Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Geography is hard (for some)
It's that time of the academic year again when bioRxiv is inundated with ancient DNA preprints. I'm not complaining, but I almost spat out my coffee when I saw this map in one of the new manuscripts (here).
What's the logic behind labeling almost all of Eastern Europe as "Steppe", and instead labeling just Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia as "Eastern Europe"? In my opinion those three countries, plus Poland, are better described as East Central Europe anyway.
It seems to me that many people working at the highest level in population genetics simply don't know what the Eurasian steppe is. They appear to see it as a continent of its own, when, in fact, it's a topographical feature and ecoregion that straddles the continents of Europe and Asia. That's why it's called the Eurasian steppe, and it's made up of three main parts: the Pontic-Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe, the Kazkah steppe of Central Asia, and the Eastern steppe of Mongolia.
Here's the same map with a few corrections (in red). Much better, don't you think?
Citation...
Antonio et al., Stable population structure in Europe since the Iron Age, despite high mobility, bioRxiv, posted May 16, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.15.491973
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Matters of geography
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Northern Europe east of Western Europe.
ReplyDeleteSouth East Central Europe south east of Eastern Europe.
Hey - in Boston (USA) East Boston is north of the South End, South Boston is east of Boston central, Charlestown is north of the North End, and the Back Bay is solid land.
Poland is not the center of Eastern Europe, but the east of Central Europe
ReplyDeletePolska jest w: „Srodkowo-Wschodnia Europa”, eng.: Poland in "Central-East Europe"
@StP
ReplyDeleteEast Central Europe translates as Srodkowo-Wschodnia Europa.
The term Central-East Europe actually means something different, and refers to the area encompassing both Central and Eastern Europe.
There is another error on the map.
ReplyDeleteIt shows Georgia as part of Earthern Europe.
And Georgia is not inside the current official borders of geographical Europe. Georgia is part of what the UN names "Western Asia".
Georgia is Europe in Council of Europe and European Union's map.
DeleteJes, David,
ReplyDeletePoland is not the center of Eastern Europe; not cental and eastern Europe, but the East of Central Europe!
Wikipedia: eng. East Central Europe and ger. Ostmitteleuropa = pol. Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia. Jes!
But Wikipedia unfortunately
pol. Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia = eng. Central and Eastern Europe; ger. Zentral-und Osteuropa;
OK, terms like northern, southern, western, eastern and central Europe and their mixes are relative and can vary from person to person and from context to context (also terms like the Balkans), but taking most of eastern Europe out of Europe when Europe is a continent with clearly defined borders is strange, especially when it is done in academia, which is supposed to be careful in such distinctions.
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between geography and geographical conventions. Conventions are arbitrary and based on the use of certain labels at the time that the convention was established. That's why we get the nonsensical separation of the Eurasian landmass (itself part of bigger Africa-Eurasia) in "Europe" and "Asia". The frontier along the Caucasus peaks and the Urals has no significance in terms of geology, biography, anthropology, linguistics or even genetics.
ReplyDeleteThat's why it doesn't matter what terms are chosen and that your modification is valid. Just like I never say that Europe (or Asia) is a continent (because it makes no sense).
Europe vs Asia makes sense in terms of genetics.
ReplyDeleteThis is easy to demonstrate with modern and ancient DNA.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2012/04/so-whos-most-european-of-us-all.html
Europe is indeed a genetic reality, it's very clear. Asia is not however, unless putting all things non-European in one bag is sensible and practical even though "Asians" as a whole have nothing in common.
DeleteAs for steppes versus forest, I don't think these researchers are well-versed in plant biogeography and climate.
@idurar
ReplyDeleteRegardless of how the borders of the currently accepted continents were determined, there is a worldwide consensus on them in academia and other organizations, including states. So academic publications should be careful about them.
Labeling Eastern Europe's forests as "Steppe" makes no sense no matter which geographic conventions one uses, because by definition forests aren't steppe.
ReplyDeleteAt this point you might as well rename this site to the Eurogeography blog lol.
ReplyDeleteI guess Kiel is in western Europe but Krakow is northern Europe too... But yeah it is crazy how these academics consistently get something wrong which you can easily get right with a simple google or wikipedia check. Almost as if it is on purpose.
Is there an ETA for when these samples will be available on G25? I'm looking forward to playing around with the Weklice samples, hopefully they are of better quality than the Kowalewko ones.
Apparently, the BAM files are out already, but I need the genotypes.
ReplyDelete@Davidski
ReplyDeleteLabeling Eastern Europe's forests as "Steppe" makes no sense no matter which geographic conventions one uses, because by definition forests aren't steppe.
Yeah, another weirdness of the map.
@Davidski
ReplyDelete2 BA Verteba cave samples in 23andme format:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17l0wVHG0AQUuSNSH1kUCzx4Db51sdvJS
could you run the g25 coordinates for them?
@All
ReplyDeletePreliminary G25 coords for a couple of the Wielbark samples.
Both are more western than Poles, but one is also surprisingly more southern.
Seems like we have here a Scandinavian and someone from the Mediterranean maybe?
Weklice_IA:3664,0.114961,0.14319,0.02489,0,0.033237,0.001673,-0.00329,-0.001846,0.001227,0.015126,-0.001299,-0.001798,-0.008622,-0.008395,-0.005157,0.008884,0.022687,-0.003927,0.008422,0.007003,-0.003369,-0.000124,-0.000863,-0.003615,0.000359
Weklice_IA:10634,0.132035,0.135065,0.071276,0.066215,0.042469,0.024263,0.004935,0.012923,0.005113,-0.005832,-0.008444,0.004346,-0.007433,-0.004679,0.02158,0.002387,-0.005215,-0.003547,0.006536,-0.001876,0.005241,-0.001237,0.004807,0.013375,-0.005748
David, I think there might be a problem with some of the labels in the BAM files. R3664 is an early medieval Croatia sample according to the paper...
ReplyDeleteR3664 751 RADIOCARBON 56,39% MALE 45,467293 13,506565 Sipar SIPAR 2018; GR 6; LEFT TEMPORAL Croatia
Would explain why it looks Balkanian. Maybe its been misassigned to Wielbark in BAM list. We've notice other issues on AG.
Can't wait for Bailulis sample G25. R10840.
ReplyDeleteHe looks like perfect proto-EB (Proto-Letto-Lithuanian). East Lithuanian Barrows was seen as cradle for EB, he is from 350 AD so maybe a tad early, but OK. His R1a is Lithuanian branch. His K36 is very Baltic.
It seems though (based on K36 modeling I did with moderns, so might be wrong), he should be rather close to Baltic Bronze. Which is strange if true. Need his G25 to figure it out.
Someone printed a map showing the indo-european languages originating in Eastern Europe and called it "Asia". If that's Asia to them, what's central Europe to the rest of us might become eastern Europe to them. It's logic, but let's all agree about where Asia is. Its quite simple to take a look at an ordinary map.
ReplyDelete@idurar
ReplyDeleteDo not understand your fixation on geographical features and genetics. The continents of Europe, Asia and Africa were not conceived based on certain geographical features or racial realities, they are coincidental products of history*, we should just accept them as they are and move on. Contesting the validity of such established geographical conventions takes us nowhere, so does "canceling" this or that established convention because of the ideological currents of the time, currents which may change fast, established conventions should be immune to such interference.
* If, for example, we inherited our global geographical conventions from the ancient Iranians rather than the ancient Greeks, we would probably divide the Old World into Greater Iran, the part to its west and the part to its east roughly speaking, following the ancient Iranian conventions.
I don't have a fixation. I actually never talk about it because "continents" are not a thing to me.
DeleteI am just sharing my perspective because the topic was brought up: it is literally the in title of this Eurogenes' post.
The authors of that map seen very keen on modern borders that only have a century or so of meaning.
ReplyDeleteI did this Tanzanian sample from 7000BP from this study of Africans. He was not in G25 nor was he published. Can we get coordinates for this sample?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04430-9
https://www.mediafire.com/file/8st6khorgi9kets/I8821.zip/file
It actually seems that I simply had an older file.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Copper Axe & Norfern-Ostrobothnian
ReplyDeleteIs there are set of Plink files with the samples from this preprint?
@idurar
ReplyDeleteI did not mean you are fixated on this topic. I was referring to your fixation on geographical features and genetics when it comes to defining continents. Geographical features became a thing in the definition of continents only after the discovery of the New World and thus do not apply to the continents of the Old World. As for genetics and races, those have never been criteria in defining continents.
@Daviaski & Norfern-Ostrobothnian
ReplyDeleteThe genotype files from the article Ancient DNA and deep population structure in sub-Saharan Africa foragers are here
https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/datasets
And here are the genotype files for this article:
ReplyDeletePopulation Genetics and Signatures of Selection in Early Neolithic European Farmers
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msac108/6586604?login=false
https://edmond.mpdl.mpg.de/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.17617/3.HOKI5I
Raw files converted by me packed https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ft7...ew?usp=sharing
ReplyDelete"As for genetics and races, those have never been criteria in defining continents."
ReplyDeleteTraditional definition of what is called "Europe" is mainly based on "culture" (source Wikipedia) for most of the time.
Especially the eastern border of what was considered "Europe" changed all the time.
17th century did rate Russia and Eastern Ukraine not as Europe but Belarus and West Ukraine as the most east European parts.
Interesting is, during the 19th century, Russia was part of Europe but not the southern part of it (east of the black sea). the European border of 19th century definition match modern DNA maps.
I have the haun that I wrote "West of the black sea". If that was the case, I of course mean "East of the black sea". (as region that NOW is Europe, but in the 19th century was sees as Asia.
ReplyDelete@Fanty
ReplyDeleteTraditional definition of what is called "Europe" is mainly based on "culture" (source Wikipedia) for most of the time.
Wikipedia explains well the evolution of the concepts of Europe, Asia and Africa (formerly called Libya):
The term "continent" translates Greek ἤπειρος, properly "landmass, terra firma", the proper name of Epirus and later especially used of Asia (i.e. Asia Minor),[62] The first distinction between continents was made by ancient Greek mariners who gave the names Europe and Asia to the lands on either side of the waterways of the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles strait, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus strait and the Black Sea.[63] The names were first applied just to lands near the coast and only later extended to include the hinterlands.[64][65] But the division was only carried through to the end of navigable waterways and "... beyond that point the Hellenic geographers never succeeded in laying their finger on any inland feature in the physical landscape that could offer any convincing line for partitioning an indivisible Eurasia ..."[63]
Ancient Greek thinkers subsequently debated whether Africa (then called Libya) should be considered part of Asia or a third part of the world. Division into three parts eventually came to predominate.[66] From the Greek viewpoint, the Aegean Sea was the center of the world; Asia lay to the east, Europe to the north and west, and Africa to the south.[67] The boundaries between the continents were not fixed. Early on, the Europe–Asia boundary was taken to run from the Black Sea along the Rioni River (known then as the Phasis) in Georgia. Later it was viewed as running from the Black Sea through Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and along the Don River (known then as the Tanais) in Russia.[68] The boundary between Asia and Africa was generally taken to be the Nile River. Herodotus[69] in the 5th century BC objected to the whole of Egypt being split between Asia and Africa ("Libya") and took the boundary to lie along the western border of Egypt, regarding Egypt as part of Asia. He also questioned the division into three of what is really a single landmass,[70] a debate that continues nearly two and a half millennia later.
Eratosthenes, in the 3rd century BC, noted that some geographers divided the continents by rivers (the Nile and the Don), thus considering them "islands". Others divided the continents by isthmuses, calling the continents "peninsulas". These latter geographers set the border between Europe and Asia at the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and the border between Asia and Africa at the isthmus between the Red Sea and the mouth of Lake Bardawil on the Mediterranean Sea.[71]
The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to these continental divisions. However, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the culture that developed in its place, linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe".[65]
From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#History_of_the_concept
So during the ancient times the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa were merely geographical concepts and were not defined based on some sort of cultural or racial unity. But during the medieval times the Catholic church began to use the term Europe to denote its domains, and during the modern era that religiously defined concept of Europe was extended to the rest of the continent of Europe, but this time detached from its Catholic underpinnings and emphasizing some sort of cultural unity instead.
