Northern-Centrism: Just Stop It!!

Except there has not been one example in ALL of recorded history, from ALL regions in the world, of one "ruling class" or "elite" or "ruling family" or "oligarchy" of staying in power beyond say ~500 years at the most extreme (let's put aside San Marino and Monaco). I find this theory not plausible.

You couldn't be more wrong. Just look at the French royal family. It's was always the same family (and the same Y-DNA lineage) from Hugues Capet until Louis XVIII, nearly 1000 years later. The family was divided in various branches over time (Valois, Valois-Orléans, Orléans-Angoulême, Bourbon), but they all descended from the same patrilineal ancestor.

It is almost impossible to go back more than 1000 years using a paper trail as there are few written sources left from the Dark Ages, and also because Germanic people overthrew the Roman Empire.

But genetic genealogy is a powerful enough tool to tell us that all these R1b-L11 derived lineages in European royal families descend from a common ancestor who lived about 5000 years ago. So it doesn't matter if we can't connect them through a paper family tree, DNA doesn't lie (and for that matter a paper trail can lie or be mistaken or suffer from non-paternity events).
 
But genetic genealogy is a powerful enough tool to tell us that all these R1b-L11 derived lineages in European royal families descend from a common ancestor who lived about 5000 years ago. So it doesn't matter if we can't connect them through a paper family tree, DNA doesn't lie (and for that matter a paper trail can lie or be mistaken or suffer from non-paternity events).

By the time those families had power R1b was already 50%+ in West Europe(xGermanic). Even in Germans, especially the ones by France, R1b is very popular. There's no way to prove or disprove these royal families had R1b lines because R1b had been the line of royal families for over 4,000 years.

100% of Eastern Bell beaker so far are R1b, and all tested for P312 are positive. So, R1b was more than a royal lineage, there were R1b nations who migrated into Western Europe. It was probably a mixture of royal R1b lineages and R1b nations who made it so popular.
 
You couldn't be more wrong. Just look at the French royal family. It's was always the same family (and the same Y-DNA lineage) from Hugues Capet until Louis XVIII, nearly 1000 years later.

But genetic genealogy is a powerful enough tool to tell us that all these R1b-L11 derived lineages in European royal families descend from a common ancestor who lived about 5000 years ago.

You must forgive me. Sometimes I am a little slow, since I am new all of this DNA business. I am just a humble scholar (in history) at a university.

If R1b is widespread (indeed over 80% in parts of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Spain), then what exactly again makes it rare and special?

Or maybe we should talk in mathematical terms: when a population of horses is, say, 75% bay colored, and a bay horse wins 75% of the races, what is the impact value of being bay?

Help me understand. Most of Europe is R1b. Most of the rulers (particularly those in the window of time you have chosen, who are part of the same family) are R1b. I don't understand why this is shocking.
 
Indeed, come to think of it, I just looked this up and found that Napoleon was apparently E1b, the early royal houses of Sweden were I1, some of Scotland's early clan chieftains were R1a, and that several royals in France and England were G2.

I'm very impressed that these relatively rare lineages (like G2) produced any royals at all!

Back to the horse race analogy: if grey horses are only 10% of the population, but win 20% of the races, isn't that more impressive than the most common type winning a lot of races?

Maybe I don't understand this.
 
You must forgive me. Sometimes I am a little slow, since I am new all of this DNA business. I am just a humble scholar (in history) at a university.

If R1b is widespread (indeed over 80% in parts of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Spain), then what exactly again makes it rare and special?

Or maybe we should talk in mathematical terms: when a population of horses is, say, 75% bay colored, and a bay horse wins 75% of the races, what is the impact value of being bay?

Help me understand. Most of Europe is R1b. Most of the rulers (particularly those in the window of time you have chosen, who are part of the same family) are R1b. I don't understand why this is shocking.
it's quite alright :) , just because I am R1b doesn't mean I am special per say; since ydna R is the most common in Europe. However if you were a ruler living in pre-Christian Europe, you as King/cheif can have more woman (usually of Mesolithic European Neolithic Farmer descent) than your People and in consequence you simply have more direct descendants. Maciamo talks about his theory of Polygamy in his R1b article.

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1b_Y-DNA.shtml#R1b-conquest

A king could have more wives but the king's men were known to have set limits on how many woman the king could take; Childerec Merovingian is a good example. Childerec Merovingians had a repudiation forgoing after all of his female subjects and got temporarily got kicked out of his kingdom temporarily. By allowing the people to set limits on the number of his spouses, the king's men were allowed to pass on their Ydna; be it Ydna I, G, T, J, etc.

Source: Gregory of Tours, in Libri Historiarum(Book ii.12),

Plus as later generations of kings go by, you have an issue with the Queen being swept away by somebody else to put it in a casual term. Before Paternaty tests were invented, there was no way you could tell if your son is actually your "biological son" so the Royal Ydna gets altered as a consequence; The mid evil Legend of King Arthur is the most famous example fiction or not with the Queen Guinevere x Lancalot and Morgan La Fay fiasco.
 
