Bell Beakers from Germany: Y-haplogroup R1b

Nice map from U152.org showing the distribution of Bell Beakers sites and the distribution of R1b U152.
U152_Bell_Beakers_with_Legend.png
 

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Here is a paper on Bell Beaker wristguards, with some nice photos.
 
Nice map from U152.org showing the distribution of Bell Beakers sites and the distribution of R1b U152.

This map is pretty good because it visualizes some of the problems with the identification of the Beaker-Bell people as Indo-Europeans that I mentioned on earlier: as can be clearly seen, both Sardinia and Sicily have comparably low amounts of R1b-U152, but a very large density of Beaker-Bell sites. With Sicily, the situation is particularly interesting because the Beaker-Bell sites are concentrated to the west of the island. Pre-Roman (and more importantly, Pre-Greek) Sicily was home to several ethnic groups, of which only one, the Sicules, were speakers of an Indo-European language (with possible affinities to the Italic languages), and they lived in the east. The inhabitants of western Sicily, the Elymians, were a non-Indo-European people.

So, very preliminary, my conclusion is that the Beaker-Bell Culture cannot have been wholly Indo-European (I think this is also very safe to assume for North Africa!), or predominantly carriers of R1b. After all, Sardinia's y-chromosomal lineages today are over 50% Neolithic (mostly I2a-M26 and G2a).
 
So, very preliminary, my conclusion is that the Beaker-Bell Culture cannot have been wholly Indo-European (I think this is also very safe to assume for North Africa!), or predominantly carriers of R1b. After all, Sardinia's y-chromosomal lineages today are over 50% Neolithic (mostly I2a-M26 and G2a).

I agree with this, what people often tend to forget is that most of the prehistoric pottery was made by women not by men. Only when pottery was made with a potter's wheel and it was sold on markets it became also the working field of men. Since the technology of making pottery was lying literally in the hands of women, one should not make the mistake to conclude it is simply the reflection of one specific Y-chromosome.
 
some remarks
- 2 Y-SNP it is very few to qualify an entire male population
- the first "true" B.B.s was not determined only by pottery but also by other artefacts (dague, arrowheads, archer's armband)
it seams they was a very mobile population so the links between women and pottery is not so important
- culturally Unetice-Aunetitz culture unerwent B.B.s influences but phenotypically they own more to the 'corded' people (surely Y-R1A as a majority) without forget the neolithic peoples -
- it would be very usefull knowing where was their ultime cradle - as they was metals searchers I think this ultime cradle was not in southern Iberia (the phenotypical aspect says the same)
- their physical types in their first colonies showed very often 'dinaric' types EVEN IN IBERIA that appeared in western Europe only at the fringes of 3000 B.C. - this type had more central-eastern Europe connexions than iberian ones
- I can not imagine this kind of settlers deplacing huge populations: small groups is more sensible to me - in central Europe only they could completely acculturate other populations (for way of life and language) - I suppose south Iberia was their first western (an the most important at that time) settlement (by sea, surely) - in some places where they was not numerous they took the local ways of sepulture (I red their own ones was flat tombs or flat graves with inhumation -
- for now I do not imagine Y-R1b was the dominant HG among true B.B.s... among the mixed ones of G.B it is different...
- what we call B.B. culture encompass several groups and among them was someones that has had contacts with the first 'beakers' but was no more direct descendants of them: in Thuringen and Sax Weimar the B.B.s was in fact contact cultures between true first B.B.s and Corded people - the Beakers of North Rhine was a mixt of true B.B.s and previous populations where mesolithic human stock and "corded" stock mixed with 'dinaric' B.B. fellows : it is these "mixed" Beakers that put their foot on the British Isles
- their language is still a mystery: but the fact that B.B.s culture traces are found in a lot of place without I-Ean language do not proves they did not speak I-Ean - it is not the first example of a not too numerous elite not being able to impose its language - I keep thinking they could have spoken a western (centum) I-Ean language... wait and see!
 
- 2 Y-SNP it is very few to qualify an entire male population

I think that this is an important point to keep in mind. I still find it very likely that Beaker culture was a catalyst for the spread of R1b, and that the initial spread of R1b was likely largely within it, against the grain of its initial spread.

- culturally Unetice-Aunetitz culture unerwent B.B.s influences but phenotypically they own more to the 'corded' people (surely Y-R1A as a majority) without forget the neolithic peoples -

I don't see a significant geographic correlation between Unetice and R1a/Corded Ware. Sure, there was probably spillover, but more than Beaker people? What's the evidence for that? I suppose your point is that "true" Beaker people were mostly not R1b, which is still a good possibility, but I'm uneasy with this "true"/not "true" dichotomy, considering how likely it is that Beaker people had multiple languages and genetic profiles.