Here are the bed files for the Sicilian study:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004222005144
https://www.mediafire.com/file/y89urue7t9eijx4/Yu_2022.zip/file
I dont see the issue with calling northern Balkans as south-east Central Europe. It sort of is more related to C.E. than the Mediterranean in terms of climate & history
ReplyDeleteI have always been confused by how people separate Russia from the rest of Europe (aka The West).
ReplyDeleteI understand it is because of modern politics. Cold War & EU. But I am confused by how people like it is an ancient divide.
Russia isn't apart of "the west", meaning USA led alliance, or "Europe" meaning the EU. But Russia is apart of the West, meaning Europe geographically (conquered areas of Asia) and European culturally. People conflate these two things.
Maybe, this is part of the reason academics conceptually have no problem separating East European Steppe from Europe and act like it is apart of Asia.
Europe is west of the Ural Mountains and north of the Caucasus Mountains.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually both a genetic and geographic concept (not a political one).
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/07/europeans-genetically-homogeneous-on.html
See that's why I don't understand why scientists are OK with saying that the steppe is in Russia, but seem frightened of admitting that the Pontic-Caspian steppe is in Europe.
@Lukaszer
ReplyDeleteLink is broken.
@bce
ReplyDeleteThose files you linked to have fewer alleles than expected in some places (like A instead of AA). If you fix that I'll be able to run them.
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteIt should be fixed now:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17l0wVHG0AQUuSNSH1kUCzx4Db51sdvJS
@Rob
ReplyDelete"I dont see the issue with calling northern Balkans as south-east Central Europe. It sort of is more related to C.E. than the Mediterranean in terms of climate & history"
Although it is unconventional, it would not be an issue by itself, in a consistent system. It becomes an issue on this particular map, because there is no other Central Europe on it, and a region mainly westward from "SE Central Europe" is labeled as Eastern Europe. So Czechia is Eastern Europe, but Bulgaria is Central. This does not make any sense.
And of course labeling a forest zone as Steppe does not make sense either.
@Onur Dincer
"Regardless of how the borders of the currently accepted continents were determined,..."
Technically Europe is a subcontinent by current convention.
@Genos Historia
ReplyDeleteThe Russians themselves went back and forth on this. At times, looking back, the Mongols were foreign oppressors, and at others defining forefathers. It has nothing to do with the Cold War. Russian history and identity is far deeper than that. To the degree that Russians have wanted to separate themselves culturally from Western Christian Europe, Russians have not hesitated to see themselves as fundamentally different, and, when it suited, Asian.
@Norfern-Ostrobothnian
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1pOLoSYb3iqnNIpXozYSATpbfMgufqFzR/view?usp=sharing
@bce
ReplyDeletevert113_scaled,0.091058,0.107646,0.051288,0.070414,0.001539,0.034582,-0.000235,0.001385,-0.027815,-0.037723,0.005034,-0.000899,-0.001487,-0.021882,0.025108,0.008618,-0.012126,0.00114,-0.008673,-0.004377,-0.002745,0.003833,0.005793,0.010483,0.002874
vert114_scaled,0.092197,0.140143,0.053174,0.021964,0.044624,0.017012,-0.00188,0.005077,0.013703,0.018953,-0.002436,0.005395,-0.009514,-0.00523,-0.003122,0.009414,0.008345,-0.00152,0.003268,-0.001376,0.01435,0.011623,-0.002218,-0.012893,-0.005029
vert113,0.008,0.0106,0.0136,0.0218,0.0005,0.0124,-0.0001,0.0006,-0.0136,-0.0207,0.0031,-0.0006,-0.001,-0.0159,0.0185,0.0065,-0.0093,0.0009,-0.0069,-0.0035,-0.0022,0.0031,0.0047,0.0087,0.0024
vert114,0.0081,0.0138,0.0141,0.0068,0.0145,0.0061,-0.0008,0.0022,0.0067,0.0104,-0.0015,0.0036,-0.0064,-0.0038,-0.0023,0.0071,0.0064,-0.0012,0.0026,-0.0011,0.0115,0.0094,-0.0018,-0.0107,-0.0042
This PLINK dataset which I sent is ok?
ReplyDeleteI'm running those samples now.
ReplyDeleteHere we go...
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/18rmkgmAMqMMr40bUrKHRfELp27FBRQ1t/view?usp=sharing
The Goths look Scandinavian.
Is it R106334 who is the Goth. Plots with Vikings
ReplyDeletehttps://ibb.co/7th1BYh
Of note, the Goth is in the “western” part of the cloud; rather than that which projects toward east Baltic
ReplyDeleteThis points to Jutland, Schleswig/Holstein
Archaeologically, everything points to Jastorf groups colonising northern Poland after 500 bc
Weklice were anthropologically Germanic, according to the research of Dąbrowski and Pudło. Weklice also turned out to be autosomally Germanic. So we see here a 100% agreement between the results of genetic studies obtained by the methods of physical anthropology and molecular biology. This gives a high probability that the anthropological Slavs from other Wielbark sites are genetic Slavs.
ReplyDeleteThe sample UZZ4446 is Mesolithic and not Early Neolithic, I must have put it that way.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like UZZ5054 actually is a less drifted form of WHG or mixed with some population related to WHGs like El Miron or Gravettians and such. The other samples show a lot of EHG ancestry.
@Slumbery
ReplyDeleteTechnically Europe is a subcontinent by current convention.
Eurasia would be considered a single continent had it been discovered (along with Africa) after the evolution of the current convention or if the evolution of the current convention had followed its discovery. Africa would then be considered either as part of a single continent with Eurasia or as a continent in its own right similar to the current situation with North America and South America. But the current convention makes an exception for the continents of the Old World, which had been defined many centuries before the evolution of the current convention (even if with some border changes since their first definition as continents), and considers them as continents in their own right. This is normal since continents were originally defined not based on some geographical features but based on the Aegean and East Mediterranean-centric worldview of the ancient Greeks.
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of Scy303 (Scythian Moldavia)? Vandal from Przeworsk?
@Mark B,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I suppose some of this idea Russia is Asian goes far back. The cold war I think did separate Russia even more so from the rest of European founded world.
@Slumbery
ReplyDeleteNo idea.
Nice samples, I've put my own sample group IDs on them and dropped them on Vahaduo's PCA here: https://imgur.com/a/IGSqSxa . The Weklice group do really look like Swedish folks!
ReplyDeleteAll Germany post 0CE samples: https://imgur.com/a/FgUSUPt
A quick attempt to plot the earliest samples who show up as Slavic-like on the North Europe PCA: https://imgur.com/a/jke3kzC , along with Weklice for contrast. It does look like the 5 outliers from HUN_La_Tene at approximately 200 BCE (women IIRC) are the first group of people who we could use to model later Slavic Europeans easily as a proximal source, although they are somewhat diverse along this cline (samples: I18182, I25509, I18183, I18226, I25524). Contemporaneous "Scythian" individuals have some of the Balto-Slavic drift quality, but have more diverse positions that don't match as closely (even with many of the outliers not included in the linked PCA!), which would be befitting a more mobile group perhaps.
Excellent paper.
ReplyDeleteThe data from Armenia shows that the main shift occured in Urartian period. 770-400bc
Unless someone propose that Urartu was Armenian the only viable alternative is that Etiuni was Armenia speaking.
Btw we have 1 new I2c2 . And another possible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiuni
A Scandinavian origin of East Germanic languages appears more likely now than ever before
ReplyDelete@Matt Broken links. Do all the Weklice samples look like R10634, ie Scandinavian like? Can someone plot it?
ReplyDeleteGeography is offcourse confusing.
ReplyDeleteBut there are some errors also. For example "Late Armenia" have 50% of "Early Armenia" but the rest is erroneous. 50% Steppe is wrong obviously.
Also modern Kurdish from Armenia samples plot in wrong place on PCA. I hope those issues will be corrected in the published version.
@Aram
ReplyDeleteI hope those issues will be corrected in the published version.
Don't bet on it.
You should email the authors or at least leave a message for them at bioRxiv.
Bailuliai and Marvelė samples are interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like Arza was right with this model:
https://postimg.cc/BXqrVPkb
Early Indo-Slavs didn’t cremate. Early Sintashta didn’t cremate. Early Balts didn’t cremate.
Early Slavs were probably those Indo-Slavs who switched to cremation and it will be difficult to locate them on PCA. But Slavic religion i.e. the solar and fire cult, cremation etc. influenced Balts and Indo-Iranians.
Cremation started much before Andronovo autosomal ancestry made its way into India.
DeleteAndronovo-steppe lineages are not the same as those of Indo-Aryans. This CWC > Sintastha > Andronovo lineages ended up in Xinjiang. They are even missing from swat valley where we have detected steppe autosomal ancestry.
Indian lineage Y3 (2600bce) > l657(2200bce) are missing from the steppe.
I am betting on an early migration of some z93 bearers between 3000-2600bce.
Fire cults are present in BMAC much before andronovo came knocking on the doors. Solar cults were present in Middle-east much before the formation of slavs.
Thanks to Tmenable for converting the genomes from Weklice and to Łuksz and Dawid for sharing them.
ReplyDeleteRussian Eurasianism is primarily to do with the Orthodox worldview rather than any perceived connection with the Turco-Mongols, Siberian natives or East Eurasia. Like I said before, during the medieval times, a religious sense of European identification evolved in the Catholic world, which excluded the Orthodox and Islamic worlds. That religious sense of European identification would evolve into the cultural sense of European identification we know only during the modern era and would eventually extend into all of geographical Europe and its colonies. But still, the cultural sense of European identification has a strong Catholic foundation, and as a result of that, the Orthodox and Muslim parts of Europe are less associated or connected with it than the Catholic and Protestant (formerly Catholic) parts of Europe, which results in counter movements such as Eurasianism.
ReplyDeleteThis is nonsense. The Eurasian worldview of the Russians has nothing to do with Orthodox religion. The Orthodox world is indeed identified with Europe, especially since the Greeks began to divide the continents. This is not an invention of the Catholic world. In Generall Russia is an orthodox country on paper, not in reality and has always been so.
Delete@Davidski
ReplyDelete"Here we go..."
Thank you David! Will you be adding the rest of the (available) samples to the spreadsheet, or are these final?
@ Onur
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't sound right. Eurasianism doesn't feature in the doctrines or liturgy of Orthodox Christianity. Quite the contrary, Orthodoxy was a mechanism for the survival of national consciousness during Ottoman rule in the Balkans, to the extent that Christianity itself was the defining identity of villagers. These groups might harbour sentiments for other 'Orthodox Christians' in the Near East, for example, but that's got nothing to do with Eurasianism, and 'Oriental Christians' split off long before the Constantinople - Rome divergence fyi.
Eurasianism in Russia has more to do with the specific set of circumstances enhancing it over the past 1-2 centuries- Communism (the global proletariat), Imperialism/ Colonialism, perceived othernesss by 'the West'
@Rob
ReplyDeleteIt is Eurasianism that has a strong Orthodox component, not the other way around, so of course Eurasianism does not feature in the doctrines or liturgy of Orthodox Christianity, including Russian Orthodoxy. Eurasianism is a modern movement after all. Communism has no place in Eurasianism or at least in its original forms, Eurasianism developed in reaction to both the West and communism, it started as a Russian émigré movement.
Orthodoxy as a mechanism for the survival of national consciousness is a phenomenon seen in the Islamic-dominated parts and periods of the Orthodox world, but I do not see a connection of it with the issue we discuss here. The Orthodox world was in the process of clashing with the Catholic world many centuries before most of the Orthodox came under Islamic domination. I did not even refer to Oriental Christians in my comment, so I do not know why you brought them up.
