle phase of Bell Beakers.

Does that maybe take away the time problem?
thanks


Davidski said...

I would say that, yes, pre and proto-Celtic developed in a largely Bell Beaker derived population. If you put it like that, then time is not an issue, as far as I can see.

But my view is that this happened in one specific part of the post-Bell Beaker world, rather than all over it or even across much of it.

The reason I see things this way is because ancient DNA actually shows genetic shifts well after the Bell Beaker period and the emergence of genetically related populations that are also closely related to modern Celtic speakers.

For example, we had a discussion about Iberia here, and I think it's clear that what happened in Iberia is that the Beakers disappeared well before the Celts arrived, and the Celts were a different people.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/03/open-thread-what-are-linguistic.html

Simon_W said...

1. The coords of Channel_Islands_LIA_La_Tene_low_res seem to be very negatively affected by the low resolution, judging by these big distances and unexpected affinities:

Distance to: Channel_Islands_LIA_La_Tene_low_res
0.04826732 DEU_Tollense_BA
0.04829576 CZE_LBA_Knoviz
0.05026423 CZE_IA_La_Tene
0.05028332 Wales_MIA

2. It's remarkable that the Hallstatt era northern outlier from Etruscan Campiglia is closer to the La Tene samples from Slovakia than to anything further west:

Distance to: ITA_Etruscan_Campiglia_CEU_o
0.02676013 SVK_LIA_La_Tene
0.02772152 ITA_Collegno_MA
0.02885323 ITA_Rome_Renaissance
0.03000411 HUN_EIA_Prescythian_Mezocsat
0.03035275 AUT_IA_La_Tene
0.03087033 HUN_IA_La_Tene
0.03094061 FRA_GrandEst_IA2

That doesn't mean it came from as far east as Slovakia; rather it suggests that the Celts east of the Rhine in central Europe were not exactly like those from France. (We don't have any Celtic samples from Germany yet.)

The La Tene era northern outlier from Etruscan Vetulonia on the other hand is similar, but has more western admixture:

Target: ITA_Etruscan_Vetulonia_CEU_o
Distance: 2.2044% / 0.02204414 | R3P
42.0 ITA_Etruscan_Campiglia_CEU_o
37.6 Wales_MIA
20.4 FRA_Occitanie_EBA

3. HUN_La_Tene is very distinct from anything from France and more similar to early Iron Age Croatia and Slovenia:

Distance to: HUN_La_Tene
0.01705285 HRV_EIA
0.01814593 SVN_EIA
0.02087226 HRV_MBA
0.02114161 AUT_IA_La_Tene
0.02238756 SRB_BA_Maros
0.02239566 HUN_IA_La_Tene
0.02245433 CZE_LBA_Knoviz_o3
0.02309874 HRV_LIA_La_Tene

It seems to be mostly a mixture of the local Syrmian_SremGroup with something resembling Czech Tumulus:

Target: HUN_La_Tene
Distance: 0.9655% / 0.00965504 | R3P
48.6 HUN_IA_Syrmian_SremGroup
35.0 CZE_MBA_Tumulus
16.4 HUN_Avar_Period

Simon_W said...

4. My East Prussian grandma scores 24.8% of the Etruscan_Campiglia_CEU_o:

Target: East Prussian grandma
Distance: 2.0823% / 0.02082342 | R5P
26.0 VK2020_UKR_Shestovitsa_VA
24.8 ITA_Etruscan_Campiglia_CEU_o
19.2 Baltic_LTU_Late_Antiquity_low_res
17.6 VK2020_NOR_North_IA
12.4 VK2020_NOR_South_IA

This may be from assimilated pre-Germanic people near the Main and/or mountainous parts of Hesse.

5. My half Swabian, quarter Alsatian and quarter Swiss grandma scores substantial amounts of HUN_La_Tene:

Target: maternal grandma
Distance: 0.7076% / 0.00707562 | R3P
51.4 VK2020_Faroes_EM
41.2 HUN_La_Tene
7.4 Levant_Abel_IA

This is probably the result of the early Medieval migration of the Danubian Suebi from Hungary and Slovakia to Alemannia. They may have had admixed with the locals before.

6. So the substantial amounts of FRA_Hauts_De_France_IA2 that I tend to get seem to be spurious. Makes sense considering that it's similar to a mix of Orkney_VA and Dublin_VA (i.e. Northwest Europeans) with Etruscan_Campiglia:

Target: FRA_Hauts_De_France_IA2
Distance: 2.1282% / 0.02128184 | R3P
46.2 VK2020_Scotland_Orkney_VA
30.4 ITA_Etruscan_Campiglia
23.4 VK2020_IRL_Dublin_VA

Matt said...

@Davidski, following from that comment, I had a quick go at replicating my graph with FRA_GrandEst_IA2, and with the Celt-Germanic PCA date you provided (using distance across all dimensions). See here: https://imgur.com/a/e8vQngf

(Assuming that these together capture a much > proportion of specific drift and much < deep proportions, compared to Global25).

The same pattern is seen of a decreasing distance to FRA_GrandEst_IA2 over time between the average for England_MBA vs England_LBA, then no change in the average between England_LBA and England_EIA. Then there's a post Roman bounce where the Saxon and VA samples get more distant on average to FRA_GrandEst_IA2 (albeit the VA set has far more variable in how Scandinavian vs British the samples in it are).

Of course, like you say this the closest samples among IA are closer to FRA_GrandEst_IA2. So more would research would be needed to see if the phenomenon of more samples close to FRA_GrandEst_IA2 is just a statistical product of increasing sample size (because the averages don't change), or represents a specific sort of individuals with special isotope / burial practices / y-dna / mtdna etc.

Also this is using all the 25 dimensions of the Celt-Germanic PCA; maybe I should only be using a selected couple of them. Maybe this is still getting dominated by some signal unrelated to Celtic speakers?

So just using the first two PC of Celt-Germanic PCA instead: https://imgur.com/a/zxIMiLF . That actually shows a stronger dip towards getting closer to FRA_GrandEst_IA2, around the LBA.

SKRiBHa said...

@Dranoel

Thank you for writing what you wrote.

(…) It probably won't be that simple. The "core" or home region of some of these cultures may match, but people's movements / migrations / influences etc. do not. (…)

Touche! Logically it had to be as you wrote, see a formation of Proto-(Italo)-Celtic but especially a formation of Proto-Germanic. :-)

It is nice that you no longer connect broken clay pots with individual peoples, languages and genes! I can see progress! Who knows, maybe eventually you too will start to see everywhere something more than just Proto-Germans or Turbo-Slavs riding dinosaurs. :-)

(…) For example, in the case of Germanic cultures you do not mention Unietice / Tumulus, and we can find a lot of works that show the connections and influences of these cultures with Northern Europe, or at least its southern part. It is known that Central Europe from the Bronze Age was the impetus for other regions (…)

From the data I have looked at, there is no indication that Unetice and Tumulus cultures were directly responsible for the formation of Proto-Germanic. These cultures have been associated with the formation of Proto-Celtic.

If they were allegedly related to the formation of Proto-Germanic, as you say, then this is logically evidence of an even greater creolization of Proto-Germanic compared to Proto-(Italo)-Celtic and PIE. This is indicated by distortions, see the so-called Germanic sound shifts, etc.

Proto-Germanic has been derived directly from Jastorf culture, i.e. from Scandinavia, and not from Unetice and Tumulus culture, i.e. from Central Europe.

‘The Jastorf culture evolved out of the Nordic Bronze Age, through influence from the Hallstatt culture farther south.’

You have to decide on something. Well, unless you are saying that Proto-Germanic was formed more or less simultaneously in southern Scandinavia and south of the Sudetes in Prague… :-)

Nick Patterson (Broad) said...

@Matt

"
Nick P wants to solve most of the problems and questions related to the part of the world his ancestors come from (as a personal interest that entwines with adding new scientific value). But maybe this one can't be with those methods.
"

I've heard this from other people -- but I don't think it true. I'm just as
interested on how Indo-European reaches India as how it reaches Britain.
I don't know for sure that the IA genetic shift is connected to Celtic, but it
does seem plausible.

On other comment on Celtic. Joe Eska tells me that Gaulish and Insular Celtic
are quite close linguistically. Hard to square that with (proto)-Celtic arriving
with the BB.

Genos Historia said...

Cool update on Celtic Y DNA.

G2a L497 looks to be a Celtic marker, now.

13% of continental Celts have G2a L497.
3.6% of English Celts have G2a L497.

10 years ago, Maciamo at Eupedia identified L497 as the most common form of G2a in Europe. He tried to link it to IE expansions. But it looks to be from Celts.

The only examples of G2a-L497 before the iron age, come from two samples in Tryipllia and one in Eneolithic Hungary.

The fact all Celtic G2a is L497, means it is a founder lineage which expanded after the Neolithic. It isn't simply leftover from the Neolithic.

Genos Historia said...

One of my family's lines from England is L497. It was mysterious at first. But now it is clear it is Celtic origin. It is cool how ancient DNA can verify specific origins like this.

Someone should double check the Gothic G2a. Remember in Poland, the Gothic Y DNA is mostly G2a. It is probably L497. If so, we can presume they picked it up from Celts.