- their language is still a mystery: but the fact that B.B.s culture traces are found in a lot of place without I-Ean language do not proves they did not speak I-Ean - it is not the first example of a not too numerous elite not being able to impose its language - I keep thinking they could have spoken a western (centum) I-Ean language... wait and see!

Some IE and some non-IE is still a possibility, with Beaker culture again acting as a catalyst for the spread of IE, rather than spreading IE directly from its origin. That would also follow the pattern of the apparent earlier spread of IE by R1a peoples, whereby there is a likely correlation between Y-line spread and language spread. And it would also be consistent with what others have already brought up about the more female-oriented spread of pottery, which doesn't need to correspond directly to the Y-line (or language) spread. And the genetic part is a testable hypothesis--we just need ancient YDNA samples from early Beaker Iberia now, preferably deep clade tested if any turn up as R1b.
 
I guess this represents already one example for maritime routes of R1b coming to western europe directly.
 
I guess this represents already one example for maritime routes of R1b coming to western europe directly.

I think they would have known two routes to Western Europe. One route along the Atlantic coast, which was already in use by the megalithic cultures before. The other along the Rhine (to Northern Italy?).

For instance near Stonehenge the Amesbury archer seem to had originated, according to isotope analyses of the teeth from the upper Rhine region(Sw-Germany or Switzerland). The grave goods (a knife) on the other hand was coming from Northern Spain. So Britain was one of the places where the two worlds of the bell beaker people met.

For those who are allowed to see the German documentary Terra X(usally Europe, Northern America is blocked)
scroll vertical bar to 29min:52sec:
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beit...ort-Eulau#/beitrag/video/1118362/Tatort-Eulau
 
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While it is true that two Beaker Folk R1b results are precious little, it is all we have for now. It is worth noting that these are the earliest R1b finds we have and that no R1b has been recovered at non-Beaker Neolithic sites. It is also worth noting that Bell Beaker is primarily a western European phenomenon, and R1b is clearly dominant in western Europe. So, it seems to me very likely that Beaker males were predominantly R1b of some kind. I could be wrong, of course, but further testing of Beaker remains will tell the tale (if such testing ever takes place).

Given the age estimates of the various R1b subclades, I think it likely these two Beaker men were R-L11 and perhaps no further up the tree than that, or perhaps very early R-P312.
 
I 'll answer Sparkey that made valuable remarks and answer the other posters: for pottery, I think that we have not to separate a female 'pottery' from the remnant of the cultural artefacts: they was a whole in the first B.B. settlements, apparently - or we have to imge a male band that sends with im all its typical artefacts but not his pottery and that go everywhere spreading a foreign pottery coming always from the same geographical source - I can't imagine that when I write "true" B.B. I mean "first B.B. people", the acculturating one, not the accultured one - everyplace B.B. "teachers" seam having mixed after sometime with other people - (let's remember the british B.B. formed on 3 phenotypes just beginning crossing one with another (it is for that it was so easy to analyse it) - one was frequent among 'Corded' people (the one that was phenotypically important yet in the Unetice Culture close geographically to Thuringen, not culturally) + one was "autochtonous" (mesolithic) in the future Germany + one was 'dinaric', type found everywhere in more or very less quantity (less in Western Europe), just AT THE CHALCOLITHIC PERIOD - I trust in anthropology for recent events, it's to say for about 5000/8000 years - so the 'dinaric' element appears as the bearer or spreader of the Bell Beaker phenomenon if it is not the source of it (see in Ireland : almost only 'dinaric' at the so called 'Food Vessel"period...) but I find that curious because all there settlements seam concerned by metals and metals come from East... (dinaric phenotype, for 'dinaric-Y-I2a1b I don't know for now) my today conclusion is that, after these acculturations and the crossings that came not immediatly but finally, it is very uneasy to guess the very true original Y-HG that beared the FIRST B.B. people- as says Sparkey and I think it since long ago, the B.B.s seam having played a great role culturally in Western Europe at the Bronze Age dawn and their incursions there put them in contact with a huge number of Y-R1b people in a lot of regions. So this 2 Y-R1b don't prove anything but are not amazing at all for me - and remember : the place they was found is surely not a FIRST FOOT PLACE: it seams a contact area with Corded (the same that produced the british B.Bs: not too far fromWestfalen: see HUBERT)- I don't yet evacuate possibilities for Y-I2a1b and Y-I2a2 - play again and have a good night
 
Sure those R1bs prove something: that R1b-M269 (xU106) was present among Beaker Folk, at least at the Kromsdorf, Germany, site. If all the other aDNA finds "prove" anything, those two prove at least that much.