@CeRcVa
You do not make any sense. There was no Christianity when the Greeks divided the Old World into the continents of Europe, Asia and Libya/Africa and neither they nor the Orthodox world identified with any of those continents in a religious or cultural sense anytime before the modern era. What you say about Russia is nonsense too, especially for the times before communism had a cultural, ideological and religious impact on the general populace there.
Who were the swat valley people according to you?
ReplyDeleteProto-Nuristanis? Weren't they half Harappan half BMAC+steppe? Or they belonged to an unknown extinct IE.
@ ambron
ReplyDelete“ So we see here a 100% agreement between the results of genetic studies obtained by the methods of physical anthropology and molecular biology. This gives a high probability that the anthropological Slavs from other Wielbark sites are genetic Slavs.”
Interesting. Which sites might they be?
Would you ascribe them to late Pomoranians and/ or “post -Lusatian” groups ?
@ Onur
ReplyDelete“ It is Eurasianism that has a strong Orthodox component”
You suggested - “ Russian Eurasianism is primarily to do with the Orthodox worldview ” which it’s not at all.
It was mostly a reaction to “Romano-Germanism”, and certainly had left-wing elements within it
I then outlined some brief points about Christianity for the unfamiliar. There were initially 5 patriarchs of Christianity - Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The latter 3 were eventually lost, and many earlier synodic splits within Christianity than that of Rome and Constantinople. The latter of which was a process rather than a “clash” . You might have heard of the crusade called by C and answered by R. The later history was more of C being under foreign rule and it’s regions not being able to partake in European enlightenment and neo -Romanticism due it being contrary to the Ottoman worldview (hence a resulting “otherness”), at a time which most clashes in the west were actually of protestants & Catholics
Eurasianism is a form of globalism , quite different to what orthodox Christianity became to symbolise. The reference to Oriental orthodox served a dual purpose to above mentioned synodic split and as a counterexample to Russian style eurasianism (focussed on Central Asia etc).
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteCan you provide some clarity over who mixed with who in Swat valley?
Was it Harappa+steppe admixture with BMAC or BMAC+steppe admixing into Harappa?
Swat valley admixture is 1800-1700bce whereas I read somewhere that BMAC and steppe mixed post 1600bce, which implies steppe mixed with Harappa first, right? Which will push the steppe admixture in Harappa before 2000bce, right?
From your blog
SPGT
Indus_Periphery 0.692±0.042
Shahr_I_Sokhta_BA1 0.104±0.045
Sintashta_MLBA 0.204±0.015
taildiff: 0.659609
@ Tomenable
ReplyDelete''A Scandinavian origin of East Germanic languages appears more likely now than ever before''
If it were that simple, why don't East Germanic & Nordic form a clade ?
@Rob 500+ years.
ReplyDelete@Rob
ReplyDeleteI know well Christian history, but thanks for pointing to some crucial stages of it for those who may not be familiar. The Catholic-Orthodox split was indeed a long process, but there were much clash, alienation, hostility and bloodshed involved in that process. The crusades were initially called for by Constantinople in its most dire moment and answered positively by Rome, but they soon turned into Catholic powers acquiring more and more territories and riches in the East Mediterranean for themselves, whether from Muslims, Orthodox or Orientals, they did not care much about the worsening situation of the Eastern Roman Empire, only the first of the crusades was really beneficial for Constantinople and the fourth one was devastating for it instead, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire. Also, the crusades were accompanied by increasing calls from the Catholic side to the Orthodox side for its conversion to the Catholic faith, which were bolstered by the increasing weakening of the Eastern Roman Empire. There was surely not much of a unity between the Orthodox and Catholics worlds, and this had been that way already centuries before the fall of most of Anatolia to the Turkic invaders.
As for the Catholic-Protestant split, that happened much later than the Catholic-Orthodox split, was much less gradual and deep, and by then the regions that would eventually become Protestant were already very much imbued with the Catholic worldview, traditions and culture, the West as we know it had already formed, as did the religious and increasingly cultural European identification along with the Latin-based high culture and worldview it entailed.
As for Eurasianism, I think we are talking about two different versions of Eurasianism. I am talking about Eurasianism as it was originally developed while you are talking about the more Asia-leaning Dugin version of it. I am not a fan of Eurasianism in any of its versions, whether more Orthodox-leaning or Asia-leaning. I mentioned Eurasianism just to point to the fact that estrangement between the West and Russia is not just to do with any perceived Russian connections with Asia but also and probably much more to do with the much longer history of estrangement between the Orthodox and Catholic worlds. Eurasianism is just one of the results of that estrangement.
@ Palacista
ReplyDelete''500 + years''
Ok. As Gothic is attested ~ 400 AD, 5/600 years ago would take you back to the Jastorf colonization of northern Poland [1], which is from 'northern Germany'. Following the 'Jastorf colonization', Celtic influences transformed lands east of the Elbe into Przeworsk & Oksywie groups, which in turn influenced back toward Jastorf & southern Scandinavia.
The 'Gothic' Wielbark culture develops from Oksywie in Pomorania. Archaeologists now tend to see the latter as a local transfomation, although contacts with Scandinavia were present. However, the acceleration of contact with Scandinavia occurs later, during the (pre-Slavic) Migration era. Therefor if Goths really did come from Scandinavia, the Oksywie - Wielbark transition might have entailed more boats then currently envisaged, ie population mobility is being under-estimated by current historians. Another possibility, testable with aDNA, is an earlier migration from Scandinavia - during LBA toward Pomorze, Saxony, etc.
In any case, the spread of ethonyms such as Goths, Gaut-, etc & their languages probably represent complex affairs.
Pardon the off-topic question but my grandfather's Big Y results came back and I was wondering if anyone had any insight.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather is R1a-L260>YP256>YP254>FT5104>YP616>Y2905>R-BY61398
Only other BY61398 I can find is a Luziński from Poland (any insights on that name)?
His only other Y-DNA matches (ie not Big Y) are only at 25 markers on Family tree - one is a German fellow, and the other is a now deceased mayor of the capital of Tatarstan.
Blogger ambron said...
ReplyDeleteThanks to Tmenable for converting the genomes from Weklice and to Łuksz and Dawid for sharing them.
====
I converted half of Weklice samples alone:) And many others from different locations. Soon I will send Davoidski much more samples...
@ onur
ReplyDeleteThere was no unified catholic world either . It was a checkerboard of post Roman and Germanic converts.
the idea of Europe was synonymous with Christiandom, including it’s western Asian provinces
The idea that Western Europe as the centre of high culture in Europe is a 19 century construct
@Rob - re-Proto-Germanic, I wouldn't be surprised if the exact location of Proto-Germanic also depends on the time period we're talking about (ie Proto-Germanic may have crossed the Danish Straits a few times back and forth).
ReplyDeleteI don't think your point about language diversity is all that valid though given that there may have been a rather recent (Migration-age) linguistic replacement without us seeing a trace. Like, Ukraine doesn't have a bunch of random divergent Proto-IE offshoots either, but that doesn't change its status as the like origin of IE.
Or we could flip that around and say the Irish Sea has the highest diversity of Celtic languages, but that doesn't make it the origin of Celts either.
@Rob
ReplyDeleteThere was no unified catholic world either . It was a checkerboard of post Roman and Germanic converts.
Initially, Western Christendom was not that unified, but it gradually became more unified, especially by the High Middle Ages, with the better assertion and establishment of the institutions and authority of the Catholic Church.
the idea of Europe was synonymous with Christiandom, including it’s western Asian provinces
Equating (Western/Latin/Catholic) Christendom with the idea of Europe was a uniquely Catholic practice, the rest of Christendom did not have a continent-based religious identification. The Eastern Roman Empire saw itself as the center of the world and had a transcontinental worldview. With the modern era, things have changed due to the Western dominance in Christendom and increasingly the world in general.
The idea that Western Europe as the centre of high culture in Europe is a 19 century construct
No, it is a natural consequence of the advances in the West during the modern era. The 19th and much of 20th centuries were just the peak of those advances. If you mean the projection of its high status back into the pre-modern era, that is wrong and anachronistic of course.
By the way, there were serious attempts by the Eastern Roman Empire and its Orthodox church to reconcile with the schismatic Oriental churches in the empire, so they did not totally separate themselves from that part of Christendom with the Orthodox-Oriental schisms. But when the Oriental Christian lands came under Muslim Arab rule, those attempts naturally became futile and were therefore canceled.
ReplyDeleteLukaszer, I didn't know, sorry! So also thanks to you for converting genomes.
ReplyDeleteRob, maybe I will answer in the words of one of the reviewers of Masłomęcz's study:
ReplyDelete"...a population of virtually all previous archaeological cultures, who have lived for millennia in the heart of Europe".
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteNew samples sent to you in PLINK (email)
2065
3478
3482
3542
3544
3655
3662
3663
3665
3670
3742
3745
3746
3747
3906
3931
6693
6701
6730
6737
9823
9919
9920
10473
10660
10667
10668
11877
OK, it'll take me a couple of days to run these.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, I'm also looking for the official genotype 1240K dataset, so if anyone knows where/how to get it, please let me know.
@ Ryan
ReplyDelete''I don't think your point about language diversity is all that valid though given that there may have been a rather recent (Migration-age) linguistic replacement without us seeing a trace. Like, Ukraine doesn't have a bunch of random divergent Proto-IE offshoots either, but that doesn't change its status as the like origin of IE.''
Your point would be valid if talking about distant past, or when people vague references about 'basal' Y-haplogroups, but not when talking about a few hundred years before linguistic attestation
So if we talking about proto-Germanic expanding from Scandinavia, lets ask some precise questions :
- what is our understanding of proto-Germanic
- what do we mean by Scandinavia ?
- what time did this expansion happen & why ?
Looking at 'hard evidence', archaeologists have concluded that the Danish Isles and Swedish mainland are "very poor in finds' in the pre-Roman Iron Age, before growing during the 'Germanic Age', then crashing again c. 600 AD.
This would explain why Nordic languages are so similar - a recent spread, arguably from Denmark to Sweden & Norway, as several scholars have already posited. We can entertain notions of some early forms of Germanic being spoken in Scandinavia during the NBA, but this was superceded. Instead, the final push came from the mainland, permeated by La Tene ideas (but still separate to 'Celts'), and mediated by groups who had already been within the NBA 'mating/ IBD network' rather than fresh migrations from 'Central Europe'.
Ancient genomes reveal origin and rapid trans-Eurasian migration of 7th Century Avar elites
ReplyDeletegenotype dataset for the 66 newly produced genome-wide data published in
https://edmond.mpdl.mpg.de/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.17617/3.PZ16SF
@Vladimir
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1YnYSa-_LevhvXOH2RqkX69jYa91ffcqj/view?usp=sharing
Thanks. And for this work there are only BAM files
ReplyDeleteThe genetic origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00732-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982222007321%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB49971?show=reads
@Rob Why did you delete your replies to me? It doesn't matter, you can spare me your bizarre takes and mental gymnastics. The aDNA speaks for itself.
ReplyDelete@ Tomenable
ReplyDeleteI was updating the comment. I don;t know what mental gymnastics you're talking about. I've seen your posts. Go ahead & have fun don;t overrate yourself mate
@ Tomenable
ReplyDeleteI was updating the comment. I'm aware of what the genetics shows, as I pointed to in the PCA I posted, and I'm also familiar with other evidence too. My summary is an acurate rendering of the data, not mental gymnastics. The fact that you think it is is a reflection of you, and the rabble you post to on Anthrogenica, not me
@ Tomenable
ReplyDeleteI was updating my reply. I know what the data shows, as outlined in the first comment & PCA i posted. I'm also familiar with all the other data combined. So there's no mental gymnastics here, just a nuanced take. The fact that you think it is mental gymnastics is a reflection of your understanding, not mine. Moreover, you don't even realise that in your posting all over Anthrogenica, it is maps which I created for various sites as far bask as 20yrs ago you are using, whilst also using data some of which I generated
@Rob
ReplyDeleteTom not Tomenable.