Genos Historia said...

This Celtic Y DNA is great at confirming the historic origins of Y DNA hgs in Europe today.

For a long time, northern European posters in forums with rare "Southern European" yhaplogroups believed their haplogroups were of local Neolithic farmer origin. E1b-V13, J2a, J2b.

This study does enough, to prove it must it is not. It has to one way or another be from the Roman empire. Or a random immigrant.

For example, the relativly high frequency of E1b V13 and J2 in France, Spain is for sure from Roman empire.

Genos Historia said...

Not to mention the near complete absence of R1b U106, I1 in Celts.

This is great confirmation of the Germanic origin of these haplogroups.

Y DNA proves, that the Germans had been completely separated from all Celts since Corded Ware times, at least paternally.

Genetic Drift wise, Germans & British Celts should be no closer to each other than each are to Balto-Slavs.

weure said...

@SKRiBHa 1600 BC is not 600 BC. And any idea were Hallstatt had it's core?

So nonsens: Tumulus influence (around 1600 BC) and the development of Germanic imo around Schleswig (Jastorf 600 BC>) don't bite each other.

Dranoel said...

@ SKRiBHa
Due to the lack of will and the lack of time, I will allow myself not to respond to these "minor irritations".

There is such a huge time difference between the cultures of Unetice and Tumulus and Jastorf that we cannot talk about them in a parallel way.

In this forum, and even in this thread, it has been mentioned many times that we cannot assume that the whole culture was "mono-ethnic". Some people from the unetice culture may have given rise to a proto-Celtic. But those who migrated influenced other cultures and left their genes there.

Read a bit about Pommelte, then learn about the culture of the Elp and Sögel-Wohlde-Circle. Later, check out the Jastorf Cultural Sites. Connect the dots and start analyzing :)

We know BB was present in Jutland. Probably these people assimilated and co-created other cultures in this place. We have Unetice in Central Germany, we have Pommelte. We have Tumulus influences and related cultures in Northern Germany and the Netherlands.

In your opinion BB - Unetice - Tumulus are the "mother" cultures of the Celts. So the Netherlands, North Germany, Jutland are pre-Celtic areas? :) OF COURSE NOT. But you can see the influence of people and cultures that gave rise to other groups elsewhere in Europe, such as the Celtic ones.

@Woere has already written a lot about all of this. Ask him, ask for links to forums, where he explained everything with specific examples based on scientific materials.

Genos Historia said...

@Romulus,

Theories about Unetice being a granddaddy of Western IEs, before ancient DNA, were interesting.

But looking at the ancient DNA, we can see Corded Ware is this mega IE granddaddy. Corded Ware times are also when most IE groups separated from each other. It is when the expansion & separation happened.

Plus the Unetice ancient DNA we have in Bohemia can't be directly ancestral in a major way to Germans or Celts.

Dave the Slothtopus said...

Genos Historia said...
"Not to mention the near complete absence of R1b U106, I1 in Celts."

Also P3121>DF19, which (in the paper) is present in the Netherlands from Beaker to Tumulus/Sogel (and through to today); and only show up anywhere else as a paper sample as a IA CZE_Hallstatt burial who autosomally looks like he never left the Netherlands.

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

@Nick

"I'm just as interested on how Indo-European reaches India as how it reaches Britain."

In your opinion is the best hypothesis on that still Yamnaya and if so how do you reconcile Corded Ware and Yamnaya Y-Chromosomes and also a much later Horse Domestication in Sintashta? In Johannes Krause's recent book he places the ultimate origin in Neolithic Iran with a transmission to Yamnaya but many myself included see issues with that. If Bell Beakers were not Celtic speakers do you believe they were Indo-European speakers or related to Basques and/or Etruscans?

Genos Historia said...

@Dave the Slothopus,

DF19 is so rare I did not take note of that. Thanks for mentioning.

The DF19 crowd now has documentation of their origins too. It is the P312 subclade which stayed "home."

Genos Historia said...

@Romulus,

I don't know anything about archaeology, but wouldn't it make sense the links between Scandinavia & central Europe in the Bronze age were "cultural" not genetic.

I say this because the Y DNA of the Germanic family, look to be indigenous to Scandinavia/northwest Europe going back to Corded Ware times.

Nordic Bronze age may have married women from central Europe, same way British bronze age married women from France. That would be the only realistic geneflow because Germanic Y DNA is distinct.

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

@Genos

"Plus the Unetice ancient DNA we have in Bohemia can't be directly ancestral in a major way to Germans or Celts."

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

If you look at this PCA, Scandinavian BA populations are much more similar to Unetice than to Corded Ware.

DragonHermit said...

@Genos Historia

EV-13 and J2b spread during the Early Bronze Age judging by TMCRA. Most of it is pre-Roman. They've never been found during the Neolithic (there was a pre-EV13 in Neolithic Spain, but not the actual thing).

This is quite common in Europe. Obscure Y-DNAs became very widespread due to IE-speaking populations. Look at R1b-L151. Nowhere to be found during Late Neolithic, and then boom, all of Western Europe is dominated by it.

Whatever their ultimate origin, they were certainly crucial in the early Bronze Age spread of IE languages.

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

@Genos

Germanic Y DNA is distinct but it's not from the Corded Ware period, that period you have Battle Axe Culture which is basically 100% R1a living alongside some Pitted Ware Culture people who were all I2a. In the period chronologically overlapping and post Unetice is when we see R1b-U106 and I1 become prominent. Maybe these were minor Unetice lineages that had a big founder effect when they brought bronze making skills to the North Sea area.

Davidski said...

R1b-U106 is a Corded Ware and Single Grave lineage.

It didn't arrive in Northwestern Europe with Unetice.

In fact, if anything, it moved south into Central Europe during the Bronze Age.

Genos Historia said...

No doubt they're very similar Corded Ware derived populations, but not directly related.

Lombards clustered right next to British BA, but we all agree they're not directly related.

The Bohemia Unetice Y DNA is not ancestral to Germanic Y DNA. R1b U152, I2a2a2 basically don't exist in Scandinavia at all.

Genos Historia said...

@Romulus,

We need more samples. Netherlands, northern Germany, Scandinavia have not been sequenced much in ancient DNA.

When we do, I bet we'll see R1b U106 and I1 exploded in Corded Ware times.

R1b U106 doesn't look like a recent expansion in the ancient DNA we have. It shows up in earliest Corded Ware settlers in Bohemia, 2900 BC. It shows up in Netherlands Bell Beaker in 2400 BC.

yfull says U106 is as old as P312. We'll find heaps of U106 in 3rd millennium BC cemeteries soon enough.

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

The U106 sample from this paper:

2136-1892 calBCE (3635±40 BP, GrN-5131) Netherlands_LNB_EBA_BellBeaker

The 3 oldest R1b U106+ samples

PNL001 4271±25 BP Corded_Ware Corded Ware Bohemia Bohemia_Unetice_preClassical
I7196 2800-1800 BCE Unetice Old Únětice Czech_EBA
RISE98 2278-2032 calBCE (3736±32 BP, OxA-28987) Nordic_LN Sweden LN Sweden_LN.SG


U106 was never found in the Danish SGC, they weren't even R1b M269. The oldest and only R1b U106 in Corded Ware was found in Bohemia , in the area preceding Unetice. The oldest R1b-U106 in Scandinavia is chronologically contemporaneous with Unetice.

Davidski said...

So like I said, U106 moved northwest with Corded Ware, and then expanded from Northwestern Europe.

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

According to the actual Bohemia paper PLN001 has a mean age of 2900 BCE and I7196 has a mean age of 2100 BCE. I would say it's a lineage that arose North of the core Unetice area and spread into the North Sea/Scandinavian area after 2300 BCE, but not with initial Corded Ware movements. Bringing bronze and the predecessor of the Germanic languages over the course of centuries.

Davidski said...

It was obvious that U106 was a Corded Ware marker years ago.

Nordic_LN RISE 98. Very Nordic.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-boscombe-bowmen.html

Rob said...

It’s obvious that U106 is from within the horizon of “corded ware” / single grave cultures but it seems people wish to find out which specific regional group; timing and network patterns with which it’s associated

EL said...

@ Romulus Right now there's nothing that suggests that I1 was a Unetice marker. I would say that it's the other way around, rather. We have a great many samples from German, Polish and Czech Unetice, with not a single I1 found. It doesn't look like I1 in Nordic_LN has anything to do with the Unetice culture.

weure said...

@ Davidski: "U106 moved northwest with Corded Ware, and then expanded from Northwestern Europe"

Agree. Some adds.

Moves northwest is from central-east (oldest R1b U106 is from Czech early Corded Ware) just about the time of the movement from central east> northwest.

And an add from Iain mc Donald: 'we do expect a lot of R-U106 in the Single Grave Culture, and I will look forward to these results. But there's a very big step between R-U106 and the specifics of R-S5520 that we are discussing here. Let's not conflate the two. I expect the SGC results will contain most of the missing R-L48 clades, maybe some R-Z18 too, potentially a few of the basal R-U106 clades, and likely some now-extinct R-U106 lines.'

