Aesch25

During the early 3rd Millennium BC much of Central and Northern Europe was being infiltrated by pioneer herders, often young men, from the east associated with the Corded Ware culture (CWC).

In some important ways, this expansion may have been very similar to the European colonization of the more remote parts of the Americas during the 16th and 17th centuries.

For instance, the European newcomers weren't always able to dominate the indigenous peoples, and, sometimes, instead of trying to impose their culture on them, they accepted theirs.

I suspect that Aesch25, an ancient sample from the recent Furtwängler et al. paper on the social and genetic structure of the prehistoric populations of the Swiss Plateau, represents a similar case.

Aesch25 wasn't buried with grave goods so he wasn't given a cultural context in the said paper. However, dated to 2864-2501 calBC, he's the earliest individual in this part of Europe with the originally Eastern European Y-haplogroup R1b-M269 and a CWC-like genome-wide genetic structure.

Indeed, the other fourteen samples from the same burial site, dated to more or less the same period as Aesch25, are overwhelmingly of local Neolithic farmer origin.

In any case, irrespective of his cultural affiliation and life story, Aesch25 represents an important data point in the search for the homeland of the so called Bell Beakers who spread across much of Europe during the Copper Age. That's because most Bell Beaker males belong to R1b-M269 and are very similar to Aesch25 in terms of overall genetic structure, apart from an excess of Neolithic farmer ancestry.

My view is that the Bell Beakers were an offshoot of the Single Grave culture (SGC), the westernmost variant of CWC. Of course, the SGC was centered on what is now northwestern Germany and surrounds, and didn't reach into the Swiss Plateau. However, in all likelihood it was founded by men closely related to Aesch25.

Below is a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based on Global25 data featuring Aesch25 and several other individuals from the Furtwängler et al. paper. To view an interactive version of the plot, copy paste the data from the text file here into the relevant field here, then press Add to PCA. Also, you should copy paste each population separately to make sure that they don't form one grouping in the PCA key.

Aesch25 can easily pass for a CWC individual from what is now Germany (DEU_CWC_LN). On the other hand, the CWC samples from the Swiss Plateau (CHE_CWC_LN) are clearly shifted "south" relative to the German CWC cluster, which suggests that they harbor more Neolithic farmer ancestry. Indeed, they all belong to Y-haplogroup I2, which is especially closely associated with Middle Neolithic European farmers.

MX265, from Singen in southwest Germany, is the only sample in the Furtwängler et al. dataset that belongs to Y-haplogroup R1a. This is a somewhat unexpected outcome, because R1a is, overall, the most common Y-haplogroup in CWC males (see here).

Another surprise is that this individual is dated to just 763-431 calBC, which is a period that overlaps with the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures in Central Europe. Considering that these cultures are often associated with early Celts, was this person perhaps the speaker of a long lost Celtic language?

See also...

Single Grave > Bell Beakers

Dutch Beakers: like no other Beakers

Hungarian Yamnaya > Bell Beakers?

Hungarian Yamnaya predictions

The Battle Axe people came from the steppe