How funny; both made exactly the same declaration “A Scandinavian origin of East Germanic languages appears more likely now than ever before”
ReplyDeleteMust be coincidence
Anyhow; this Tom person needs to learn how to build an argument instead of making declarations from 2D plots
The latest papers on mobility in Europe and Pompeii are interesting. Despite the amusing attempts of some Levantinists to somehow link Magna Grecia with the East_Med shift in Italy, the truth is that the Roman Empire was the real engine of that radical change in the genetics of the Italian peninsula. Thousands of migrants from all regions of the Empire changed Italians forever, both in the city of Rome and to the north (Tuscany) and south of the city. The autosomal and uniparental markers point to Cyprus, Syria, Anatolia, Levant, Egypt and even Mesopotamia, little or nothing to do with the Greek colonists of Magna Graecia. When we have Iron Age genomes from Greece we will be able to confirm this hypothesis. Mobility within the Roman Empire brought many of these markers to the most Romanized areas of Western Europe (Hispania, Aquitaine and Occitania) although these regions did not have the East Med shift that we see in Italy. However, in Hispania, the western regions (Lusitania and Baetica) were also affected by population movements from North Africa. In fact, the autosomal profiles of the Hispano-Romans are practically identical to those of the western Iberians (Portuguese, Asturians, Leonese, Galicians, western Andalusians). Spaniards do not need to resort to the Goths and Moors to explain our genetic composition.
ReplyDelete@Rob You have me confused for someone else. Just Tom, no -able. Are you really surprised more than one person looked at the results and came to the same conclusion?
ReplyDeleteOff topic; my brother alerted me of the new movie "The Northman", and altough unlike him, I'm not a big fan of Vikings and Norse stuff, I found it worthy of viewing. My Polish gf also found it awesome. It's an impressive experience, because director Robert Eggers tried to recreate the mental world of the Vikings, who really believed in the reality of their heathen gods and in the power of fate.
ReplyDelete@Onur Dincer
ReplyDelete"You do not make any sense. There was no Christianity when the Greeks divided the Old World into the continents of Europe, Asia and Libya/Africa and neither they nor the Orthodox world identified with any of those continents in a religious or cultural sense anytime before the modern era. What you say about Russia is nonsense too, especially for the times before communism had a cultural, ideological and religious impact on the general populace there."
I am Georgian and communism has nothing to do with Russia. Russia annexed Georgia in the 19th century, and during this period Georgian Elite emerged who were pro-Europeans nationalists(Ilia Chavchavadze and etc.). Russia perceived pro-European sentiments of Georgians in the 19th century as a threat. Yes, Russia was a much more pro-European country in the 19th century than it is today, but the Russian Empire was not a pure-blooded pro-European country. They also used Orthodoxy for political purposes, to subjugate other Orthodox countries, to fight against Muslims, and for anti-Catholic policies.
Therefore, one can not follow the example of Russia for other orthodox countries, such as Greeks, Georgians, who have been Christians for much longer than the Russians. Russia is a big country, they are a mixture of many different cultures and peoples (European, Mongolian, Turkic)...
@CeRcVa
ReplyDeleteWhat I have written here up to now is not about what policies should be pursued or how people should identify themselves but about the historical background. How people act after this historical background is people's own choice, I do not deal with that.
And finally some politics from me: I am well aware that countries such as Georgia and Armenia have no choice but to pursue pro-European policies and be in European alliances instead of being in alliance with, say, Arab countries. But I also think that the Europe in question should be broadly defined, it should not end in the Pontic steppe but should include all the European-settled territories from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the Eurasian supercontinent. From Lisbon to Vladivostok, as they say. I know this is a pipe dream for now, and I am also aware that Russia has people from diverse ethnic, cultural and racial backgrounds, but so are Western European countries today, and increasingly so in fact, thus the old arguments about the diverseness of the population of Russia do not apply as much today. Anyway, we have talked enough on politics I think, let's not politicize the thread.
@ Tom
ReplyDeleteAnd I said the same thing - ' R106334 who is the Goth. Plots with Vikings''
But i wanted to then digress into the complexities of the matter, but then thought might wait got a more relevant post, hence the re-take. Sorry for confusion.
@ Dave
ReplyDeleteIs the Weklice sample genotype data which you used for G25
Have you looked at any models for it ?
I just had a look at some PCA plots.
ReplyDeleteSeems like the Weklice people were very similar to Swedes. Would be interesting to see if they had the same sort of minor Finnish admix as many modern Swedes.
Using a set of LBA -IA sources, I got this
ReplyDeleteWeklice_IA:10634
CZE_IA_La_Tene_oFennoscandian 38%
DEU_Halberstadt_LBA 38%
DNK_BA 24%
d 0.024
At face value, this is consistent with a scenario of locals & distants engaging in social contacts & identity making, as Polish archaeologists have suggested
ReplyDeleteWell, let's wait for the supposedly Polish-like Iron Age locals, because they haven't been sampled (or at least published) yet if they actually existed.
ReplyDelete@Lukaszer
ReplyDeleteYou should look to convert R10760, it's an early imperial sample from Algeria that is North Italian-like or Italic-like
btw Swedish Battle Axe came via East Baltic [1]
ReplyDeleteDenmark EKG & German CWC Fail as routes/ sources [2] [3]
Off topic, but I had a quick question for anyone (Davidski or anyone else) about the v50.0_1240K_public library and differences from the Human Origins (HO) panel (https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/allen-ancient-dna-resource-aadr-downloadable-genotypes-present-day-and-ancient-dna-data):
ReplyDeleteI wanted to test what differences were present in the present .DG (diploid genome) samples in 1240k against some groups of ancient samples, so first what I did was run:
admixtools::extract_f2('(v50.0_1240K_Public Files)','(Target Directory)', pops=c('Mbuti.DG','Iran_Wezmeh_N.SG','Turkey_N.SG','Italy_Mesolithic.SG','Romania_IronGates_Mesolithic.SG','Spain_EN.SG','Spain_C.SG','Ireland_Megalithic.SG','Poland_Koszyce_GAC.SG','Russia_Afanasievo.SG','Russia_MLBA_Sintashta.SG','Kazakhstan_Botai_Eneolithic.SG','Brazil_Sumidouro_10100BP.SG','Serbia_Mokrin_EBA_Maros_1.SG','Russia_Shamanka_Eneolithic.SG','Russia_KolymaRiver_LN.SG','Latvia_BA','Polish.DG','Russian.DG','Orcadian.DG','Norwegian.DG','Bulgarian.DG','French.DG','Basque.DG','Hungarian.DG','English.DG','Estonian.DG'), maxmem = 3000)
This gave me about 876481 SNPs (784986 polymorphic) from the 1233013 SNPs in 1240k, which seems like a pretty good basis to compare (note; the Mokrin samples above are those with some "Balto-Slavic related drift" and enriched Euro_HG related ancestry as identified on G25).
Then I ran some f4 stats against this (and should be over the full 876481 SNPs). Once that was done, I compared some similar stats computed on the HO_public, with 499680 SNPs (446810 polymorphic).
Plotting some comparisons of the 1240k_public and HO_public (although note the stats I use compare to Ukrainian in the case of HO because no Polish): https://imgur.com/a/UeKT0Sd
The HO generates very high significant stats for a lot of pairs (comparing Ukrainian to the other recent Europeans), but the 1240k most of them fall to non-significance (comparing Polish.DG instead).
Does anyone have any ideas about why this is? The correlations are quite good between the stats, but the magnitudes of Z drop off a lot from HO->1240k.
For example on the HO, the stat f4(Mbuti, Latvia_BA;Orcadian, Ukrainian) is Z: 5, while on 1240k for (Orcadian.DG; Polish.DG) its only Z:0.85 which is non-significant. (Or for a very extreme pair f4(Spain_C.SG, Latvia_BA;Basque, Ukrainian) on HO generates Z: 23.9, while on 1240k only Z:8.39, significant but very reduced).
As a quick summary of what reaches significance on each: https://imgur.com/a/alh3UUQ
On the 1240k, the only comparisons between Polish.DG and other Europeans that reach significance are the greater affinity of Basques for all EEF, of West Europeans for Middle Neolithic Spanish, of lower affinity for Bulgarians to Euro_HG and the extra Asian affinity for the Russian samples in 1240k. That's it. Whereas on HO there are plentiful significant differences between Ukrainians and the others.
So the question is really, does anyone have any ideas about why this might be so? Am I missing an important step in preparing the data? Or is the 1240k as a more neutral, outgroup ascertained set (sites ascertained as polymorphic in Africans), just much less likely to generate strong stats or something like this?
To circle back to why this actually matters, consider some qpWave models run on both HO data and 1240k data: https://imgur.com/a/6a12wvz . You can see that lots of models that fail on HO (on fewer SNPs) succeed on 1240k with more SNPs...
qpWave on the 1240k data seems to have less power to distinguish between populations, even when recent ancestors/cousins who are highly relevant on G25 (e.g. Latvia BA) are present. This might actually matter if we're trying to use the 1240k - 'the best dataset' - and qpAdm/qpWave - 'the most popular/best formal model' - for trying to understand fine scale dynamics.
@Matt
ReplyDeleteYou should email support at David Reich Lab with detailed questions like this.
But isn't Polish.DG just one random person from Warsaw?
Based on what I've seen, this sample is somewhat unusual (more southern), compared to the Polish samples from Poznan and Lublin in the HO.
There are also about three Polish samples in there from Lublin that look 50/100% German.
@Davidski, I don't think the given sample having more EEF could explain anything; if that were the case and that were the only difference between 1240k and HO, we'd expect the Z score in the statistical differences with Estonian, Russian, Norwegian to increase (unless they all somehow systematically had more EEF ancestry?), whereas all of those are lower too.
ReplyDeleteOK, but what about the fact that this is just one sample?
ReplyDelete@Davidski, done some testing of that idea and yes, I think you've hit on it and sample size is actually the crucial difference here! (and no need to email Reich Lab).
ReplyDeleteWhat I did was I took the samples from the HO, and then modified the .ind file to only select the samples that were the same ones that made it over to shotgun diploid as .DG in the 1240k (the .DG samples in SGDP are basically sourced from the same samples as the genotyped modern population samples in HO... Except for 1 Norwegian sample which wasn't, and of course the Polish and Ukrainian samples).
When I then run the stats on HO against *exactly* the same samples and same number of samples, then the stats become as weak on HO as on 1240k and have the same patterns: https://imgur.com/a/fRsYosx
So it seems like the Z scores for our f stats here are actually super-sensitive to the low sample size. We might not be able to use the full 1240k to look into the fine-scale affinities of modern populations with formal stats until there are large samples of .DG modern people incorporated into them.
I'd imagine we'll get similar problems with trying to test against ancient individuals, even of high individual coverage, who we find in small samples sizes of 1-3, and we'll need sample sizes reaching into the 10s to try and identify fine scale via formal stats confidently. It looks like using the 1-3 samples of SGDP diploid genotyped people are relatively pointless at the moment unless we're looking for something very obvious.
I didn't think the Z would be so sensitive to the number of samples in a target population, as long as you had enough SNPs covered, but it does seem to be so...
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteHow are those Lukas PLINK files progressing???
@Ariel
ReplyDeleteI'll have them done this weekend.
When scythians were dominating Pontic caspien steppe where were Lithuanian speakers residing?
ReplyDeleteAlso how much BMAC ancestry in early scythians compared to later scythians?
The close relationship between Balto-Slavic languages and Sanskrit is on a much deeper level, and in large part due to the conservative nature of Balto-Slavic and the fact that Sanskrit is a dead language.
ReplyDeleteScythians or any other Iranic speakers have nothing to do with this.