It's not likely that R2b U106 in Czech/Bohemia went to an immediately extinct on the contrary. It's likely that the specific subclade Z156> Z304 (>DF96/98) moved with Tumulus (1600 BC) to the northwest. The Celtic Paper has made this more likely.

alex said...

@Genos_Historia
"This Celtic Y DNA is great at confirming the historic origins of Y DNA hgs in Europe today.

For a long time, northern European posters in forums with rare "Southern European" yhaplogroups believed their haplogroups were of local Neolithic farmer origin. E1b-V13, J2a, J2b.

This study does enough, to prove it must it is not. It has to one way or another be from the Roman empire. Or a random immigrant.

For example, the relativly high frequency of E1b V13 and J2 in France, Spain is for sure from Roman empire."

Depends on the region and the subclade in question. For Britain that looks to be the case, i.e. that most/all of J2a, J2b, E-V13 is of post-IA origin. But Iberia is slightly different, there is a decent amount of G2a in Portugal, for example, and a part of that must be from Neolithic times because there was no G2a-heavy population that settled Portugal in historic times. The "total Y DNA replacement" is kind of a meme, even in Britain and Ireland there's an amount of neolithic I2a still surviving (although a lot of the native clades got wiped out for sure)

J.S. said...

@Genos_Historia
Genomic ancestry during Antiquity in France
Mendisco Fanny (1), De Belvalet Harmony (2), Gleize Yves (3), Bel Valerie (3), Thiol Sandrine (3), Oudry-Braillon Sophie (3), Grimaud Julie (3), Rochette Marie (3), Pinard Estelle (3), Chenal Fanny (3), Barrand-Emam Hélène (4), Hernandez Jérome (3), Pruvost Mélanie (5)
1 - De la Préhistoire à l’Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie (France), 2 - De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie (PACEA), Pessac, (France), 3 - INRAP (France), 4 - Antea Archéologie (France), 5 - De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie (France)
The aim of the ANCESTRA project (ANR Ancestra, dir. M.Pruvost) is to reconstruct the peopling of the territory of present-day France by characterizing the different waves of human populations since the Neolithic and until the beginning of the Middle- Ages.
Following the publication of data concerning the Neolithic and Bronze Age, this part of the project focuses more particularly on the unexplored period of Antiquity.
Thanks to a close collaboration with the archaeologists involved in the project, we report here genome wide data from about a hundred samples from South, North and East of France.
Antiquity, like most periods of transition, could be marked by new social rules, new networks of exchange as well as the arrival of new groups of migrants. Crossing archaeological, anthropological and genomic data, we investigate demographic processes and social structures during the Ancient Era, marked, among other things, by the expansion of the Roman Empire across Europe.
Despite an overall diversity for this Antiquity period which echoes that currently observed in the France territory, we were able to identify a subtle structure of this genetic diversity according geographic regions. We also could identify that the local population were affected by gene flow from eastern Mediterranean region but the admixture with Roman individuals remains sporadic.
Finally, these genomic data, confronted with more local archaeological issues, raise new questions about cultural continuities across France, and allow us to discuss the different components of the society of Antiquity.
page 103_104
https://isba9.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Abstract_Book_ISBA9_2022.pdf

weure said...

@ Davidski "Nordic_LN RISE 98. Very Nordic"

Yes and his subclade is very extinct in the NW.

This is his subclade on Yfull. More Saudi's than Scandics (0)...

https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-PF7562/

Perfect illustration of what Mc Donald has stated that many of the early lines went extinct (in the NW).

Davidski said...

Modern Northwest Euro U106 lineages are from Single Grave too.

Dranoel said...

Except that it practically never has a mere cultural link, without any genetic linkage. The Z2103 is the best example of this. Recent studies have confirmed several Z2103s in Britain during the Bronze Age. Would anyone expect it some time ago? Certainly not. This is an example of how genes flowed along with culture, trade or "simply", and it mattered, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller.

So we have 2 versions:
a. that U106 has spread north from Central Europe,
b. that U106 had spread north from Central Europe and later returned south (part of it).

But what basically speaks for one option and not the other?

Do any of you know, how was the sample Z2103 from Czech CWC dated?

Large-Scale Migration into Southern Britain During the Middle to Late Bronze Age pictures - some results include:
6 - P312> Z290 (not sure if L21 is no call or ancestral)
105 - P312> Z290> L21
41 - P312> ZZ11> U152
16 - P312> ZZ11> DF27
2 - P312> DF19
215 - P312 all (includes many that are no calls at the above)

7 - U106> Z2265> BY30097> Z381> Z156
9- U106 all

3 - S1194

5 - PF7589

6 - Z2103> M12149

Is there anything known about the context of these Z2103 samples? Do you suspect with what historically / archaeological movement of people this could be related?

weure said...

Davidski "Modern Northwest Euro U106 lineages are from Single Grave too."

Agree. But not 100%. Z156>Z304 (DF96/98) can be the "exception".

My "two cents" ;) for a Tumulus (1600 BC) spread in this specific case/ subclade.

In both cases early Corded ware central-east can be the original source.


Matt said...

@Nick: Fair enough, you know your own mind! Though I would not see any issue with entwining an interest in Britain and Ireland specifically with your research any more than Iosif Lazaridis producing more than average about Greece and the Near East, or Narasimhan on India...

Matt said...

@alex, it does seem clear that if there was any pre-Beaker survival in Britain, France and Iberia, it must've occured in some quite unusual and concentrated locations and remained patrilocal for a long time. (If it were in any concentration above 1/1000... Which would literally be, like 20-40 men or something, given likely total population sizes). There are a few I2a in Britain in the CA-EBA but not a lot; none in Iberia save 1. Population sizes are not large, so it's not inconceivable for it to be near total.

Copper Axe said...

@Rob

Could you link the article or mention the confusing claims. Not really big on Heyd myself either tbh.

LivoniaG said...

Nick Patterson (Broad) said...
Joe Eska tells me that Gaulish and Insular Celtic are quite close linguistically. Hard to square that with (proto)-Celtic arriving with the BB."

Nick. Maybe as much as 2000 years separates any written Celtic from PIE, even conservatively. There had to be pre-Celtic speakers somewhere in that time period. There had to be or Celtic is not descended from PIE.

All you and Joe Eska are saying is that at its tail end, Celtic was reduced to two dialects. Language convergence is one explanation. The need for speakers of a spread out language to maintain mutual comprehensibility.

Dave the Slothtopus said...

So here is a breakdown of U106 and DF19, including the new ones from the paper:

I5748 DF19>Z302* Oostwoud, Noord-Holland 2579-2211 calBCE Aceramic Single Grave [Pre-Beaker?]
Rise98 (nordic looking) U106 2431-2238 BCE 'Battle Axe"/SGC?
I13028 DF19>DF88* Ottoland-Kromme, Zuid-Holland 2456-2141 calBCE Barbed Wire Beaker
I7196 U106>Z381>Z156>Z304>DF98>S1911>S1894 Jinonice, CZE 2300-2000 BC Early/Older Unetice
I3025 U106 Molenaarsgrsaf, Zuid-Holland 2136-1892 calBCE Barbed Wire Beaker
I4070 U106 > Z381 Oostwoud, Noord-Holland 1881–1646 calBCE Tumulus/Sögel-Wohlde?
I26830 DF19>DF88>FGC11833>S4281 Wervershoof-Zwaagdijk, Noord-Holland 1620-1311 calBCE Netherlands_MBA/Tumulus/Sögel-Wohlde
I11972 Z381+/Z301- Westwoud, Noord-Holland 1501-1310 calBCE Elp
I17019 Z156>>Z304 Vlaardingen, Zuid Holland 1421-1216 calBCE Hilversum
I13788 Z156>>Z304 Chouc, Teplice, NW Bohemia 1300-800 BCE Urnfield
I17607 DF19>DF88>FGC11833>S4281 Louny, Stradonice, NW Bohemia 800-550 BCE Czech_IA_Hallstatt C or D
I23978 Z156>S552->FT221936 Zegorje ob Savi, Slovenia 742-400 calBCE Hallstatt C or D
I11149 Z156 Taversham, Cambridgeshire 733-397 calBCE [pre?] Catuvellauni
I15950 Z156>>Z304>>Y28944 Teplice, NW Bohemia 480-390 BCE La Tene
I12907 Z156>>Z304 "Aak" Ultgeest-Dorregeest, Noord-Holland 356-57 calBCE IA West-Frisia
[Rome Happens]
3DT16 U106>Z381>S264/Z156>Z305>Z307>S265/Z304>DF96>~18274596-G-A>S11515>L1/S26 Driffield Terrace, York, England c. 175-225 AD
6DT3 U106>Z381>S264/Z156>Z305>Z307>S265/Z304>~22365047-G-A>S1911>S1894>FGC14818>FGC14823>FGC14814 Driffield Terrace, York, England c. 275-375 AD
6DT23 DF19>DF88>FGC11833>S4281>S4268>Z17112>S17075> Z43034 Driffield Terrace, York, England c.250CE

Then U106 is everywhere in german tribes and DF19 shows up in a Norwegian-like sample (RMPR31) buried without context in Rome around the time it is sacked by Alaric

SKRiBHa said...

@weure

Thank you very much for what you wrote!

