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Tuesday, November 1, 2022

The story of R-V1636


Who wants to bet against this map? Keep in mind that ART038 (~3000 calBCE) remains the oldest sample with the V1636 and R1b Y-chromosome mutations in the West Asian ancient DNA record. Ergo, there's nothing to suggest that V1636 or R1b entered Eastern Europe from West Asia.

See also...

A tantalizing link

How relevant is Arslantepe to the PIE homeland debate?

214 comments:

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DragonHermit said...

Yeah but is there archeological proof this is what led to the formation of Hittites south of the Caucausus for example? We can clearly trace all these Yamnaya-derived, or CW/BBC-derived cultures in Europe.

Maybe even worrying too much about genetics is counter-productive at this point. Yamnaya could very well be MOSTLY steppe natives, but got their language from contacts with Maykops/Kura-Axes-like cultures. They don't have farming terms, simply because they didn't farm and use them. It doesn't mean they didn't originally exist.

Those Anatolian cultures just seem so far removed from anything that was happening in Europe, not to mention their inferred split date is BEFORE the domestication of the horse (>4,000 BC). David Anthony for example is also of the mind that Yamnaya were horse riders, because their reach was insane within a few generations. How would pastoralists without horse domestication, dominate Anatolia like that? They dominated the Middle East by crossing the Caucausus on foot? It just goes against everything we learned about how steppe nomads function. We just don't see the overwhelming dominance of the Middle East, like we do Europe.

Davidski said...

It's impossible for Kura-Araxes or even Maykop to be the source of Indo-European languages in Europe.

Kura-Araxes is too late, and there's no evidence that either Kura-Araxes or Maykop had any direct impact on Yamnaya or Corded Ware.

If anything, it can be argued that Kura-Araxes was the mirror image of Yamnaya in the Near East, and possibly the result of those Copper Age steppe influences in the southern Caucasus.

There is R-V1636 in Kura-Araxes, and no one is going to convince me that V1636 isn't a steppe marker.

Rob said...

@ Derwood Hermit


'' With Yamnaya/CW/BB we had massive archeological evidence. They left destruction in their path, and it was clearly due to favourable geographic/cultural conditions: grassland/forest steppe, Danube River, horse riding nomads.
But now to claim, that some pre-kurgan steppe pastoralists,.,... No such gradient exists across the Caucusus. Literally the only thing that links them is the CHG component, which is everywhere from ancient Anatolia to the steppes.''



This is all nonsense, It sounds like you read a cartoon from 15 years ago.

Just like in the previous thread, where you were ignorant of population collapse in Late Roman Balkans, you are again confusing your own lack of udnerstanding with reality

DragonHermit said...

@David

I'm not questioning whether this Y-DNA was steppe or not. But we have steppe people invading Bulgaria since 4th millennium BC, and we know linguistically it was a dead end.

I'm simply talking about an archeological possibility. Could a nomadic steppe people before the given date of horse domestication cross the Caucusus and militarily dominate Anatolia, the heartland of the agricultural revolution? We're talking orders of magnitude difference in population size/density. I wouldn't rule it out hypothetically, but surely we'd see clear proof of it archeologically, like we do with Yamnaya/CW in Europe.

There are 2 ways to spread language: war or culture. Yamnaya did it through war in Europe and we see it. We don't see the evidence for a steppe takeover in Anatolia, and culturally speaking, a nomadic pastoralist people have 0 chance of spreading their language through to ancient sedentary kingdoms. It'd be the other way around. I don't even want to get into the whole "CHG-spread IE" thesis of Reich & co, because Tuscans/Romans and Basques/Spaniards show you can have near identical genetics but speak unrelated languages.

Davidski said...

@DragonHermit

Your argument is based on a completely false view of the Indo-Europeanization of Europe west of the steppe, and also on a false view of the leading hypotheses for the origins of Anatolian speakers.

Yamnaya didn't conquer Europe through war, and Yamnaya warriors didn't ride horses.

Corded Ware and Yamnaya people were pastoralists who traveled in wagons with their families and herds, and moved into areas that were less populous. This was a very successful strategy, and over generations they came to dominate as the surrounding farming populations declined.

The spread of Indo-Europeans into Anatolia was somewhat different, in that they moved into city states, but also similar in that they eventually became rulers in some areas.

The spread of Anatolian speakers into Anatolia was similar to the spread of Phrygian speakers who came to Anatolia after them from the Balkans.

So are you also going to argue that the Phrygians didn't exist or that they didn't come from the Balkans because of your strange views about the Yamnaya expansion?

You need to do some serious reading.

Rich S. said...

@Davidski

What makes you think Yamnaya and Corded Ware did not ride horses? I'm not trying to start an argument, but I think they did ride horses. I'm curious about your reasoning. I realize this issue is controversial.

Davidski said...

My point was that Yamnaya warriors didn't ride horses, unless maybe just to get to the battle.

There's no evidence for actual mounted warfare I think until the late Bronze Age in the Srubnaya culture.

Rich S. said...

@Davidski

"My point was that Yamnaya warriors didn't ride horses, unless maybe just to get to the battle.

There's no evidence for actual mounted warfare I think until the late Bronze Age in the Srubnaya culture."

Ah, okay. I agree. Yamnaya and Corded Ware rode horses, but evidently they had no real saddles (other than maybe a blanket or a sheepskin or something) and no stirrups. The bare (or mostly bare) back of a horse is an unstable platform for doing much of anything except trying to hang on and ride. I know that from personal experience, since I tried it when I was a teenager. I have seen some people who were pretty good at it, though - like my younger sister.