Well the scythian rulers in India were using Sanskrit language in their inscriptions. Even the Islamic Turkic-Mongols were using Persian in India.
DeleteQuestion is whether 800bce scythian elites or clergy were aware of Vedic language as an L2 which they possible brought with them to Russian steppes as they migrated from central Asia (closer to Vedic territory).
Mahabharata (400bce-200ce) attests scythians as well as their practice of Vedic culture which was abandoned according to later texts.
Back to “language diversity”, it actually is a good gauge , with due caution of course
ReplyDeleteExamples
- paraCeltic languages in mainland Western Europe (not Ireland, as Ryan suggested)
- Baltic languages and Slavic in northeast Europe
- ancestral Greek, Macedonian, Phrygian, even Paeonian north of Greece
- it even holds for PIE ; diversity of ancient attested languages around Black Sea; cf shallow / homogeneous indoIranian languages in Turan
The lack of para-Germanic attestation is interesting , but explicable
The relationship between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian is not deep and goes back to the Iron Age, nor is the relationship between I-I and Greco-Armenian is deep. It's all voodoo nonsense.
ReplyDelete1. Eric Hamp has the most likely model with Indo-Iranian as an early split that matches with the Near Eastern texts. Discounting the supposed Anatolian names in the Armi texts Indo-Iranian is accepted to be the earliest attested language during the Gutian period. Witzel falsely claims this is an early Indo-Iranian group that adopted BMAC culture yet their most important gods, specifically Indra, are clearly Vedic Indo-Aryan and do not go back to PII.
2. The actual experts on the Mitanni empire Jesper Eidem and Von Dassow already put the origin of the Mitanni Aryans around lake Urmia in the late third millennium. This is confirmed by the Indo-Iranian toponyms in that region.
3. The actual expert on South Central Asia, Vidale pretty much put third millennium South Eastern Iran as part of what he calls the Proto-Indo-Iranian horizon. On the other hand, Gian Luca Bonora's recent 700-page thesis pretty much confirms that the lingua franca of the East Iranian and Indus network was Indo-Iranian.
4. There were a few Iron Age movements from Northern Iran to the steppes and Europe known to Herodotus and confirmed by archaeology. (See the Sigynnae and Sindoi who speak an Indo-Aryan language similar to that of the Mitanni). Most likely these were the last of the Daevas of Mazandaran escaping the Iranian conquest.
Alberto has it right, early IE spread from Iran and later European IE spread from the Balkans after the Vasconic Bell Beaker spread. It's a shame he's no longer interested in the PIE debate as he considers it solved and to be fair the Iranian homeland is pretty much a guarantee.
That's kinda interesting.
DeleteKing Xerxes inscription and I quote;
" among these countries there was a place where previously demons (daiva) were worshipped. Afterwards, by the grace of Ahuramazda I destroyed that sanctuary of demons, and I proclaimed: 'The demons shall not be worshipped!' Where previously the demons were worshipped, there I worshipped Ahuramazda at the proper time and in the proper manner."
Always wondered where this place was located.
Anyone who claims that Iran is the PIE homeland is a total crackpot.
ReplyDeleteOn an aside on Indo-European trees, the authors of the "IELex" data, Michael Dunn, whose data used as the basis for the papers of Bouckaert (2012) and Chang (2015), but criticised by Kassian (2021), has published this on github late last year (and updated recently) - https://github.com/evotext/ielex-data-and-tree/tree/r20211108
ReplyDelete"Indo-European Lexical Cognacy Database (IELex) and ‘Good Enough’ Tree
This repository contains data and scripts for producing a Baysian phylogenetic tree sample of for the Indo-European family which is good enough for use in phylogenetic comparative methods. It should be considered as the current version of the "Indo-European Lexical Cognacy Database" from Dunn et al. (2011), popularly known as "IELex". The "Indo-European Cognate Relationships" (IE-CoR) database project, now based at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, has been working on a much improved database originally based on this data, but has not had any public data release so far. In the meantime, this is the best we can offer, as an alternative to the original website (http://ielex.mpi.nl) which is now offline."
They stated that their changes include;
- "The cognate coding is borrowed from Andrew Garrett's corrections of the IELex database (published in supplementary materials to Chang et al. 2015)."
- "Use the Bouckaert et al. (2012) language sample minus sparsely attested languages, following Chang et al. (2015). This is a tradeoff between quality of the wordlist and quantity of languages in the sample."
But they do not include "the Chang et al 2015 notion of ancestry constraints (and there are theoretical and empirical reasons that make these controversial in any case)"
The tree seems to be fundamentally more similar to Kassian (2021)'s tree.
This tree splits
Anatolian->Tocharian->Graeco-Armenian from the remaining core in the higher order, then splits Indo-Baltic-Slavic from Germanic-Celtic-Italic
where Kassian splits:
Anatolian->Tocharian-> simultaneous split of Albanian/Graeco-Armenian/Indo-Baltic-Slavic/Germanic-Celtic-Italic
(Compared to Chang's tree which is similar but does not treat Indo-Baltic-Slavic as a clade and has Graeco-Armenian-Albanian as a clade).
Albeit the clade of Indo-Baltic-Slavic is very shallow and almost a trifurcation.
The time splits are still very deep though, unlike the tendency of Kassian's treet to ignore modern languages and constrain deep roots.
Was looking at population estimates and some interesting data pops up.
ReplyDeleteLithuania had only 780k population in 1800ce
Would be interesting to see how many lived around ~1369ce from when the language is attested. Wonder how many died from bubonic plague.
Russia barely had a million people at turn of common Era. In contrast 75 million lived in India.
Would like to know about the mtdna profile of swat valley samples. Any steppe specific lineages found in these samples?
Were Croats from Iran? Any truth to their Hravatska identity which possibly links them to an Iranian tribe?
@Vara
ReplyDelete"...the actual experts on the Mitanni empire Jesper Eidem and Von Dassow already put the origin of the Mitanni Aryans around lake Urmia in the late third millennium. This is confirmed by the Indo-Iranian toponyms in that region..."
Actually, and as far as I know, Jasper suggests a date around 18th century BCE for the first possible presence of Indo-Aryans in the Near East, due to the word "maryannu" in some tablet of that region. And Eva von Dassow, in her recent article on Mitanni mentions the beginning of it around 1600-1550 BCE with the name Hanigalbat. Neither of them mention 3rd millennium.
Can you tell me which are the sources or references to your claim?
Here's my reference of von Dassow's latest article:
von Dassow, Eva, (2022). "Mittani and Its Empire", in Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, D. T. Potts (eds.), The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, Volume III: From the Hyksos to the Late Second Millennium BC, Oxford University Press.
King names like Gandash & Abi-Rattas of Kassites are of Indo-Aryan character.
DeleteGandash is probably dated to 1750bce.
Gandash
DeleteGandharva, Gandhara, Gandha
(Fragrance or Smell)
(Possibly from Afghanistan?)
Abi-Rattas
(Abhiratha)
Possibly means "great charioteer"
Abhirata
Deleteअभिरत
practising
performing
pleased or contented with
Etc
@Matt,
ReplyDeleteDo you have a link to the unpublished Yamanya Y DNA in Hungary?
I remember a few years ago, someone posted a link to a powerpoint where researchers of an upcoming study in Hungary showed Y DNA results. All the Yamanya males had R1b Z2103 while Bell beaker males had R1b P312.
I want to use it as a reference in an upcoming video where I will argue Yamanya is not the PIEs.
I plan on finishing the video this week.
ReplyDeleteIt'll be the most professional video I've made yet. I know all my videos so far have been low budget.
Here are the Syrian Antiquity samples
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/1r570gdv0zo8uk8/Srigyan_2020.zip/file
It almost doesn't even warrant explanation, but Baltic languages can not have been 'shaped' by Scythians. They formed at least by 1200 bc, in Brushed/ Stroked pottery groups in the Dnieper-Dvina region, which probably moved in from the vicinity of northeast Poland at some point.
ReplyDeleteScythians emerged several hundred years later. And despite a lot of confused claims on the internet, they did not come from Turan. And the people they came into contact with in Hungary & the forest-steppe bore a predominantly 'East Hallstat' rather than Balto-Slavic affinity. So there's no direct link apart from one which goes back to 2500 bc when the ancestors of pre-In-Ir set off from eastern Europe.
Scythian flourished in steppes for nearly 800 years. Enough time to leave long lasting impact.
DeleteIn contrast Delhi sultans & Mughals who weren't Persians were instrumental in the spread of Persian loans in modern Indo-Aryan languages. Their combined rule was 500 odd years.
Genos Historia said...
ReplyDelete"I want to use it as a reference in an upcoming video where I will argue Yamanya is not the PIEs."
And what language would the Yamnaya speak? Just because their patrilineages are very rare in western Europe doesn't mean they were not speaking PIE. Yamnaya lineages are rather common in the Balkans, Anatolia and Armenia, places where numerous Indo-European languages existed.
@Carlos
ReplyDeleteI don't have anything on me atm but I think you are confusing different subjects. The first appearance of Indo-Aryans in Syro-Anatolia not western Iran is accepted to be between 1800-1700 BCE. There are various explanations like Van Koppen's Hammurabi prisoners and Eidem's Eastern Hurrians in northwestern Iran who migrated to Syria and brought with them the Aryans this is found in a recent book the emergence of the Mitanni state.
The establishment of the Mitanni kingdom is where there is no consensus. IMO, there is no strong evidence for 1800 BCE nor is it relevant for the PIE debate. It is very likely that the kingdom was established around 1600.
As for Von Dassow's early Aryans I think it was in the 2008 book where she downplays the Indo-Aryan elements of the empire.
For pre Mitanni and Kassite Aryans:
https://www.academia.edu/10344521/An_Indo_European_god_in_a_Gudea_Inscription
Manishtushu (𒈠𒀭𒅖𒌅𒋢, Ma-an-ish-tu-su) was the third king of the Akkadian Empire, reigning from c. 2270 BC until his assassination in 2255 BC (Middle Chronology).
DeleteIts kinda funny that Akkadian King has an Indo-Aryan name in 2270bce.
Manish means "The God of the Mind" derived from the Sanskrit words "man" (mann) which means Mind and "ish" which refers to God or master.
Too much Coincidence eh!
@alex
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it Yamnaya was not Early Proto-Indo-European but only Middle Proto-Indo-European. Their predecessors along with those of Corded Ware were actually the Early Protos. Maybe there is too much "Proto" in the story...?
Yeah, Sredny Stog was Proto-Indo-European.
ReplyDeleteRoiter writes ''Thus it became clear that, in the second half of the second millennium BC, there were Indo-Iranian communities dwelling in Mitanni''
ReplyDelete@ Assuwatama
ReplyDelete''Scythian flourished in steppes for nearly 800 years. Enough time to leave long lasting impact.''