(…) 1600 BC is not 600 BC. (…)

Really? I thought it was just the opposite, i.e. 600 BCE is not 1600 BCE! Thank you for clarifying this!

(…) And any idea were Hallstatt had it's core? (…)

Hmm, if you do not know it, (which I admit is odd) then instead of asking, maybe you’d better read something about it yourself, or take a look at a map, e.g. at this one:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Hallstatt_LaTene.png

(…) So nonsens: Tumulus influence (around 1600 BC) and the development of Germanic imo around Schleswig (Jastorf 600 BC>) don't bite each other. (…)

It is rather logical that any influence would be difficult the other way around, see Jastorf (600 BCE) > Tumulus (1600 BCE).

Now seriously. From what you wrote, I understand that you agree that:

a. Proto-Celtic formed in Hallstatt culture (1200 - 500 BCE),
b. Proto-Germenic formed in Jastorf culture (750 – 1 BCE).
c. Proto-Germanic was formed by a mixing of the influences, traditions and languages of earlier peoples and cultures of Scandinavia, such as:

- Nordic Bronze Age / Northern Bronze Age / Scandinavian Bronze Age (1750 – 500 BCE), Battle Axe culture / Boat Axe culture (2800 – 2300 BCE),

with peoples and cultures of Central Europe, such as:

- Hallstatt culture (1200 – 500 BCE), Urnfield culture (1300 – 750 BCE), Tumulus culture (1600 – 1200 BCE), Unetice culture (2300 – 1680 BCE), Bell Beaker culture (2800 – 1800 BCE).

d. All of the aforementioned cultures and peoples were descended from Corded Ware culture (2900 - 2350 BCE) which itself logically had to be 100% Post-PIE...

Thank you so much for help! All the best. :-)

SKRiBHa said...

@Dranoel

Again, I have to thank you very much for what you wrote! I admit that you surprise me positively, but I do not understand you a bit. First, you made a complete simpleton of yourself and urge everyone to ignore me, and then you start writing to me again and again, and now you have been helping me, probably unconsciously. You will probably regret it soon, but for now, it is nice, so keep going!

(…) Due to the lack of will and the lack of time, I will allow myself not to respond to these "minor irritations". (…)

Do not be so shy! Feel free to do it. I do not know if you will be able to beat this cute Turbo-Slav riding dinosaur movie, but try your best. I bet you can do better. Try to do something even smarter!

(…) In this forum, and even in this thread, it has been mentioned many times that we cannot assume that the whole culture was "mono-ethnic". Some people from the unetice culture may have given rise to a proto-Celtic. But those who migrated influenced other cultures and left their genes there. (…)

As I see it, with pain but, nevertheless, you admit that KoSSinna and all this "Siedlungsarchäologie" are a pile of Prussian crap. Bravo! Respect!

(…) In your opinion BB - Unetice - Tumulus are the "mother" cultures of the Celts. (…)

Where am I saying something like that? You manipulate absurdly again. I just put together the official data, i.e. cultures and their dating. It is not me, but other representatives of Prussian science like you, have linked Proto-Celtic to Hallstatt culture (1200 - 500 BCE), etc., and Proto-Germanic to Jastorf culture (750 - 1 BCE).

(…) @Woere has already written a lot about all of this. (...)

I have already replied 'weure'. I hope you are digesting what I wrote there and do not choke on it because it would be a real pity...

Rob said...

@ Copper Axe

''V. Heyd, Yamnaya, Corded Wares, and Bell Beakers on the Move.''

I think it's pretty good effort. However some internal contradictions
- a rather bizarre claim made that I2a completely disappeared from Europe.
- more fine-grained understanding of sublineages required (e.g. would help prevent silly errors like above; a good '''sanity check''; helps track correct migration paths - e.g. Fatyanovo does not come via East Baltic Battle Axe but via a more inland forest-trjectory)
- issue with 40% turnover in Iberia , taking G-W inferences at face-value
- seems to almost want to say maritime beakear developed in Upper Rhine, yet still opts for 'Iberian proto-Beaker'' idea
- I would not rely absolutely at minor variations of C14 values in tracking migration paths, as they derive from different materials, different Labs

Still, very laudable effort given his consideration of middle Neolithic pre-CWC dynamics. Some (eg Kristiansen et al) jump from LBK to Corded Ware, missing 3000 years of history

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

Are there any papers with models of Bell Beakers or any other R1b-L51 population using the SGC samples?

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

The situation with U106, Scandinavia, and Germanics looks to me the same as the situation with U152, Britain, and Celts.

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

Just earlier

Davidski said...

I guess this is more about psychology and your mental state than discussing the facts. I'm finding that these sorts of debates are often heavily influenced by the mental state of the participants.

The fact is that U106 was present in very early Corded Ware in Czechia, and then soon after it moved north, because it's also found in Late Neolithic Sweden and the Netherlands.

So no, there was no late expansion of U106 into Northwestern Europe and Scandinavia. It got there really early with the Corded Ware people.

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

The facts are we have two Single Grave Culture samples with Y-DNA, separated by 100 years, and they are both R1b-V6136. Which is even further removed than the ancestor of the Beakers than Yamnaya. So if yo want to believe based on your feelings that they also had something else that is fine, maybe they will, but so far this is all the data has to say about their Y-DNA. You've been saying for years the same about Yamnaya having R1a-M417 or R1b-L51 and hundreds of samples later that still isn't the case.

Davidski said...

I guess you didn't read that paper properly, because it actually says that these Single Grave samples, much like Bell Beakers, have a higher level of EEF than other Corded Ware populations.

You know, they're like autosomally the right sort of population to be related to Bell Beakers.

But I'm still at a loss as you why you can't make the simple link between early Czech Corded Ware U106, Late Neolithic Swedish U106 and Dutch Bell Beaker U106.

Obviously, there was L51 and U106 in early Corded Ware, so there was plenty of time for it to spread north, and that's indeed where we find it.

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

I'll believe it when I see it. There are other populations autosomally the right sort of populations to be Beakers too. The samples from Immel overlap with German Beakers who are looking like the best bet to be ancestral to all other Beakers.

On another note, the way you come after people with ad hominem attacks reminds me of Lenin, is that the sort of guy you want to be like? Are you a fan of the Soviets and Lenin?

Dranoel said...

Davidski

If I understand correctly, Woere agrees with you that U106 left the Czech Republic in early Cwc. But why his version with the fact that later z156 followed a similar path is not correct? Has anyone made any analyzes to contradict this?

@skribha

haha: D like a man has hopes, but no - you are unreformable;) rudeness, vulgarity and knowledge from wikipedia - the worst combination. So you still have to ignore you. You irritate some, and entertain others. You are the clown of this blog :) such a harmless monkey. That's your charm.

And those texts must have touched you a lot, since they keep you awake. Apparently there was a lot of truth in them :) I am going to make breakfast and I wish you a nice day. Stay in your shit hut and wait for the return of the big lechia :) turbo-slavs will save you!

Davidski said...

@Romulus

It's been obvious for a long time that Bell Beakers are derived from a western EEF-rich Corded Ware population.

This was obvious even before it became clear that many Corded Ware populations were rich in L51.

So I'm not sure why we're even having this idiotic discussion now.

Davidski said...

@Dranoel

I don't focus too much on singleton samples or even specific lineages. I look at the big picture.

The big picture shows that U106 moved west from the steppe with early Corded Ware, and it became established across much of Northwestern Europe during the Late Neolithic.

So I'm not going to consider a Unetice singleton belonging to Z156 as the game changer, especially since there's no evidence or logic behind any Unetice expansion into Northwestern Europe, and, in fact, there's very convincing isotopic data showing the presence of Scandinavian migrants in Unetice.

Rob said...

My contention that P312 moved via Danube / Central Europe remains true . The early P312 are in Moravia, south Poland, south Germany , Switzerland
I don’t know specifically about U106, but it’s beyond doubt that there was a late Bb era migration to Scandinavia from NW Europe . Locally it’s called the flint dagger horizon . It explains the Gw shift as well as the I1 foundry effect in Scanda

Davidski said...

Early Corded Ware moved west via northwestern Ukraine.

That's why it's different from Yamnaya in terms of both Y-haplogroups and autosomal ancestry.

Davidski said...

By the way, U106 Nordic_LN RISE98 was buried with a bone needle.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/09/commoner-or-elite.html

Rob said...

@ Dave

'Early Corded Ware moved west via northwestern Ukraine.

That's why it's different from Yamnaya in terms of both Y-haplogroups and autosomal ancestry.''

This is kinda non sequitur.
I dont think there is a unitary "Corded Ware'. There were several migration paths.

Davidski said...

So how do you square Corded Ware cultural and genetic unity (vs the very different Yamnaya) with this idea of multiple paths, including one via the Danube?

Rob said...

''So how do you square Corded Ware cultural and genetic unity (vs the very different Yamnaya) with this idea of multiple paths, including one via the Danube?''

There is evident structure within CWC. The Czech study outlined it, and it was also evident in material culture, Y -haplogroups, etc.
But that might have developed after the NW Ukraine funnel - something like a Baltic path & Central path.
And thirdly you had the Balkan path.

Davidski said...