Steppe pastoralists no doubt rode horses mainly to facilitate herding, especially herding horses, which is practically impossible on foot. When it came to fighting, I think they were "mounted infantry": as you said, they rode to the scene of combat, but dismounted to fight. Their horses were excellent vehicles for beating a hasty retreat when the fighting was done or when things weren't going too well.

DragonHermit said...

@Davidski

David Anthony on Razib Khan podcast said he is of the mind that Yamnaya rode horses, and they’re looking to find evidence of it like physiological impact on skeletons. Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense why people near China and in Slovakia would be cousins.

The large scale invasion of Europe in that short amount of time would have been impossible without horse riding. And for steppe people to invade Anatolia before that date and by crossing the Caucusus makes 0 sense archaeologically. At the very least we’d see
countless tombs or some kind of incontrovertible evidence.

I think EHGs on the steppe came into contact with CHG-carrying people and gained favours through cultural contact/intermarriage with these people. Anatolian linguistic split estimates and Patterson DATES put this sometime in the 5th millennium BC.

Davidski said...

@DragonHermit

There was no horse mounted invasion of Europe by Yamnaya. Anyone who claims that there was is an idiot. I doubt that Anthony has ever claimed anything of the sort. It's more likely that you're misrepresenting what he said.

Yamnaya people moved around on very advanced wagons (for their time) pulled by oxen. There's plenty of evidence for this, so there's no mystery.

Nick Patterson's DATES estimates are irrelevant because his assumptions about Yamnaya ancestry are wrong.

Yamnaya is not a mixture between EHG and CHG. It's a mixture between Ukraine Neolithic foragers and Progress-like steppe people, with some minor European farmer ancestry.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2022/09/dear-iosifyamnaya.html

Also, there is plenty of evidence for influence from the steppe and the North Caucasus in Anatolia at exactly the right time. The fact that you're ignoring this evidence means you have an agenda, and that's why you're stuck on Yamnaya being EHG/CHG and think that nothing happened in Anatolia.

Here's a quote from an expert on Anatolia that contradicts your agenda.

The Arslantepe Royal Tomb (in the Upper Euphrates Valley, eastern Anatolia), which is dated to 3100-2900 B.C., shows that far-reaching influences from the Northern Caucasus were already crossing the Greater Caucasus range and that they were being assimilated by the Anatolian power groups.

https://www.persee.fr/doc/mom_2259-4884_2012_act_58_1_3447

Rob said...

3000 bc Arslantepe & Kura-Araxes have little do with IE. Arslantepe was conquered by Hitties for the first time in the MLBA; so lets get some basics straight

However, there are sure signs of IE people moving in around Troy and the eastern Maramara with southeast European affinities between 4000 & 3000 bc.

Also, I agree with Aram that proto-Armenians came with western-shifted. It's pretty remarkable just how 'European' all IE were.


Ric Hern said...

Looking at the San people I can not imagine that Hunter Gatherers had a problem with mobility. They can run for hours after a wounded animal without stopping covering significant distances. Give a Hunter Gatherer an ox wagon for moving their Tents and other belongings etc. and food on the hoove and you will get a highly mobile society. Moving at 10 kms per day people can cover 6000 kms within TWO YEARS so I can not see why horses specifically are needed to expand at a fast pace. Yes using horses to pull Travoises could have lightened the load but moving 3000 kms in a 100 years is possible without them.

DragonHermit said...

@Davidski

Like I said, I'm not denying this specific V1636 clade is from the steppe. In fact, not even Lazaridis himself is ruling out this possibility in the paper as he specifically mentions this clade.

What we're talking about is LARGE SCALE MOVEMENTS. You yourself mentioned in Hungary for example we can find dozens (or hundreds?) of kurgans. We have 0 evidence for large scale invasions of Anatolia from the steppe. I'm sorry but SO FAR it's just not there. The evidence in Europe of large scale migrations on the other hand is overwhelming. The only "large scale" movements we have proof of so far are GENETIC, and it's the injection of this "CHG-like" component (or whatever you want to call it) INTO steppe people. And this correlates VERY STRONGLY with the linguistic estimates split of Anatolian.

Also, pardon me if you've already mentioned it, but I want to get your take on Lazaridis' logic that the farmer ancestry in Yamnaya is NOT European derived, because it lacks WHG, and the ratio of Anatolian/Levantine components is 1:1 in Yamnaya, unlike Europe which tends more Anatolian. He is arguing that Yamnaya's farmer ancestry is some eastern ANF variety.

Davidski said...

The best fitting populations for the Anatolian-related ancestry in Yamnaya are Vinca MN or Bulgaria ChL.

These populations don't have much Western hunter-gatherer-related ancestry; just a little more than western Anatolian farmers.

So there's no need to expect to see WHG ancestry in Yamnaya, especially in a rough distal analysis like the one done by Lazaridis.

In regards to Anatolia, you're making the same basic mistake as David Reich by expecting the history of Anatolia to look the same as that of Europe.

As I've already explained to you, there were significant influences from north of the Caucasus and from the Balkans in Anatolia.

Such influences were enough to have brought new languages into Anatolia, like Anatolian and Phrygian.

It's a straw man argument to claim that just because you don't see a massive invasion from the steppe in Anatolia then there's no way that new languages could move into Anatolia.

This sort of approach is extremely naive and simply not very interesting.

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