Absolutely, but their primary impact was on eastern Halstatt groups
@GH: This is possibly what you're looking for: https://imgur.com/a/uCKiNd9
ReplyDelete@Norfern-Ostrobothnian
ReplyDeleteScaled
SYR_Tell_Qarassa_Early_Antiquity:syr005,0.055773,0.151314,-0.045254,-0.12048,-0.005847,-0.058846,-0.014571,-0.007154,0.064016,0.010934,0.024358,-0.018733,0.061843,-0.000275,0.014522,0.017634,-0.032726,-0.011909,0.001131,0.032641,0.023334,0.015828,-0.009737,-0.000602,-0.011496
SYR_Tell_Qarassa_Early_Antiquity:syr013,0.078538,0.152329,-0.065619,-0.124679,-0.000615,-0.051316,-0.015746,-0.016845,0.067288,0.00328,0.012342,-0.039265,0.070317,0.00812,0.002714,0.020684,-0.041853,0.008868,0.002514,0.036643,0.017844,0.019043,-0.001849,0.00976,-0.013891
Raw
SYR_Tell_Qarassa_Early_Antiquity:syr005,0.0049,0.0149,-0.012,-0.0373,-0.0019,-0.0211,-0.0062,-0.0031,0.0313,0.006,0.015,-0.0125,0.0416,-0.0002,0.0107,0.0133,-0.0251,-0.0094,0.0009,0.0261,0.0187,0.0128,-0.0079,-0.0005,-0.0096
SYR_Tell_Qarassa_Early_Antiquity:syr013,0.0069,0.015,-0.0174,-0.0386,-0.0002,-0.0184,-0.0067,-0.0073,0.0329,0.0018,0.0076,-0.0262,0.0473,0.0059,0.002,0.0156,-0.0321,0.007,0.002,0.0293,0.0143,0.0154,-0.0015,0.0081,-0.0116
Btw: https://www.e-a-a.org/AsiCommon/Controls/BSA/Downloader.aspx#Program (31/08/2022)
ReplyDeleteSession: "Population History and Community Formation in Early Medieval East‐Central Europe: Integrating Genetic, Isotopic, Archaeological and Historical Perspectives"
"How archaeology and anthropology can build on aDNA analyses of entire cemeteries"
"Biological kinship patterns in an early medieval graveyard of the Rheinland as part of the Frankish kingdom"
"Population history of Early Medieval Ukraine "
"Y‐chromosome analysis of Goths from the Maslomecz group cemeteries in southeastern Poland"
"Ancient DNA reveals the settlement of Avar community in Lower Austria during Early Medieval Period"
"Snapshot into kinship structure and population history of a late Avar‐period community from genome‐wide analyses of the whole Rákóczifalva cemetery"
"The issue of continuity of population history between 8‐12th centuries in Carpathian Basin based on archaeogenetic results of four cemeteries"
"Population dynamics in the Oder and Vistula basins as informed by novel genome‐wide data."
Session: "Moving into the Mediterranean – New Developments in the Research on Genetics, Mobility, Culture Change and Languages"
"Insights into the genetic landscape and mobility patterns of the Bronze Age ‐ Iron Age transition in Southeast Europe"
"The transformation of the genomic landscape in Copper and Bronze Age Campania"
"How can aDNA be your friend: predictive case studies from the prehistoric Aegean"
Session: "Bioanthropology in Western Asia: Moving forward (A Session in Honour of Prof Holger Schutkowski)"
"New genomic evidence of a Bronze Age Levantine‐Egyptian Nexus"
The best and most recent explanation of Mitanni times is found in Eva von Dassow (2022):
ReplyDeleteBefore being known as Mitanni the realm was known as Hanigalbat around 1600 BC by Babylonians and Assyrians, in texts of the late Old Babylonian period (von Dassow 2022: 467, 469).
Full reference:
https://tinyurl.com/558mprx6
von Dassow, Eva, (2022). "Mittani and Its Empire", in (eds.) Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, D. T. Potts, The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, Volume III: From the Hyksos to the Late Second Millennium BC, Oxford University Press, pp. 467, 469.
Not sure why it's so hard to read.
ReplyDelete"The name Indar relates to the Gutian theophoric
Inda-ššu,
similar to the Kassite
Indaš
and the Sanskrit term
indrasūnu
"son of Indra". Indaššu was the name of an Ensi of Zabshali recorded in a tablet dated tothe Ur III period"
Sorry but a relatively late god this early pushes back I-I quite a bit.
The syrians have high distance but they are saudi-like, how old are they?
ReplyDeleteDistance to: SYR_Tell_Qarassa_Early_Antiquity:syr013
0.03945042 Saudi:saudi1413
0.03958149 Saudi:saudi1432
0.04047167 BedouinB:HGDP00643
0.04056856 Yemenite_Al_Jawf:Y225
Distance to: SYR_Tell_Qarassa_Early_Antiquity:syr005
0.03938884 Saudi:saudi1403
0.04065577 Saudi:saudi1432
0.04067604 BedouinB:HGDP00623
0.04177152 Yemenite_Al_Jawf:Y225
Thanks very much, Matt, that's exactly what I was looking for.
ReplyDeleteVara wrote
ReplyDelete“ early IE spread from Iran and later European IE spread from the Balkans after the Vasconic Bell Beaker spread.”
I think that is exactly where it goes wrong.
It is very hard to see Bell Beaker not spreading IE languages.
There really weren’t any complete waves of migration across Europe after Corded Ware and Bell Beaker. Even Urnfield is local.
And, no, there’s nothing really that comes from the Balkans or anywhere else that even comes near those kinds of cultural and population changes before Roman times.
That new El Argar report showing steppes ancestry sweeping through Iberia before 2200 BCE did it for me. Steppes ancestry doesn’t mean genes carried language. But it does mean that these people were moving everywhere in Europe.
There’s really no likely way to explain the spread of IE languages across Europe anyway than the combination of Corded Ware and Bell Beaker.
I don’t know where PIE started. But this looks very much like how it spread across Europe.
100 clay tablets recovered from lost mitanni city dated ~1375bce. Any idea how long will it take to decipher it?
ReplyDeleteI highly doubt Mitanni elites were genetically of Indo-Aryan stock. I fail to understand why wouldn't they impose their Aryan language on native hurrians like they did in central Asia,India and Iran.
DeleteWhy do I think so?
DeleteClaim is Vedics came into India 1500bce and by 1400bce started composing oldest layers of Rig Veda which has ~3% substrate from non-IE languages despite being in contact with so many cultures from Siberia to India.
Yet in Syria & Iraq whose population size was much smaller; they appear to have intruded by 1750bce and gain power by ~1600bce yet the language they used was Hurrian with 0.01% Aryan loans.
Mitanni disappeared by ~1200bce
ReplyDeleteA century or 2 later Medes appear in and around the Mitanni territories. What possibility that the Hurrians came in contact with these early Proto-Medes?
A sample from near by region if my geography is right;
Source: Archaeogenetics
Hasanlu IA 900bce, Hasanlu, W Iran
Target: IRN_Hasanlu_IA
Distance: 2.3395% / 0.02339468
35.0 Levant_Ashkelon_LBA
29.4 UZB_Bustan_BA
26.6 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kalavan
9.0 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
0.0 ARM_LBA
0.0 ARM_Lchashen_MBA
0.0 ARM_MBA
0.0 MNG_TUK001
0.0 PAK_Katelai_IA
I also think zoroastrian religion is Assurized-Aryan religion.
In contrast eastern Iranian speaking Kangju were;
DeleteSource: Archaeogenetics
Rus_Sintastha_MLBA 50%
UZB_Bustan_BA 25%
MNG_slab grave_EIA 7%
KAZ_zevakiniskiy_LBA 18%
Or source: annonymous
Kazakhstan_Kangju_o3 , DA206
Target: KAZ_Kangju:DA206
Distance: 1.8255% / 0.01825521 | R3P
52.0 RUS_Sintashta_MLBA
41.4 TKM_Gonur1_BA
6.6 RUS_Shamanka_EBA
Sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank has however suggested that the Kangju could have been Tocharians.
Here is what Herodotus has to say;
Delete"The Medes were formerly called by everyone Arians, but when the Colchian woman Medea came from Athens to the Arians, they changed their name, like the Persians [did after Perses, son of Perseus and Andromeda]. This is the Medes' own account of themselves."
Wonder if their is any truth to it.
There is an interesting trail: Catacomb culture groups moved south of the Caucasus ~ 2200 bce. I think there will be R1b-Z2103 as far as East Anatolia and Syria. Then there is a similar signal in Iran & Dzharkutan. Dzharkutan is in turn relevant for Swat _IA
ReplyDelete@Livonia G said-"I think that is exactly where it goes wrong.It is very hard to see Bell Beaker not spreading IE languages."
ReplyDeleteAll those who link genes and language, have to recognize that there is an evident genetic continuity between the Chalcolithic and Iberian-Tartessian peoples of the Iron Age. No one can deny that all of them were R1b-DF27. No one can deny that those peoples as well as the Rhaetians and Etruscans spoke NON Indo-European languages ergo what at the moment is a mental gymnastic exercise is to claim that the BBC spoke an IE language. CWC never reached Western Europe, and neither in Iberia nor in France can you find R1a-M417, R1b-Z2103 or Q. The Iberian migrations related to the BB culture have already been scientifically demonstrated long ago, so it is much more logical to think that this culture never spoke IE. The argument of the existence of steppe ancestry in Iberia is childish because there is also WHG and EEFs ancestry
@Xdzyn, think they'll be lots of stuff from that region and that time frame judging by this.
ReplyDeleteIt also seems like it's becoming popular to identify large medieval cemetaries and get high sample sizes. Another example is - https://www.embl.org/about/info/course-and-conference-office/events/ees22-09/ - "Comparing and contrasting local genetic structure amongst densely sampled early medieval cemeteries - Krishna Veeramah – Stony Brook University, USA" at another symposium later in the year.
The Kangju look like Sarmatians who migrated southeast and settled in Sogdia, replacing the earlier Sakae (which packed a lot of Inner Asian ancestry)
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
DeleteSarmatians have interesting story to tell.
Their territory, which was known as Sarmatia (/sɑːrˈmeɪʃiə/) to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia (it included today's Central Ukraine, South-Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia, Russian Volga, and South-Ural regions, also to a smaller extent northeastern Balkans and around Moldova). In the first century AD, the Sarmatians began encroaching upon the Roman Empire in alliance with Germanic tribes. In the third century AD, their dominance of the Pontic Steppe was broken by the Germanic Goths. With the Hunnic invasions of the fourth century, many Sarmatians joined the Goths and other Germanic tribes (Vandals) in the settlement of the Western Roman Empire. Since large parts of today's Russia, specifically the land between the Ural Mountains and the Don River, were controlled in the fifth century BC by the Sarmatians, the Volga–Don and Ural steppes sometimes are called "Sarmatian Motherland".
"The Sarmatians were eventually decisively assimilated (e.g. Slavicisation) and absorbed by the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe."
Is the quoted part visible through genetics? To be fair I was aware of their existence. They look like a better candidate than even scythians ;)
*Wasn't 🙏
DeleteIt would be extremely interesting to see what ancestry turns up among archaeologically attested Mitanni samples. A BMAC source without Harappan ancestry will have huge implications for Swat valley samples which have upto 36% BMAC.
ReplyDeleteThat would cleary point to Swat Valley people being Indo-Aryans without any R1a(2 in 44 male samples to be precise).
That could also point to BMAC as a possible source of Indo-Aryan language.
Gaska wrote: "The argument of the existence of steppe ancestry in Iberia is childish because there is also WHG and EEFs ancestry"
ReplyDeleteGaska - The only way to learn a new language back then was to hear it. No books. No writing. Probably no schools. The only way to learn a new language was hearing somebody else speaking it. Nothing else works.
And the evidence is that there were lots of new speakers of a new language suddenly showing up all over Europe. Corded Ware first and then Bell Beaker further west and as a backwash towards the east. We can only see this because they all carry the "steppes" autosomal dna, however that happened.
I used to think something else could explain IE languages in Europe. The El Argar report flipped me. It was the sudden rush of new people that makes sense.
Please read it when you can.
It says: "The beginning of the Bronze Age [Early Bronze Age (EBA)] in Iberia (2200 to 1550 cal BCE) marks a clear population turnover, suggested by both the omnipresence of steppe-related ancestry in all individuals directly postdating 2200 BCE... and the frequency of Y-chromosome haplogroups in males, which are almost exclusively of the R1b-P312 type that was completely absent in Iberia before 2400 BCE " Suddenly new people were everywhere and they were probably speaking a new language. Not genes. People.
@Genos Historia
ReplyDelete…
Access to the oldest samples of CWC/BBC R1b from the line P312 in South-Eastern Poland is published by A. Linderholm et al. 2020
Access to samples from line R1b-Z2103 (Yamnaya/CWC?) and line R1b-P312 (Bel Beaker?) (in total around n.20) in the Carpathian Basin is known to Anna Szecsenyi Nagy (Hungary)
ReplyDelete@LivoniaG
What you have written is totally contradictory- If I understand you correctly, a new group of men belonging to a P312 lineage that did not exist in Spain before 2,400 BC created the Argar culture (2.200 BC) and began to speak a language that also did not exist in the Iberian Peninsula (I suppose Indo-European).