Corded Ware people used stone battle axes and they had 10-15% ancestry from Ukrainian foragers.

They all came from the same place.

The structure started happening after they settled across Northern and Central Europe.

Copper Axe said...

I always found it interesting thst so far kurgan burials seem more prominent amongst the L151 Corded Ware groups than the R1a-M417. Could maybe harker back to the Proto-Indo-European days when the common ancestor of L51 and Z1103 lived.

But beyond that you are definitely looming at a closely related population cluster out of which the Corded Ware arose. I do think the genetic difference between them and Yamnaya is a little overstated sometimes. I would like to see how Yamnaya samples that are a bit closer to the forest-steppe look like. I also think some of the Yamnaya samara samples were admixed with populations from the east (maybe Repin or Khvalynsk related remnants) which could pull the average away from "Proto-CWC" genetic cluster in terms of WHG/EHG versus EHG/CHG rated ancestries.

Copper Axe said...

@Davidski

"there's no evidence or logic behind any Unetice expansion into Northwestern Europe"

There is an interesting interpretation of the Unetice culture rather being something akin to a Proto-state than just a material culture of pastoral tribes a la the Beaker horizon. There definitely was an Unetice expansion towards northern continental Europe in terms of the spread of material traditions and metalworking from the Unetice culture (and perhaps state). However this wouldnt have to mean anything in terms of population genetics or even linguistic dispersals. Even the elites during this Unetice era up in northern continental Europe could've been locals who became politically affiliated with the Unetice core.

Davidski said...

The earliest Corded Ware samples from the Baltic and Czechia (a mix of R1a and R1b) cluster together relative to Yamnaya.

Even Ukrainian Yamnaya is somewhat more southeastern compared to them. New Yamnaya samples won't change things much.

Fatyanovo had flat graves, but Corded Ware in Germany and Poland, also rich in R1a, had kurgans.

Andrzejewski said...

@Davidski “Early Corded Ware moved west via northwestern Ukraine.

That's why it's different from Yamnaya in terms of both Y-haplogroups and autosomal ancestry.”

I don’t understand that. Are you saying that the 10%-15% Ukrainian forager contribution has made such a tremendous difference that the y Hap R1a1 quintessentially replaced all others, including R1b?

Copper Axe said...

@Davidski

You would know this better than I would, but isnt it the case that the Corded Ware sites in the Polish lowlands dont have burial mounds, which do show up southeast near the Carpathians? As far as I know those samples were R1b rather than R1a.

It isnt just Fatyanovo but the entire Baltic Corded Ware, the Battle Axe culture, Corded Ware of Belarus and the middle Dnieper variant of Ukraine were pretty much all mainly or exclusively doing flat burials.

Regarding the Corded Ware in Germany, you clearly had different groups with different traditions. I havent been able to come across archaeological descriptions of the sites the German Corded Ware samples were from, but I know that in some German Corded Ware groups flat burials were standard. Burial mounds are more of a single grave thing in Germany.

Obviously its not as simple as "r1b=kurgan" and "r1a=flat grave" and I hope this isnt interpreted as R1b and R1a Corded Ware groups being unrelated, but it is an interesting pattern and I do wonder how this relates to the period when the Corded Ware and Yamnaya's common ancestor lived.

Richard Rocca said...

@David, I asked the lone "U106 from Unetice" holdout this question elsewhere and got a nonsensical answer:

"If the Tumulus Culture was the "source population" for some/most of U106 in the Netherlands, then how do you explain the obvious lack of U152, R1a and I2a2 in the MBA/LBA/Iron Age Netherland samples when they make up an overwhelming majority of Bohemian EBA samples? It seems illogical."

And then sent this, but still got back answers that make zero sense to anyone:

"Sorry, but your response is also illogical... unless you are proposing that the U106 folks in Unetice all got DNA tested and were the only ones that decided to move to the Netherlands. Logic dictates that U106 and its major subclades were already in the Netherlands, Northern Germany by the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker periods."

Samuel Andrews said...

Davidski, it sounds like you're saying Corded Ware descends from people who weren't members of the Yamnaya culture.

If so please do elaborate.

Btw I've come to the same conclusion about Corded Ware. Early R1a and R1b samples cluster together to the exclusion of Yamnaya, confirming they come from the same location on the Steppe.

Rob said...

The earliest 'CWC' burials were fairly poorly adorned (e.g. some flint), but various different weapons could be displayed (daggers, battle axes, arrowheads). Battle Axes were not universal

Flat graves are later development, as communities started developing, which is consistent with Fatyanovo emerging after 2500 bc

I bet even in NW Ukraine we will find some structure - most would be in between Early Baltic CWC & Yamnaya, but some would sporadically have higher amounts of EEF

Davidski said...

@Copper Axe

There's R1a in both the northern and southeast Polish Corded Ware.

Davidski said...

@Rob

The very early Corded Ware male from Bohemia with U106 was buried with a stone battle axe.

So stone battle axes were important from the start, but it seems they were phased out in some communities.

Davidski said...

@Samuel

Yes, the earliest Corded Ware people came from the same population, irrespective of their Y-DNA, and they were different from the Yamnaya people that we know.

It's still possible that they came from a very specific Yamnaya sub-type that hasn't been sampled yet, but if so, I think the definition of Yamnaya needs to change, and only the classic, Z2103-rich should be called Yamnaya.

Rob said...



out of interest, I see on Suppl the only early, carbon dated man with Battle Axe is Gr 166 from Obříství (OBR.003.A). He is mtDNA U5a & Y-hg ''?'' on the paper. Has anybody confirmed he is U106 ?

Davidski said...

@Rob

Actually, the early Corded Ware sample (OBR003) I was thinking of that was buried with the battle axe is just listed as R1b-L151 in the paper (table S4).

But this doesn't change my argument, because he's from the same population as the U106 sample.

Wastrel said...

Just to pin down the Celtic question a little more...

The problem is, not only is Celtic clearly late, but we can directly connect the exact sudden spread of Celtic languages - from Iberian Galicia to Anatolian Galatia and everywhere in between! - with archaeological, in the latter stages historical, and to at least some degree also genetic expansions at exactly the right time... out of central Europe. That is, the Hallstatt Culture. In fact, not only is Hallstatt in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, but their surviving art looks exactly like you'd expect early Celtic art to look. There can be arguments as to when in Hallstatt history to date Proto-Celtic exactly, and whether all culturally Hallstatt areas were already Celtic speaking, or some may have been sibling groups to the Celts, or just culturally-dominated neighbous, but fundamentally it's pretty much impossible NOT to assume that the Celtic expansions, and Proto-Celtic, are very strongly related to the Hallstatt phenomenon.


So if you want people living thousands of years earlier in Britain to be "pre-proto-Celtic" (the ancestors of the Celts), you need to assume that people migrated out of Britain, to Central Europe and what would eventually become Hallstatt.

The problem THERE is that there seems to be no archaeological or genetic reason to assume this.

Instead, there seems to be a very straightforward local development: Bell Beaker > Unetice > Tumulus > Urnfield > Hallstatt. There's no point at which it looks like suddenly a load of British people took over the continent.

It's not impossible, of course. We do know that there were contacts with Britain, certainly. Unetice had some trade with Wessex. And apparently there's a couple of guys murdered at Stonehenge, the older of whom was from Germany somewhere, and the younger of whom was from Britain, but migrated to Germany, and then after some time migrated back to Britain. They were buried with metal goods, and this might suggest political ties (visiting diplomats, exiled nobles) or economic and cultural ones (migrant metalworkers). But generally the direction of everything, for thousands of years, seems to be of continental influence on Britain, not vice versa.

And there's just no reason to think that the British BBs were the ancestors of the Celts. Other than nationalism - the desire to paint the celts as a native British development who went and violently conquered the world, rather than just another bunch of French invaders - there's absolutely no reason to pick Britain, of all places, as the ancestors of central european Celts, of all people.

Davidski said...

@Wastrel

I don't think anyone is claiming that Celts came from Britain.

It seems to me the suggestion is that all or most Bell Beakers spoke pre or proto-Celtic. Then, I suppose, they began speaking Celtic while they were still in contact with each other, and then eventually they were speaking different types of Celtic as they drifted apart.

But I don't see much sense in making the British Bell Beakers or the British Bronze Age peoples Celtic speaking.

I think that when we have all of the relevant data, and the dust settles, it'll become clear that the Celts arrived in Britain during the Iron Age, and that the spread of Celtic languages was a complex process that didn't always go hand in hand with significant population shifts.

Davidski said...

@Copper Axe

By the way, we don't even know yet if northern Polish lowlands Corded Ware was mainly R1a, because at this stage the samples there are mainly I2.

One of the samples from southeast Poland belongs to R1a, but this wasn't listed in the paper for some odd reason. However, southeast Poland is one of the early Corded Ware hubs, or the Corded Ware X horizon, and it's likely that all of the R1a-rich Corded Ware populations passed through there at some stage.

Middle Dnieper culture had both flat burials and kurgan burials, but, in any case, we don't know anything about the genetics of these people.

Fatyanovo had mostly flat burials, but Abashevo had kurgans, and both of these groups were rich in R1a-Z93.