The various anthropometrics you mentioned bring in the vacillations of autosomal dna, half of which was contributed by females. You cannot really say that because some Beaker Folk fit Coon's old idea of "Dinaric", therefore they couldn't have been R1b.

And if two R1b among the Beaker Folk don't prove anything, then surely a father and son pair of R1a at the Corded Ware site at Eulau don't prove anything either.
 
Sure those R1bs prove something: that R1b-M269 (xU106) was present among Beaker Folk, at least at the Kromsdorf, Germany, site. If all the other aDNA finds "prove" anything, those two prove at least that much.

The various anthropometrics you mentioned bring in the vacillations of autosomal dna, half of which was contributed by females. You cannot really say that because some Beaker Folk fit Coon's old idea of "Dinaric", therefore they couldn't have been R1b.

And if two R1b among the Beaker Folk don't prove anything, then surely a father and son pair of R1a at the Corded Ware site at Eulau don't prove anything either.

What do you think R1b(M-269) dispersal in Europe(Especially the Balkans)?
 
Where there germans in the area of central and southern germany at the time of the Bell-beaker......I am afraid there where no germans, there was most likely gallic people like the Volcae tribe that where both on the rhone river southern france and in Ahhalt , north bavarian region.

On the upper rhine area was I2b1
The Bronze Age was carried to Britain by the Bell Beaker people, beginning 2475 BC. They did not come from Spain, but from Rhineland Germany. They travelled down the Rhine River through Holland into England, bringing characteristic bell beaker vessels most similar to those of the German Rhineland.

The German Rhineland was I2b1 central. The I2b1a mutation is belived to be indigenous to Britain, but some have questioned why it sporadically turns up in Germany and the Netherlands. Ken dates it to around 2000 BC; just after the beginning of the Bell Beaker culture in England. It was carried to Britain by migration and not by trade, and spread throughout Britain and most of Ireland.

The bell beaker culture was carried through most of its range by migration and not by trade, as shown by analysis of isotopes and genetic traits. It held a big area in north central Europe.

People have the greatest genetic continuity with those who lived in the same place before them, in northern Spain and part of Czechoslovakia. Otherwise there is evidence of very sizable migration. Even if they did make only a difference of a few percentage points in the population of Britain, that is a mass migration, and large enough to introduce a mutation by founder effect as common as M284. The Wikipedia article does not state by what genetics they have established the size of the population change. A genetic mutation for variegate porphyria, which normally is carried by 3 of 100,000 people, was carried from Holland to South Africa by a single orphan late in the 17th century, it became established in successive little Dutch farming communities, and today, 300 years later, 2% of the people of South Africa, both Black and White, carry this mutation. It is still extremely rare in Holland, probably much less than the incidence of M284 in Holland.

When explaining M284 in Holland and Germany, it is important to realize that there was a major migration of Puritans from Britain to Holland in the 17th century.


The volcae also explain the movement of R1b as they also travelled to northwest Italy
 
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Sure those R1bs prove something: that R1b-M269 (xU106) was present among Beaker Folk, at least at the Kromsdorf, Germany, site. If all the other aDNA finds "prove" anything, those two prove at least that much. The various anthropometrics you mentioned bring in the vacillations of autosomal dna, half of which was contributed by females. You cannot really say that because some Beaker Folk fit Coon's old idea of "Dinaric", therefore they couldn't have been R1b. And if two R1b among the Beaker Folk don't prove anything, then surely a father and son pair of R1a at the Corded Ware site at Eulau don't prove anything either.
I agree with almost all your post but: 'dinaric' phenotype is not only the "COON'S OLD IDEA" (bu the way, I saw a beautiful dinaric crane (alive) this afternoon in Brittany where this shape of crania is very rare (I know someones, the maximum in the 'Bigouden' region of South Finistere, Brittany) - I agree with you about the "elastic" link between autosomals, and mt and Y DNA - BUT I don't see why Y-R1b could have had so often dinaric traits because dinaric traits are hugely commoner in Balkans where Y-R1b is very seldom - Bell Beakers IN OCCIDENT was VERY MOBILE MALES, AND DINARIC AT THE FIRST STAGE, APPARENTLY... I think they never took there dinaric traits among local females on their ways, becauses the countries they covered in West was very large and variated for human phenotypes - so a male element carrying some genes giving way to a 'dinaric' aspect went from Eastern or South-Eastern Europe - I can't think in Y-R1b waiting more informations for Corded and Y-R1a, I believe as you that we lack more data - but the overwhelming presence of Y-R1a in ancient I-E Steppes Peoples and in North-Eastern Europe, and on the "trail" of R1a to Norway, all regions where the 'battle axes' culture seams having had a big impact, can put us to believe that Y-R1a was very present among 'Corded' people- but surely enough too I think, there was yet some Y-R1b-U106 and some Y-I1 among the 'corded'
 
What do you think R1b(M-269) dispersal in Europe(Especially the Balkans)?