First of all, P312 is for the moment non-existent in all Europe before 2.500 BC (not 2.400 BC), with the oldest cases reported in Germany and Spain. Secondly, if these newcomers imposed their language on the Iberian farmers, why did their direct maternal and paternal (R1b-P312>DF27) descendants change their language and become NON-Indo-European speakers?. They were the dominant class, the Argar men were overwhelmingly R1b-Df27 (>95%) and there were no migrations or conquests during the Bronze/Iron Age (the urnfield culture never reached the Argar territory)-Moreover, this language change was not only a local phenomenon, but affected 2/3 of the Iberian Peninsula (400,000 km2), that is, the territory of the Iberians, Vascones and Tartessians. To this you have to add that beyond the Pyrenees the Aquitanians spoke Basque and part of Occitania spoke Iberian. How was the miraculous process by which the men of the BB culture stopped speaking their mother tongue?
In my opinion it is common sense to think just the opposite, i.e. the genetic continuity between the Iberian BB culture and the historical Iberian peoples of the Iron Age (and in the case of the Basques up to the present), leads us to think that the BB culture (at least in Iberia) never spoke an Indo-European language. Something similar happens in France (Aquitanians and Occitanians) and Italy (Etruscans and Raetians) also mostly R1b-P312 and nevertheless NON-Indo-European. Don't you realize that there is something wrong? I am not trying to convince anyone, I am simply stating what many Spaniards think about it. You have a very different interpretation of European prehistory and it is not a question of discussing who is right and who is wrong. We simply think differently.
@LivoniaG
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what I thought earlier so I needed some convincing as well.
The fact that BB was so dominant and influential is the reason that it most likely wasn't IE.
To make it simple let's compare two scenarios previously accepted in the mainstream.
1. A group of nomads come down from Kazakhstan around 1500 BCE, takeover some of the most violent and expansionist people at the time, and by 1200 BCE impose their language and erase almost every toponym in South Central Asia except for two and these two like Kubha already have IE etymologies. Yet somehow this group left very little genetic impact around that time and no cultural impact that made a few archaeologists come up with a kulturkugel model and it was brought up by Erdosy that the supposed Indo-Iranian markers actually went from south to north. However, this invisible group failed to erase the toponyms of Central India, Eastern India, Western Iran..etc regions at the time divided, less advanced and less warlike. Despite such limited impact we have no trace left of the previous supposed natives except in loanwords proposed by Lubotsky which you can find that some other linguists propose IE etymologies for them or could have been acquired from trading.
2. This scenario is the opposite. A highly mobile group comes from the east and utterly dominates western Europe to an extent that hasn't been seen before or since, not just culturally but genetically as well. If the invisible group could erase everything in 200 years surely this group can as well. Yet, this group had more than 2 thousand years to do so but the regions where this BB culture flourished show strong evidence of non-IE speakers(Basque, Etruscan, Iberian, Tartessian..etc) and relatively late IE takeover and the IE groups that took over that region the Celts may have originally been Basque-like as proposed by Kassian.
It's hard to look at BB or early steppe groups and consider them IE. Also, the post BB groups Hallstat , La Tene.. etc carry a different cultural package even if they are rich in steppe ancestry. The spread of IE in Europe could be very similar to the spread in Asia, through complex metallurgical networks. E.g. just like in Europe there is no large wave that could explain Indo-Iranian other than the EBA cultural phenomenon of early diffusion of Grey Ware elites and Indo-Aryan maybe with the Hindu Kush tin road that went through India and Bactria(Parpola also noticed the appearance of tin with the Mitanni). The actual IE package has little to do with steppe nomadism and Anatolian farmers, and more with metallurgy and religious frauds. This is especially true with European IE where smiths were elevated from sidekicks to protagonists in some cases.
With most of the work being in Spanish the Basque vs IE problem won't be solved anytime soon since almost everyone is trying to fit the data into the model just a quick look at the Indo-Iranian fiasco will show you that. I mean Jarrige and Hassan have challenged the steppe migration since 1985 and it's only recently picked up. Maybe as PIE in Iran becomes more popular linguists will look if Vasco-Caucasian is valid but who knows.
@Vara
ReplyDeleteIran isn't the PIE homeland, and Corded Ware people were Indo-Europeans, you crackpot.
@LivoniaG
ReplyDelete"There’s really no likely way to explain the spread of IE languages across Europe anyway than the combination of Corded Ware and Bell Beaker.
I don’t know where PIE started. But this looks very much like how it spread across Europe."
I don't think there's any modern or attested IE languages we can trace to Bell Beakers. Their territory all got washed over by later waves of IE through Unetice, Halstatt, La Tene, Urnfield, etc. Maybe they spoke IE but I think if they did that branch of IE is dead.
The appeal to consensus doesn't work anymore huh?
ReplyDeleteYes, David, I am the crackpot not the dudes who for years thought fishermen Khvalynsk was PIE or Slavs taught Greeks and Indo-Aryans or that Hallstat Scythians stuff lol. Let's ignore the fact that pre-Scythians like Kanita(Kanites) show up in Rigveda. It's almost as if no one is trying anymore.
Sorry PIE in Iran is the accepted theory atm.
The consensus is that Cored Ware was Indo-European and the PIE homeland was on the Pontic-Caspian steppe. So you're obviously a crackpot.
ReplyDeleteAnd the academics who are pushing for a PIE homeland in Iran (against all odds) will not only be proven wrong, but also discredited.
@Ryan,
ReplyDeleteThe idea Unetice is an important ancestor who went all over Europe, has been diproven by ancient DNA. People have predicted they gave rise to Celts, gave rise to Germans, but all this has been disproven.
70%+ of ancient Celtic & Italic speakers belong to yHG R1b P312. Everything indicates that Bell Beaker descendants survived very well up until the present day and that they are the ancestor of Celtic & Italic languages.
R1b p312 used to be 70%+ everywhere in Western Europe. It was the Mediterranean geneflow into southwestern Europe & Germanic geneflow into British Isles in historical times which lowered the frequency more than anything else in the last 4,000 years.
@Ryan,
ReplyDeleteWhat are talking about Bell beaker's language is extinct?
Look at Bronze age, Iron age Italy.
About 80% of the males belong to R1b P312 and 50% of their ancestry can be modelled as being from Bell Beaker.
It is obvious the Italic tribes trace back to Bell Beaker. No other migration had such a large impact on Bronze, Iron age Italy. Where else can their IE language be from?
There was no serious replacement of Bell beaker Y DNA in conteintal Europe. The Celtic speakers of the Iron age were overwhelmingly a continuation of Bell beaker.
It is no coincidence that Celtic & Italic languages have always been considered to be related to each other.
The Kulturkugel is a model formulated on what was known in the 1980s .
ReplyDeleteThere is a new scenario evident now
Celtic and Italic languages didn't spread with the Bell Beaker culture. They originated within very specific subsets of the post-Bell Beaker world.
ReplyDeleteThey then expanded from these areas (in Western and/or Central Europe), possibly as late as the Iron Age.
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2021/12/when-did-celtic-languages-arrive-in.html
It's important to understand this distinction, and anyone claiming that, say, Bell Beakers in Britain spoke Celtic should kindly pull their heads out of their asses.
@Samuel - see what David said. My guess would be that Italic languages came with the Urnfield Culture. Urnfield obviously had some Beaker ancestry, but not exclusively so, no? And I'd be curious about David's take on what influences contributed to Unetice and Urnfield cultures.
ReplyDeleteI'm skeptical though that you'll find Beaker ancestry in a Unetice grave in Ukraine though for example.
I haven't looked in detail at the origins of Unetice.
ReplyDeleteLet's wait for that big Hungarian Bronze Age paper to see what it reveals on the topic.
@Ariel
ReplyDeleteUpdated...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18rmkgmAMqMMr40bUrKHRfELp27FBRQ1t/view?usp=sharing
That Bell Beaker descended populations spoke languages not related to IE (or any other supposed family to that matter) says nothing about this peoples' original language other than they were good at learning languages from the places they settled.
ReplyDeleteIberian, Tartessian, Basque or Etruscan are not related either, so we can't argue any of them are their original language.
David, fear of 'being discredited' hasn't stopped whole hosts of people defending blatantly absurd - but deeply chauvinist - positions before.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have learned from following genetic genealogy, since the dawn of the internet age, is just how, (distressingly), common mental illness is amongst the general population.
Iberian and Aquitanian-Basque are related (anthroponymy, numerals, vocabulary, etc...), and we already know enough about Iberian to understand that it was the mother tongue of many historical Iberian peoples. Spanish archaeologists have demonstrated the relationship between the urnfield culture and the Celtiberians, so in my opinion the proto-Celtic/Celtic entered Iberia thanks to the ancient Hallstatt culture (1.300-1.000 BC). Celtic is therefore a language spoken in Central Europe at the end of the Bronze Age (nobody can think that it was the language spoken by the BB culture). We only have one Celtiberian genome and it is not P312 but I2a, so it is clear that the central European cultures Unetice>Tumulus>Urnfield were not genetically homogeneous (at least in terms of their male markers).
ReplyDeleteRegarding Italy, the linguistic situation is as complicated as the Iberian one. The Etruscans (>70% R1b, >25% U152) were not IE, and the Italic peoples (Latins, Daunians) have an obvious connection with the Balkans (Illyrians). Illyrians were overwhelmingly J2b-L283 and that lineage has also been found in Iron Age Italic peoples. Also R1b-Z2103 (which in my opinion is the only subclade of R1b that could be linked to the expansion of IE in mainland Europe) has been found in Latins and Daunians (but not in Etruscans) so it is not excluded that Indo-European Italic languages came to Italy from the Balkans.
However, it could be that both DF27 and U152 were the dominant markers in both NON-Indo-European and Indo-European peoples (the Latins also have that marker) and I don't think we will be able to solve the mystery with the genetic data at our disposal. That is why the linguistic positions seem irreconcilable to me, nobody will be able to convince the opposite side because there are enough arguments to justify that the BB culture spoke a language related to the Basque-Aquitanian and there are also arguments to relate the BB culture in central Europe with the Italic peoples (thanks to U152).
@ Vara
ReplyDelete'' that Hallstat Scythians stuff lol''
Instead of constantly bluffing & acting offended, try to understand data
For ex
Ukraine_IA_WesternScythian.SG
Russia_Srubnaya
Russia_Shamanka_EBA.SG
Russia_North_Caucasus_MBA
Hungary_LBA_Kyjatice.SG
best coefficients: 0.323 0.101 0.274 0.301
Tail Prob 0.614091
@ Assuwatama
''The Sarmatians were eventually decisively assimilated (e.g. Slavicisation) and absorbed by the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe."''
Its a popular theory, but Sarmatian lineages dont seem to feature strongly in the expansion of Common Slavic. Instead, what we are currently seeing is that Sarmatians mixed with Dacians, Goths and Roman provincials. All this occurred just before the Slavic expansions
But we will understand more detail in due course
''That would cleary point to Swat Valley people being Indo-Aryans without any R1a(2 in 44 male samples to be precise).''
ReplyDeleteThere are also 2 x I2a2a1b, found in steppe & adjacent parts of Europe. Also ancient Xinjiang, modern Kurds.
David the new paper on ancient Maltese samples has identified two different groups of Early European Farmers, the main one (Eastern) appeared to be the dominant type in most of Europe, the secondary one seems to have been the dominant one in Atlantic Europe and the Western Mediterranean (from which it originally spread).
ReplyDeleteDo you think possible your Celtic VS Germanic PCA might have been detecting this difference in modern Europeans in PC2? Since it clearly separates western European populations which should have preserved a higher degree of BA ancestry until today (Irish, SW French/Basques) from the rest, I was wondering whether this was a possibility.