There might be a correlation between latitude and flat burials, because it seems that the more northerly the Corded Ware group, the less likely it was to build kurgans, but this might have something to do with the climate or environment.

Rob said...

The Kuyavia CWC is pretty interesting . It’s GAC related I2a2a1b2; not the Yamnaya related I2a2a1b1

Arza said...

Re: Polish CWC

There are 3 R1a samples from the Polish SE CWC.

pcw250 R1a1a1 2500-2200 BCE Poland_Southeast_CordedWare.SG
pcw420 R1a1a 2500-2200 BCE Poland_Southeast_CordedWare.SG
pcw430 R1a1a1 2500-2200 BCE Poland_Southeast_CordedWare.SG

Re: Middle Dnieper

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd6535
"The strongest connections for Fatyanovo Culture in archaeological material can be seen with the Middle Dnieper Culture (23, 48) spread in present-day Belarus and Ukraine (49, 50)."

https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/sciadv.abd6535/asset/a881415e-29eb-4bb1-845d-e4683243ea33/assets/graphic/abd6535-f1.jpeg

IMHO it's hard to see the Middle Dnieper Culture as anything other than "Proto-Fatyanovo" so their genetics should be similar-to-identical.

Copper Axe said...

I think Middle Dnieper only has mounds in the sense of re-burials rather than a proper burial tradition. And I also think its a bit of a mishmash archaeologically. Abashevo got their kurgan burial traditiom from their southern neighbours.

But anyways, I have a question again regarding the impact of Uralic Siberian ancestry in eastern europe only appearing in the LBA/iron age (russian iron age I guess), is there anything you can tell more about it? Can be in private if necessary. Or just an elaboration in the trend of 1200 bc samples dont have it 800 bc do? I'm asking because Altvred on Anthrogenica shared some results in regards to admixture dating which falls along the same line.

Cheers.

Copper Axe said...

But what Rob mentioned could make sense, if flat graves simply just developed later (although they are contemporary in Dutch single grave) and then spread through the Corded Ware horizon it could just simply be that the early birds out in the west missed out on that development and continued their mound burial tradition.

Arza said...

Re: Kuyavia CWC

Besides I2a2a1b2 they also have an elevated HG ancestry of a certain type:

https://i.postimg.cc/1zqHKzZc/CWC-POL.png

Genos Historia said...

@All,

About ancient U106 being different clades from modern U106.

Almost the ancient continental U106 so far is U106>Z156>Z304. While modern U106 is overwhelmingly U106>Z156>L48.

But there is a good answer for this. L48 is Germanic so we won't see it in continental Europe till the Iron age.

In Viking data, U106>Z156>Z304 is basically none existent. But in modern Belgium I see it is 7% of all samples not just R1b samples.

This makes Z304 look like a continental U106 clade that is pre-Germanic. Hence why it basically doesn't exist in Scandinavia while is present in bronze age continental samples and common in Belgium.

The much more popular U106>Z156>L48 is probably Germanic, and was probably in the Nordic Bronze age culture.

Its absence isn't evidence L48 comes from Unetice. When we get Nordic Bronze age samples it'll probably be at a high frequency especially in Denmark, where near 50% of Viking age people had L48.

a said...

Dranoel
Recent studies have confirmed several Z2103s in Britain during the Bronze Age.
6 - Z2103> M12149

"Is there anything known about the context of these Z2103 samples? Do you suspect with what historically / archaeological movement of people this could be related?"

R1b-z2103-M12149 Britain.
R1b-z2103-M12149 Altai.
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-M12149*/
id:I5279RUS [RU-AL]age 4904BP+/-



Davidski said...

@Copper Axe

It seems to me that flat graves were a trend that caught on in the north/northeast, rather than being directly linked to any paternal lines and thus Y-haplogroups.

This is probably most evident in Poland, where the Y-haplogroups were mixed, and R1a is basically found all over the country, including the all important southeast.

I can't comment about the Uralic situation, because I need to look at all of the latest data before committing to any views.

ambron said...

Arza, I suspect that I2a2a1b2 may be the original lineage of this HG clan that brought the Balto-Slavic drift to the European genome.

EastPole said...

@ambron
“Arza, I suspect that I2a2a1b2 may be the original lineage of this HG clan that brought the Balto-Slavic drift to the European genome.”

Interesting: why Balto-Slavic drift was spreading among R1a CWC tribes and not R1b tribes?

Possible answer:

That HG clan that brought the Balto-Slavic drift to the European genome got slavicized early and the rest of R1a CWC tribes was Slavic/Balto-Slavic from the beginning. So there was no linguistic and cultural barrier.

Any other explanations?

Davidski said...

There's no real Balto-Slavic drift before the late Corded Ware period.

It's a recent phenomenon, not something that has been around since the Mesolithic.

Dranoel said...

@a

Thank you for answering my question. But I meant these Western samples :)

In addition to Yamnaya, we have Z2103 in:
2. BB, Poland, Samborzec, I4253, 2571-2208 BC (3920 60 BP, Ki-7929);
3. BB, Hungary, Szigetszentmiklós, I2787, 2457-2201 calBCE;
4. BB, The Netherlands, Molenaarsgraaf, Grave II, I13026, 3630 40 BP (GrN-5566; 2135-1890 cal BCE);
5.the latest study from Great Britain - 6 x Z2103-M12149 (?)

Someone already mentioned it on this forum, but Z2103, although in small numbers, probably appears in almost all groups - from yamnaya, vucedol, then Scythians, etc. to CWC in the Czech Republic, BB in Europe, NW and England of the Bronze Age.

As Davidski wrote, the Z2103 arrived in Central Europe along with Yamnaya from Hungary. But those people who got here have clearly stayed here and mixed with the local cultures of Central Europe and NW.

Now a few questions:
a. This beaker from Poland is relatively old, right? For example, looking at the beaker dates from Poland and Hungary, it can be concluded that the flow of the Z2103 northward was long and continuous for a long time.

b. looking at the path Z2103 has traveled, do you suspect that what other Y DNA it was accompanying?

c. do we know the exact dating of CWC Z2103 from the Czech Republic? Where exactly was this sample collected? I think someone once suspected it might be Bb ... but I have no information

d. is the exact date and place of Z2103 from UK surveys known?

e. @Davidski - I already wrote what is my opinion. But do you think the Z2103 can also be present in Single Grave?

LivoniaG said...

@Wastrel + Davidski - yes, thanks

No, i’m not claiming Celtic languages started in Britain. But there are some good reasons to think some Bell Beaker communities spoke pre-Celtic.

The earliest written forms of any Celtic language are mainly fragments and date some time around 450BCE. Lepontic and CeltiIberian are generally seen as early branching. But full Celtic text are much later.

Comparatively, we have Mycenaean Greek language - not Proto-Greek but a daughter language - being written in full text around 1400 BCE.

So, if PIE was splitting up into different languages by that time, then that’s at least 1000 years where “pre-Celtic” had to be spoken somewhere. Repeat - it had to be spoken somewhere.

Bell Beaker communities may have spoken now extinct IE or non-IE languages. But they may have also spoken languages that did NOT go extinct.

One of the reasons that pre-Celtic/Celtic lived on and did not die-out might be that it was an important language. So it continued to be spoken and eventually developed into historical Celtic.

One reason it may have been important is because at least some Bell Beaker types spoke it.

Davidski said...

@Dranoel

Well, we already have V1636 from a Single Grave burial, so why not Z2103?

But if so, then only as a minor lineage. I think Single Grave was overwhelmingly L151.

Matt said...

Saw on Anthrogenica there was some interest in what the G25 shows against the CG PCA.

One way to look at this is to compare the distance between population averages produced by both PCA, making first sure that those averages are computed on the same samples. This will tell us whether certain populations have more distance on G25 than expected from CGT, and vice-versa.

So: https://imgur.com/a/Q4b7XRY

There's a fairly good relationship; the slope is 1.4193 (G25 distance generally 1.4193x CG distance) and the r^2 is 0.739

Doing this, the populations which systematically have large differences in their distances considering G25 and CG are most likely to be HUN_IA_Prescythian_Mezocsat_o1, POL_Krakow_MA. So generally not particularly Celtic or Germanic.

But, these are driven by "populations" with a single sample. If we compare the populations with more than one sample, though, we still see that HUN_IA_La_Tene_o3 (Baltic / Slavic like samples in HUN_IA_La_Tene) is a big outlier, with more distance on G25 than on CG, but a lot of the other populations are pretty similar. Though there is more of a tendency for the Viking Age populations to be slightly outlying with more distance on CG, for populations that represented Vikings in Norway or Viking colonies (Denmark, Ukraine, Russia).

In general they're very linear though. However, it could be that this hides some difference where greater tendency to difference between some pairs is balanced out, systematically. When I look at the top differences though, it seems like many of the top pairs where distance on CG is > G25 are within Viking Age populations though, while many G25 > CG are contrasting HUN_IA_La_Tene_O3 with others.

Tigran said...

Few question.

Is Zlaty Kun related to IUP populations? Would the initial IUP populations have all been y K with some ending up looking East Asian due to them being in the process of becoming East Eurasians? Or is it the other way around? Where would the split between Y IJ and Y K be?