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Hmm. You lost me again. Are you proposing that entire nations are descended from a small number of kings? How many were allowed to have kids?

No one ever rose up because they were denied this basic human right? Like the way Caligula was killed?

How many descendants do you propose these kings had?

Wouldn't there be horrific inbreeding after a few generations?
 
Hmm. You lost me again. Are you proposing that entire nations are descended from a small number of kings? How many were allowed to have kids?

No one ever rose up because they were denied this basic human right? Like the way Caligula was killed?

How many descendants do you propose these kings had?

Wouldn't there be horrific inbreeding after a few generations?


No, not necessary kings other factors come into play but Cheifs is one of them. Of course no one could say for sure if there was any uprisings but since Chimpanzees tend to go to war on occasions; just like us, there were no doubt uprisings. However any uprising that took place in prehistory have gone to either the mists of legends/mythology or not recorded at all.

like it says In the sources I showed you, R1b could have also spread by your ability to conceive boys, Agresive warfare and how many men vs woman are in your area as well as Chiefs/kings.

The information could get changed or tweaked as new archeological and genetic discoveries arrive.
 
You must forgive me. Sometimes I am a little slow, since I am new all of this DNA business. I am just a humble scholar (in history) at a university.

If R1b is widespread (indeed over 80% in parts of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Spain), then what exactly again makes it rare and special?

Or maybe we should talk in mathematical terms: when a population of horses is, say, 75% bay colored, and a bay horse wins 75% of the races, what is the impact value of being bay?

Help me understand. Most of Europe is R1b. Most of the rulers (particularly those in the window of time you have chosen, who are part of the same family) are R1b. I don't understand why this is shocking.

Who said that R1b was rare or special ? Why would you think it is shocking that European royal families are all R1b ? It's just the way it is.

From a historical perspective, however, it is interesting that the very people who "invented" elite dominance, class distinction and patriarchalism happen to be the Indo-Europeans (R1a + R1b), and that after imposing this new societal order on Europe and South Asia during the Bronze Age their paternal lineages managed to remain in power for over 4000 years. It is true that in Western Europe most of the male population now carries an Indo-European Y-chromosome, so it is to be expected that the aristocracy should also be predominantly R1b. But what is more surprising is that R1a managed to remain the predominant elite lineage in India (Brahmin and Kshatriya castes) despite being in the minority for 4000 years (Brahmins make up 5% of the Hindu population). Other examples of minority lineages in power are the Ottoman Sultans (R1a in a country where R1a only makes up 7.5% of the population), the Czars of Russia (R1b, which is only at 6% in Russia), and even the Habsburgs of Austria (R1b, which is at 32% in Austria itself, but only around 17% if we consider the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire).
 
By the time those families had power R1b was already 50%+ in West Europe(xGermanic). Even in Germans, especially the ones by France, R1b is very popular. There's no way to prove or disprove these royal families had R1b lines because R1b had been the line of royal families for over 4,000 years.

Actually many of the royal families who were confirmed R1b come from region with well under 50% of R1b:

- Russia : R1b = 6%
- Norway : R1b = 32%
- Denmark : R1b = 33%
- North Germany (House of Oldenburg) : R1b = 36%
- East Germany (House of Wettin) : R1b = 36%
- Austria : R1b = 32% (Austro-Hungary = 17%)
- South Italy (House of Bourbon, Kingdom of Two Sicilies) : R1b = 27%

These are modern percentages. If R1b has been in power in those region for many centuries in the past 1000 years, chances are that the percentage of R1b is now higher than it was before all those emperors, kings, archdukes, princes and their paternal cousins starting sowing their seeds around.

100% of Eastern Bell beaker so far are R1b, and all tested for P312 are positive. So, R1b was more than a royal lineage, there were R1b nations who migrated into Western Europe. It was probably a mixture of royal R1b lineages and R1b nations who made it so popular.

You mean that the elite burials of the Eastern Bell Beakers were 100% R1b. What does that tell us about the rest of the Bell Beaker population in that area ? For all we know only a small elite (1% of the population) was R1b and the rest were Mesolithic and Neolithic lineages. You can't extrapolate frequencies for a whole region (e.g. Germany) based on only 6 samples, which happen to be exclusively elite samples. It would be like opening the tombs of the kings of France at the Basilica of Saint Denis or that of the Kings of England at Windsor and guess that because the samples are 100% R1b then the people of France and England since the Middle Ages must have been overwhelmingly R1b. You see the problem with that kind of assumptions, don't you ?
 
You mean that the elite burials of the Eastern Bell Beakers were 100% R1b. What does that tell us about the rest of the Bell Beaker population in that area ? For all we know only a small elite (1% of the population) was R1b and the rest were Mesolithic and Neolithic lineages. You can't extrapolate frequencies for a whole region (e.g. Germany) based on only 6 samples, which happen to be exclusively elite samples. It would be like opening the tombs of the kings of France at the Basilica of Saint Denis or that of the Kings of England at Windsor and guess that because the samples are 100% R1b then the people of France and England since the Middle Ages must have been overwhelmingly R1b. You see the problem with that kind of assumptions, don't you ?