Honestly, I don't know about the original entry of R1b into Europe and how that worked. There are so many conflicting opinions and so little evidence that it's nearly impossible to say.

What we do know is that no R1b predating 2600 BC has been found in Europe and that R1b has been found among the Beaker Folk. That's a start, but it's not everything, obviously.

I do think the Beaker Folk were the vector of Indo-European languages into western Europe, if only the Italo-Celtic branch, but I don't really want to get into another interminable Indo-European argument with the R1a Fan Club, with its stupefyingly long and soporific posts, which generally triumph by being supremely tiring rather than by being persuasive.
 
I agree with almost all your post but: 'dinaric' phenotype is not only the "COON'S OLD IDEA" (bu the way, I saw a beautiful dinaric crane (alive) this afternoon in Brittany where this shape of crania is very rare (I know someones, the maximum in the 'Bigouden' region of South Finistere, Brittany) - I agree with you about the "elastic" link between autosomals, and mt and Y DNA - BUT I don't see why Y-R1b could have had so often dinaric traits because dinaric traits are hugely commoner in Balkans where Y-R1b is very seldom - Bell Beakers IN OCCIDENT was VERY MOBILE MALES, AND DINARIC AT THE FIRST STAGE, APPARENTLY... I think they never took there dinaric traits among local females on their ways, becauses the countries they covered in West was very large and variated for human phenotypes - so a male element carrying some genes giving way to a 'dinaric' aspect went from Eastern or South-Eastern Europe - I can't think in Y-R1b waiting more informations for Corded and Y-R1a, I believe as you that we lack more data - but the overwhelming presence of Y-R1a in ancient I-E Steppes Peoples and in North-Eastern Europe, and on the "trail" of R1a to Norway, all regions where the 'battle axes' culture seams having had a big impact, can put us to believe that Y-R1a was very present among 'Corded' people- but surely enough too I think, there was yet some Y-R1b-U106 and some Y-I1 among the 'corded'

R1b is not uncommon in the Balkans. It is just less frequent there than it is in western Europe. Unless I am mistaken, the R1b SNP trail leads through the Balkans on its way northwest. That is, there is more R-11* and R-L23 (xL11) in the Balkans than elsewhere in Europe. As one moves north and west, the amount of the L11+ clades P312 and U106 becomes overwhelming. That seems to me to establish a trail from or through the Balkans on its way to northern and western Europe.

Anthropometrics can flip in a couple of generations. A Dinaric great grandfather may have great grandsons who would fall into a different anthropological category. For example, I have a photo of my y-dna great-great grandfather. I don't look anything like him, other than the fact that he had blue eyes and I have blue eyes (his eye color is described in a book written by one of his daughters). He was bald by middle age (I still have my hair), and he had an aquiline nose (I do not).

I don't think you should make too much of some Beaker Folk being Dinaric at some point.
 
Anthropometrics can flip in a couple of generations. A Dinaric great grandfather may have great grandsons who would fall into a different anthropological category. For example, I have a photo of my y-dna great-great grandfather. I don't look anything like him, other than the fact that he had blue eyes and I have blue eyes (his eye color is described in a book written by one of his daughters). He was bald by middle age (I still have my hair), and he had an aquiline nose (I do not).

I don't think you should make too much of some Beaker Folk being Dinaric at some point.

Hear, hear! Although I am in fact bald, like my gr-gr-grandfather (and his other male-line descendants).

And by the way, rms2, some years ago (when there still was a DNA-Forums, and you were still active on it) you started a thread about photos of our Y-DNA ancestors. It's now gone to the cyber graveyard, but I thought in principle that was a good idea. Your WorldFamilies R1b forum isn't very photo friendly; I don't know about the FTDNA-sponsored forum, or MolGen, or Eupedia... just thought I'd run that flag up the pole, again, and see if anybody salutes.
 
Hear, hear! Although I am in fact bald, like my gr-gr-grandfather (and his other male-line descendants).

And by the way, rms2, some years ago (when there still was a DNA-Forums, and you were still active on it) you started a thread about photos of our Y-DNA ancestors. It's now gone to the cyber graveyard, but I thought in principle that was a good idea. Your WorldFamilies R1b forum isn't very photo friendly; I don't know about the FTDNA-sponsored forum, or MolGen, or Eupedia... just thought I'd run that flag up the pole, again, and see if anybody salutes.

I think we could do it again via ImageShack or some other web hosting site.
 
Acatually R1b in Balkans peaks in Kosovar Albanians and in some Croatian parts.
This are the heaviest Dinarid areas in the world.
 

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