Ric Hern said...

As an Afrikaans speaking guy it always surprises me how many of the West Germanic Languages and certain dialects within them I can understand fairly well. Seeing that West Germanic Languages split from one another between +-700 and 1200 AD. it leaves me with the idea that a window of 800 to a 1300 years is not unthinkable for understanding certain maybe more conservative dialects among different languages.

So putting this within the picture of spoken understandibility between Bell Beaker dialects it gives me a window of 2400 BC. to 1600 BC. or at the very extreme 2400 BC. to 1100 BC. So conservative dialects within Bell Beaker could have been understandable from the Bell Beaker period to well within the Urnfield period.

Hallstatt then would have been for me like trying to understand North Germanic Languages. Still doable but with a lot of help.

Dave the Slothtopus said...

We have one L151>P312>DF19>Z302* single grave sample from the Netherlands (Oostwoud, West Frisia): I5748 is an aceramic SG flat grave sample buried with flint blades, centuries later his grave was ploughed over, the Beaker layer begins (beaker fragments start in the plough grooves), two tumuli are built (one directly over I5748's grave) which are then used by Beaker and later cultures for deposition of graves.

rozenblatt said...

@Rob "Flat graves are later development, as communities started developing, which is consistent with Fatyanovo emerging after 2500 bc"

Are you sure about the date?

A lot of radiocarbon dates for Fatyanovo are older than 2500 BC:

NAU001 Naumovskoye Yaroslavl, RUS Fatyanovo 2836–2573
NIK002 Nikultsino Yaroslavl, RUS Fatyanovo 2865–2500
NIK004 Nikultsino Yaroslavl, RUS Fatyanovo 2876–2620
NIK005 Nikultsino Yaroslavl, RUS Fatyanovo 2881–2581
VOR004 Voronkovo Yaroslavl, RUS Fatyanovo 2878–2627

From "Genetic ancestry changes in Stone to Bronze Age transition in the East European plain"

Andrzejewski said...

@Tigran “ Is Zlaty Kun related to IUP populations? Would the initial IUP populations have all been y K with some ending up looking East Asian due to them being in the process of becoming East Eurasians? Or is it the other way around? Where would the split between Y IJ and Y K be?”

Would Botai be Yenisseyan speaker? Not sure. They are supposed to be WSHG but their ydna Hap found so far are Basal N (Uralic like) and O (like Han Chinese). MtDNA was Z and R1b, all of these were East Eurasian. Blaček thinks there Botai spoke a Yenisseyan language or were ancestral to Huns/Xyungnu - allegedly Yenisseyan and not Turkic speakers. Kett on the other hand also has mostly East Eurasian component but one more related to the ymlkhtakh shared by Eskimos, Nivkh, Yukaghir and Samoyed. So I don’t think that neither group is related nor having any kinship to WSHG.

BTW, now Botai is considered 45:55 East Asian: ANE/West Eurasian, while Kett are 80:20.

Matt said...

@Rozen, the Fatyanovo_BA are dated quite differently in the Human Origins anno (v 50). E.g NAU001 is dated at 2841-2469 BCE, and they give YBP as 4526 (2526 BCE roughly, despite the average of the aforementioned date range being 2655 BCE).

I don't know why that's the case, though the later (more recent) dates from HO anno would be more consistent to my mind with their mean levels of EEF proportion, which would be unprecedently high a CWC culture of that dating period, from a place that's not particularly locally rich in EEF. This is not impossible by any means (there's no reason why a merge of populations couldn't happen independently and faster there), but it just seems less plausible to me.

I noted when I was crossplotting EEF level in post3000 BCE samples across all of Europe that the Fatyanovo samples are strange, going by the dates given in Saag, in being very rich in EEF compared to other steppe admixed samples of similar date (from Czech Republic and other early CWC).

The average date YBP for all the Fatyanovo samples (41) listed in the HO anno is 4455 YBP (2455 BCE). Again, I don't know archaeologically what should be the case here, but a set of dates that are more mid 3rd millennium seem to be more consistent with significant EEF absorption.

Matt said...

@Rozen: E.g. Fatyonovo seem like mid-late CWC from around or post 2500, who have around 30-40% EEF, not like the early CWC, who seem to pick up basically an average of an extra 2% for every generation/25 years they are past 3000 BCE. Not impossible that Fatyanovo could've formed such a mix independently, and earlier, it just seems easier to imagine that's not so.

Rob said...

@ Rosenblatt

There is a technical issue with those dates, - a very wide spread in calibration from the point-estimate B.P. + 95% CI, which gives a broad date range from 2900-2400 BCE. We cannot simply 'take average'' and call it 27,500 bce. But I am told, the lesser evil is to look at the modal value of the calibration curve, which sits around 2600 BC

The MDC culture, which sits between western steppe & Fatyanovo, clearly correlates with the Catacomb culture, as evident by numerous cultural artefacts flowing from Catacomb to MDC . So typological dating always helps to rationalise radiometric dating

Andrzejewski said...

@Patterson Broad et al. Is there a consensus that all or almost all of the EEF element in CWC and BBC, along with Indo-European speaking people from the Bronze Age onward, comes almost exclusively from GAC or at least from a very closely related pop?

Are Etruscans from a different pop, one that has given us Ötzi, an LBK-related derivative?

And are Basques, whose farmer side comes largely from Cardial Pottery, cluster more closely with GAC, being that the latter one is mostly Cardial pottery in lieu of LBK or WHG?

LivoniaG said...

Ric Hern said...
"Seeing that West Germanic Languages split from one another between +-700 and 1200 AD. it leaves me with the idea that a window of 800 to a 1300 years is not unthinkable for understanding certain maybe more conservative dialects among different languages."

Yes, some of your comprehension is from the close relatedness of the those language. But modern standardizing of these languages probably also helped.

But especialy before writing, your objectives may have been different. In the center of a strong mobile Bell Beaker community that chased and produced resources and carried complex new systems over a large area, you might run into diverse dialects among your fellow Bell Beakers that would make making plans, and exchanging know how difficult.

This is where linguists talk about forms of convergence such as dialect leveling and accommodation change between speaker who need a precise level of common understanding.
if we catch a common, sometimes second, language that developed this way, it does not look like an acommodation of ancient speakers, a working language. but instead something formal and unsplittered. And that makes it look young but it's actually old.

The Greek Koine came up in this way and we see its history in the days of writing.

I think Celtic with so little diversity when it first appears in history can be explained this way. A language that was once designed to level dialects for the sake of mutual comprehensibility. An I think the Beakers are the best bet for originating that kind of language.

"So putting this within the picture of spoken understandibility between Bell Beaker dialects it gives me a window of 2400 BC. to 1600 BC. or at the very extreme 2400 BC. to 1100 BC. So conservative dialects within Bell Beaker could have been understandable from the Bell Beaker period to well within the Urnfield period."

ambron said...

EastPole, it could have been so, but I don't have a clear opinion on this yet.

David, we have probably said everything that can be said about the Balto-Slavic drift. I think the samples from Nitra will shed more light on this issue.

a said...

Dranoel said...

Thank you for answering my question. But I meant these Western samples :)

In addition to Yamnaya, we have Z2103 in:
2. BB, Poland, Samborzec, I4253, 2571-2208 BC (3920 60 BP, Ki-7929);
3. BB, Hungary, Szigetszentmiklós, I2787, 2457-2201 calBCE;
4. BB, The Netherlands, Molenaarsgraaf, Grave II, I13026, 3630 40 BP (GrN-5566; 2135-1890 cal BCE);
5.the latest study from Great Britain - 6 x Z2103-M12149 (?)


Unless you can get a clear understanding of samples from(#5 U.K.) their specific ydna clade, or their shared IBD segments with other ydna samples, you might have a hard time actually tracing their trajectory- movement from the steppe. The evolution of steppe Yersinia Pestis might also help in the future mapping migration, since there have been a few research papers showing the spread and connection between certain groups.

Sample #4(Netherlands) is interesting, in that he was grew up being vitamin D deficient, and specialized in fishing, not pastoralist and horses.

Samborzec-- Of interest certain areas of modern day Poland/Czech- still have R1b-z2103>z2110( Yamnaya were Z2109+). Nowhere near as high as R1a in Poland, or L51+ in the West Europe.

Samples ( #3 Hungary)Bell Beakers I2786,I2787 and I7043 might be connected with horse attempts at horse breeding. We have to wait and see if the horse bones from Szigetszentmiklós and the horse bones from Catacomb burials are connected samples 2 Dom2 horses(273n) from Yamnaya-Turganik.

From the recent study (The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes) of 273 ancient horses.

" two late Yamnaya specimens from approximately 2900 to 2600 BC (Turganik (TURG)), located further east than the western lower Volga-Don region (Figs. 2a, b, 3a). These may therefore have provided some of the direct ancestors of DOM2 horses"

Question?
Is there another R1b-Z2103+ sample from France?
Northeast French Salsogne (CBV95) from 2574-2452 BC belongs to the dominant Yamnaya R1b-Z2103 subgroup (Brunel et al.2020)

Dranoel said...

@Davidski and a

Thank you for your answer!