@Davidski,
ReplyDeleteI never said Celtic and Italic languages spread during the Bell Beaker period. I never said Bell Beaker spoke Celtic.
What I am saying, is it is they originated in Bell beaker descendants.
I am frustrated by how many people try to belittle the role of Bell beaker. And try to act like later groups, eg Celts, who derive from Bell beaker are some radically different group people.
@Ryan,
ReplyDeleteR1b P312, Kurgan admixed DNA samples in Italy predate the Urnfield culture. Therefore the Italic tribes don't come from Urnfield.
Saupe 2021
Ancient genomes reveal structural shifts after the arrival of Steppe-related ancestry in the Italian Peninsula
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.022
80% of Etruscans and Latins carry R1b P312. Therefore, the IEs who went to Italy didn't just have some Beaker ancestry, they were basically pure blood Beaker folk.
Btw, they are genetically identical to those Bronze age Italians who predate Urnfield. So it seems the genetic makeup of Iron age Italy was established by 1500 BC. W
No one, including Davidski, highlighted how this proved a Bell Beaker origin for Italic languages.
@Ryan,
ReplyDeleteYou, Romulus, seem to be attached to old theories about Unetice, Urnfield which have not panned out.
The IE expansion into western EUrope was done by Bell beaker, not these later groups.
yes, Unetice is largely derived from a new Corded Ware derived group who moved into Bell Beaker territory. This is new geneflow is marked by the high freq
@Ryan,
ReplyDeleteNo one has identified a signature Urnfield Y DNA marker.
No one has identified its presence in Celtic speaking areas.
This study got lots of Y DNA from Celts in central Europe, the most eastern Celts.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04287-4
Even for them, 57% belong to R1b. The main haplogroup which is not R1b are G2a-L497 and I2a.
I2a and R1a were the signature haplogroup in Unetice. But it is at only 17% in eastern Celts. Which is not good evidence they got their language from Unetice. I2a, R1a are not really found in Celts in France and Britain. So once again there's no good indication their language is from a different source than Bell Beaker.
There is 'eastern European' Corded Ware ancestry which entered Bohemia, germany after Bell Beaker with Unetice. It is signified by Yhg I2a and R1a. It does exist in later Celts. But why should this where their Celtic langauge be from? And why don't we see this Y DNA in western European Celts?
It seems to me pretty obvious that Single Grave/Kurgan Bell Beaker was simply derived from Corded Ware. If Corded Ware was Indo-European, then so was Bell Beaker.
ReplyDeleteMale remains from the Basque country that predate the arrival of Single Grave Bell Beaker have all belonged to Y haplogroup I2. Somehow Y-DNA R1b-DF27 came to dominate Basque society without the language change to Indo-European that everywhere else accompanied a similar switch in Y-DNA. The Basques worshipped a mother goddess, Mari, and had a matrilocal marriage system, in which the groom went to live with the bride's family. Such a system preserved the Euskara language and culture while doing nothing to stop outsider Y-DNA from becoming dominant.
The evidence from ancient and modern Y-DNA, mtDNA, autosomal DNA, and X chromosome DNA indicates that the entry and expansion of steppe DNA into Europe west of the steppe was male mediated. That's beyond reasonable dispute, and it matches what we know happened linguistically and culturally, as well.
Rob, guess who wrote this to you 3 years ago: "For example, culturally Celtic shares much with Scythian and even Vainakh"
ReplyDeleteI am glad you are picking up but of course, doesn't mean the Scythian ethnogenesis was in Hallstat.
It's pretty dishonest to claim that the kulturkugel model was in the 80s when one of the latest models, Parpola's 2015, is entirely based on it. He also has some weird stuff like the Vedic King Sudas conquering Sakas on his way to India. While an outlandish scenario, pre-East Iranians are pretty much confirmed by linguists to have been in contact with the Vedic people. Which is funny because we see no evidence of the invisible people in Turan till the Median era.
Speaking of bluffs where is this new scenario? Please share one that can explain why Indra worshippers with Indo-Aryan names show up in the Near East Pre Sintashta. In case you didn't know Indra is an Indo-Aryan Vedic god specifically as pre-Vedic and Proto-Indo-Iranians are Dyaus worshippers like most Indo-Europeans.
Let's be real if you knew of the recent stuff on South Central Asia you wouldn't be bluffing like this but speaking of recent models, have you forgotten what your friend Heggarty wrote about the spread of Indo-Iranian? You seemed to be a big fan of him so here's a reminder.
https://www.academia.edu/40316071/Indo-European_and_the_Ancient_DNA_Revolution
Heggarty is a fool.
ReplyDeleteScythians were steppe people and overwhelmingly of Sintashta origin, so this is where their language came from.
There's exactly zero evidence of Scythians getting their language from Iran.
@Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry for being conflictive. We're all trying to understand the same history.
I just consider Bell Beaker to be very important and I don't think people really recognize this yet. It gets me a little fired up.
IMO, it is one of the major IE expansions, alongside Yamnaya, Corded Ware, Andronovo-Srubnaya. It was THE IE expansion into western Europe.
I suppose Unetice represents a migration of 'eastern' Corded Ware into Bell Beaker territory. It brought I2a, R1a.
ReplyDeleteBut we don't know if Urnfield is derived from Unetice or represents a resurgence of Bell Beaker.
Late Bronze age DNA from Bohemia is overwhelmingly R1b P312 and French-like genetically, so looks like a Bell Beaker resurgence. I believe they come from Urnfield culture but I haven't checked.
Celtic speakers in Bohemia do have Eastern European ancestry, presumably from Unetice ultimately, but are still mostly Bell beaker.
If you are to say Celtic comes from Unetice>Urnfield, then you are ultimately saying Celtic comes from Central-East Corded Ware which sounds weird.
Based on archaeology, it had been suggested that Unetice represented some kind of new cultural code with southeastern inspiration & new forms of representation. Some of the I2 clades in Unetice might indeed link to the Balkan/Carpathian basin / east Alpine region. At first look, however, the R1a-Z280 did not, but now we know that Slovak Nitra culture is full of R1a, which is within the Carpathian region.
ReplyDeleteAcross Europe, Urnfield represents a religious shift adapted piecemeal and uniquely in each region, even Nprdic late Bronze. But within this broad region, there were movements internally, some of which were IE, some non-IE related.
@ Vara
ReplyDelete“ It's pretty dishonest to claim that the kulturkugel model was in the 80s when one of the latest models, Parpola's 2015, is entirely based on it.”
No its more a matter of your personal misunderstansing. Parpola's essay in 2015 is pre-aDNA, thus based on pre-existing models + whatever his personal additions might. Whatever the case, none of the prolific DNA-ethused archaeologists or linguists dealing with synthetic linguistics has hit the nail on the head for any specific topic, certainly not the Finns (+ a few clowns on the proto-Germanic thread in Anthrogenica) who still in 2022 believe that Fino-Uralic originated in the Eneolithic Volga-Kama.
In order to be competent, one who has to have a command of all disciplines to understand limitations or directions of all lines of evidence & in turn build new models based on that rather than assimilating half-digested DNA evidence into their own pre-existing frameworks.
But as for BMAC, at least the archaeological + DNA side of things is clear. BMAC collapsed and Andronovo groups permeated beyond the now segmented post-BMAC communities. The magic bullet is no longer required- there was frank infiltration. So again, you're throwing up strawman skeletons from bygone eras
''Please share one that can explain why Indra worshippers with Indo-Aryan names show up in the Near East Pre Sintashta.''
Are you able to cite specific examples from well dated contexts which demonstrate an Indo-Aryan presence in 3000 or 2500 BC Near East or South Asia ?
@Someone said-“No one has identified a signature Urnfield Y DNA marker”
ReplyDeleteMolekulargenetische Verwandtschaftsanalysen am prähistorischen Skelettkollektiv der Lichtensteinhöhle-Felix Schliz-The items, found in the cave are typical for the regional time period of 1000 to 700 B.C.E-Urnenfelderkultur (Urnfield culture)-Within these 15 males, 5 distinct haplotypes were found. They are predicted by the author of this document to belong to haplogroups I2a2-M436>L38 (80 %), R1b-U106 (7 %), and R1a-SRY10831.2 (13 %).
Knoviz culture-Y-chromosome (1.050 BC)-I2a-M436>M223>L1229 (2), R1b-U152>L2 (6), R1b-L151>Z2118>S1161 (3), R1b-U106>S497, R1a-Z80 (1), H2-P96 (1)
Hallstatt A1 phase Falkenstein (1.997)-RSFO (Rhenish-Swiss-France Orientale), Milavce culture (Bohemia), Unstrut culture (Thuringia), Lusatian culture (Lusatia, Poland), Knoviz culture, Middle Danube Urnfield culture (Austria, Moravia, Slovakia)
Among the proto-Celts of the Hallstatt A1-A2 culture in Germany we do not even find a case of P312. And we have I2a among the Berones (Celtiberians) and we know that the Celtiberians spoke Celtic and we know that their sites in the Castilian plateau show an uninterrupted continuity since the arrival of the Urnfielders. Any non biased person can deduce that the Urnfield culture was a genetically heterogeneous culture (if there was a dominant male group it was I2a never P312) and that it was responsible for expanding celtic in western Europe-
The BB culture was a pan-European culture that originated in Iberia and in its eastern domain reached Hungary. All the Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures of Western Europe are descendants of the Beakers. “ALL” means, that both the NON-Indo-European cultures like the Etruscan and the Iberian as well as the Indo-European (Urnfield, Hallstatt, la Tene) are descended from the men of the BB culture because western Europe since the Chalcolithic was overwhelmingly P312. So they all have the same right to claim to be legitimate heirs of the BB culture and they all have the same right to think that their culture of origin spoke the same language as they did. The northern Italian Beakers were Iberian (just check their uniparental and autosomal markers), and they were not yet U152. This lineage is a bronze age issue in Italy and obviously entered that peninsula crossing the Alps as Hannibal. And do you know who was closer to the Alps? The Etruscans (not the Latins or the Daunians), and do you know that U152 is older in the Etruscans than in the Latins? and do you know that the Etruscans spoke Etruscan? and do you know that it was a NON-Indo-European language?-The Kurganist propaganda continues to ignore such obvious matters as the fact that where P312 is the majority NON-Indo-European languages appear-That is the true reality in the Iron Age of Western Europe.
ReplyDeleteWe are not talking about Aquitanian-Basques but Iberians who besides being very close relatives of the Etruscans (we have a case of Df27 in Etruria) had in common their non-Indo-European languages. For those who think they were unrelated languages
ReplyDeleteEtruria (Ause/Castola/Cortona/Cossai/Hasta/Luca/Minio/Ossa/Pisa/Veturris-Bituriza)
Iberia (Ausa, Ausetani/Castulo/Cortonum/Cossetani/Hasta-Asta-Astura-Astapa/Luci/Minius/Ossigi-Ossonoba/Pisoraca/Biturris-Beturri)
Two western Mediterranean peoples, genetically related, overwhelmingly dominated by R1b-P312 and with a common denominator-NON-Indo-European languages. Does anyone need more evidence to at least think carefully that maybe (I only dare to say maybe), R1b-P312 never spoke IE? Why don't we leave the matter in the hands of R1a-M417 and Z2103?
I also used to think that BB could have been originally non-IE, eg some ancestral form of Vasconic & Iberian. One premise was that maybe 2 or 3 different language families expanded from the circum-Pontic region, & hence PIE and pre-Vasconic were 2 of those for ex.; with the R1b-M269 being differently placed in location to R1a-M17. However, given that the 2 were obviously closely linked, they must have both spoken a form of late PIE before expanding west. So now the riddle is figuring out how the various non-IE languages persisted in western Europe despite the universal 'sweep', to which there is no single answer.
ReplyDelete