As for the sample from the Netherlands - perhaps it was the next generation already there, so he "lost" his roots related to horse breeding. Is it possible to check the autosomal test of this sample and verify it? U106 was also deficient in vitamin D, so this could indicate that they lived together under similar conditions.

As for the sample from France - CBV95 I was looking for data and only found that it is R1b M269. How does the information that it has Z2103 + come from?

Davidski has already touched upon this problem:
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/05/seven-thousand-years-of-french.html

@ Davidski
If I understand correctly, your calculations show that this person came from Germany / has the greatest similarity to the BB samples from Germany?
I saw the table with the K12b scores for BB from France and Switzerland and this sample had the highest percentage of Northern Europe. Could this be related to her migration from N Germany / the Netherlands?

Bob said...

@ Matt "said...
@Davidski, fair enough - I guess that would be particularly compelling if like you suggest those already have or do get found to form a natural subset united by something archaeological, like their dating / location / burial customs / isotopes, etc. that fits well with what would be predicted by a particular archaeological model.

(I guess it's less compelling if it's more like "We've got a lot of samples from the EIA, so we can look at their genetics and then pick out a subset that overlaps more, but there isn't really any natural reason from archaeology you'd identify them together apart from their genetics". Because that could just be that its easier to select a particular grouping with higher affinity from a larger set of samples).

The uniparentals do matter as well."

Just catching up after having my head down for over a week - coincidentally updating the archaeology elements of my Iron Age migration model for southern England. I am possibly the only person who has produced such models in recent years - first written up in 2015 pre-aDNA sample availability for the Isles (- and also predicting the major Y DNA haplogroup involvement).

If you would be willing to try the analysis techniques you were testing/demonstrating a week ago - I can provide a bespoke simplified migration model for southern England for the LBA/EIA/MIA migrations (probably leave out LIA initially). I now have another 6 years of research to make more refined - or simplified but very focussed - models to test.

They would be archaeology based but simplified with each possible 'migration' / group of sites defined by key diagnostic pottery / burial rights / metalwork / landscape feature creation (e.g. field systems/hillforts) & ceremonial/social activity where diagnostic. (Isotopes are available for a few of the sites only.)

I would be able to identify a range of Patterson 2021 sites and specific date ranges for each grouping. I could list out each sample by site for each grouping if required.

I was planning to do this anyway to try to develop my own autosomal analysis technique to test it but you are lightyears ahead of me on that.

[Re. Uniparentals: I have also been looking into my own L21>FGC5494 haplogroup as an illustrative example and it appears in the aDNA record in Early-Middle IA sites in unusual pit grave burials across a grouping of sites that fits with the model very well. There are a number of other haplogroups that also look diagnostic. But perhaps it should be left as a pure archaeology based model to begin with and uniparentals considered at a later stage - perhaps after the initial autosomal tests?]

So, if I provide the archaeology based model are you up for testing with your methodology?

Wee e said...

An interesting read from someone who is (a) a linguist (b) speaks some Celtic languages (c) a proper academic, for want of a better expression, at a proper university. Often collaborates with archaeologists (ie on the distribution of language in inscriptions and associated artefacts.)

John T Koch 2019
“Rock art and Celto-Germanic vocabulary: Shared iconography and words as reflections of Bronze Age contact”
(freely available on academia.edu)

He looks at a very specific corpus of words where celtic and germanic languages share either a word not seen elsewhere in Europe or specific forms+usages of IE root words where the form or specific meaning is not shared with other IE languages like Latin, Greek, Slavic languages etc.

Folks here will not be surprised to hear that this vocabulary is heavy on war/combat, trade, the supernatural etc. And his hypothesis is that it is strongly associated with the very specific shared bronze age iconography of stele in southern Spain and Scandinavia. (Horses, chariots, bows, axes, combs, mirrors, fighting and of course ships and bronze age horned helmets)

An interesting detail is that he also gives specific linguistic as well as historic reasons (broad-brush historical connections or divisions that are well known) for locating this shared vocabulary in the bronze age, at some point when there must have been, if not yet Germanic speakers, a linguistic community of pre-or proto-germanic speakers, and likewise people speaking something that was maybe not yet celtic yet was already distinct from whatever was going to be Italic.

This is very poorly explained by me: you should read it.
Something else that looks interesting which I haven’t read is there too, .”A Sea Beyond Europe to the North and West” by John Koch and Johan Ling, on the same themes.

SKRiBHa said...

@Dranoel

(…) All of the aforementioned cultures and peoples were descended from Corded Ware culture (2900 - 2350 BCE) which itself logically had to be 100% Post-PIE. (...)

I wrote it earlier to 'weure', on the occasion of compilation of data on Proto-Celtic, which formed most likely in Hallstatt culture (1200 - 500 BCE) and Proto-Germanic, which formed in Jastorf culture (750 - 1 BCE).

Corded Ware culture had to be 100% Post-PIE and the so-called satem, or actually alternated at the same time. This is evidenced by linguistic data from:

• Indo-Iranian languages, which derive indirectly from Corded Ware culture, and developed somewhere (for example, I claim that Proto-Iranian formed only in BMAC / Yaz) on the way east of the Carpathian Arc, through San drainage basin, Fatianovo, Sintashta, to the Iranian Plateau and Punjab,
• Slavic languages, which derive directly from Corded Ware culture, as the peoples who speak these languages have remained in the area where Corded Ware culture originated and existed.

Logically all cultures that derive from Corded Ware culture like La Tène (450 - 1 BCE), Hallstatt (1200 - 500 BC), Urnfield (1300 - 750 BCE), Tumulus (1600 - 1200 BCE), Unetice (2300 - 1680 BCE), Bell Beaker (2800 - 1800 BCE) and Jastorf (750 - 1 BCE), Nordic Bronze Age / Northern Bronze Age / Scandinavian Bronze Age (1750 - 500 BCE), Battle Ax / Boat Ax (2800 - 2300 BCE), had to be IE / Post-PIE to some extent.

The question of what if not NIE substrate caused secondary devoicing audible / visible in Post-Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic languages, which itself is a mixture of Pre-Proto-Germanic from Nordic Bronze Age / Northern Bronze Age / Scandinavian Bronze Age (1750 - 500 BCE ) and Proto-Celtic from Hallstatt culture (1200 - 500 BC)?

In the next post I will show how these secondary devoicings as the so-called rough breathing S>H formed, based on the name Hallstatt.

SKRiBHa said...

@Dranoel

1. Hallstatt is known for its production of salt, dating back to prehistoric times, and gave its name to the Hallstatt culture, the archaeological culture linked to Proto-Celtic and early Celtic people of the Early Iron Age in Europe, c. 800–450 BC.

2. The name means "place of salt." The second element is from Statt; the first element, rather than being from Salz, was likely borrowed through Celtic, such as Welsh halen or Breton holen; see Proto-Celtic *salanos.

…..

Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic/salanos

Derived from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂ls (“salt”).

Related terms
*sālos

Descendants
Proto-Brythonic: *haluɨn
Middle Breton: halon
Breton: halen
Old Cornish: haloin
Middle Cornish: halan, halen
Middle Welsh: halwyn, halaen, halen
Welsh: halen


Old Irish: salann
Irish: salann
Manx: sollan
Scottish Gaelic: salann

…..

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/séh₂ls

Proto-Slavic: *solь, *soldъ (“malt”), *soldъkъ (“sweet”)
→ Proto-Iranian: *solH (“salt”)
Zazaki: sol (“salt”)
Northern Kurdish: solin (“salt”), sû (“saltless”)

Proto-Germanic: *saltą

Proto-Hellenic: *hāls
Ancient Greek: ἅλς (háls)


Sanskrit: सर (sará)
Persian: هلتاک‎ (haltâk, “salty yoghurt”), هلث‎ (halþ~halt, “salty, salty food”)

Tocharian A: sāle
Tocharian B: salyiye

Proto-Finnic: *soola

I will repeat the question: What if it was not a NIE substrate, which secondary devoiced all these selected words?

Wee e said...

Here is the abstract of Koch’s paper.

“ Rock art and Celto-Germanic vocabulary
Shared iconography and words as reflections of Bronze Age contact

Abstract Recent discoveries in the chemical and isotopic sourcing of metals and ancient DNA have transformed our understanding of the Nordic Bronze Age in two key ways. First, we find that Scandinavia and the Iberian Peninsula were in contact within a system of long-distance exchange of Baltic amber and Iberian copper. Second, by the Early Bronze Age, mass migrations emanating from the Pontic-Caspian steppe had reached both regions, probably bringing Indo-European languages with them. In the light of these discoveries, we launched a research project in 2019 — ‘Rock art, Atlantic Europe, Words & Warriors (RAW)’ — based at the University of Gothenburg and funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The RAW project undertakes an extensive programme of scanning and documentation to enable detailed comparison of the strikingly similar iconography of Scandinavian rock art and Iberian ‘warrior’ stelae. A linguistic aspect of this cross-disciplinary project is to re-examine the inherited word stock shared by Celtic and Germanic, but absent from the other Indo-European languages, exploring how these words might throw light onto the world of meaning of Bronze rock art and the people who made it. This paper presents this linguistic aspect of the RAW project and some pre-liminary findings.”

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