The studies that sampled them give descriptions of the burials, not all were elite burials. Now, 3/3 of Irish LNBA are R1b-L21 and 10/10 East Bell Beaker are R1b. R1b was already the lineage of entire nations. The elite theory makes sense for Spain, France, and Italy where they can't be fit as 70%+ East Bell Beaker but for the British Isles it looks like a R1b-L21 nation replaced the previous people.

We see the same trend in Scandinavia. All LNBA Scandinavian Y DNA falls under Germanic-specific subclades(R1a-Z284, R1b-U106, and I1 have all been found). These weren't royal people, they were ordinary people. Chances are the elite are going to carry R1b and not the Y DNA of foreigners, which will cause it rise in frequency. Howecer R1b would have already been the majority haplogroup.
 
The studies that sampled them give descriptions of the burials, not all were elite burials. Now, 3/3 of Irish LNBA are R1b-L21 and 10/10 East Bell Beaker are R1b. R1b was already the lineage of entire nations. The elite theory makes sense for Spain, France, and Italy where they can't be fit as 70%+ East Bell Beaker but for the British Isles it looks like a R1b-L21 nation replaced the previous people.

We see the same trend in Scandinavia. All LNBA Scandinavian Y DNA falls under Germanic-specific subclades(R1a-Z284, R1b-U106, and I1 have all been found). These weren't royal people, they were ordinary people. Chances are the elite are going to carry R1b and not the Y DNA of foreigners, which will cause it rise in frequency. Howecer R1b would have already been the majority haplogroup.

In Scandinavia, the samples that you say were ordinary people belong to the haplogroups that are the three that are dominant today in that region (R1a-Z284, R1b-U106, and I1). That makes sense. But keep in mind that the The Nordic Bronze Age samples date from 1000 years after the German Bell Beaker samples. That's a long time for Neolithic lineages to be replaced. In contrast, if you look at Germany circa 2500 BCE, R1b could not have replaced all the Neolithic Y-DNA lineages within a few generations. Even if it did, how would you explain that R1b is only around 45% in Germany today, and that potentially Mesolithic + Neolithic lineages make up between 25 and 38% ? (depending on whether you include E1b1b, J1 and J2 as Neolithic or Iron Age, Roman, Jewish, etc.) Are you saying that all the I1, I2, E1b, G2a, J, T were reintroduced by later migrations, like the Germanic expansion from Scandinavia, the Roman conquest of southern Germany, and so on ?
 
Maciamo, I respect what you have created here a lot. Your maps are incredible sources for so many of us; I appreciate this forum; and you clearly have a passion and a lot of knowledge.

But you are dealing with someone who knows a thing or two about history.

1. You are significantly over-representing the case about modern monarchs. The Czar of Russia, the King of England, and the Kaiser of Germany were first cousins in 1918. So of course they will be the same Hg. One German family had taken over the thrones of three large countries, and indeed, many more.

To include them as evidence of a trend is misleading.

We have no data on most of the Czars of the past, or the Kaisers of the past. The Kaisers' immediate predecessor, the Holy Roman Emperor, wasn't even hereditary, but elected!

The French monarch controversy is still debated: G2 or R1b? And there is not enough data to make these claims, particularly about native Greek monarchs, Roman emperors, Albanian kings, etc. That's why they are a little "northcentric," as someone else put it.

2. On your R1b theory, in general. You cite ancient Indo-European sources, like the Norse sagas, the Gaelic tales, and the Sanskrit chronicles for exploits in warfare, and use this to support your theories.

However, you ignore the fact that EVERY SINGLE INDO EUROPEAN SOCIETY WAS MONOGAMOUS and founded upon the marriage bond. I know a thing or two about classical history -- and all of the talk on this board, on this thread and others, which talks about Indo Europeans choosing multiple wives -- is so contra to history that I am routinely shocked that any serious person would post it.

We have a huge corpus of Sanskrit, Greek, Hittite, Latin, Oscan, Gothic, Slavonic, Tocharian, Gaelic, and Armenian texts, many of which date from not too far after the Indo European migrations, and several later ones which in some fashion relay the facts about these societies.

Within all of those texts, many of which I have read in their original form, there is ZERO evidence for the "chieftain mating" or "polygamy" or "imbalanced male migration" or theories that people post.

If anything, it is just the opposite: in the oldest Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin texts, we hear tales of the higher classes having strict arranged marriages and far fewer children than the others.


If the texts themselves don't convince you, we also have studies that reconstructed early Indo-European society and even Proto-IE society which also find no evidence of these theories.

For example:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/04/proto-indo-european-monogamy.html

I've posted on other threads the demographic cases for why certain HGs are found in greater numbers in certain places. I would love it and appreciate it if you would give them some honest thought.
 
1. You are significantly over-representing the case about modern monarchs. The Czar of Russia, the King of England, and the Kaiser of Germany were first cousins in 1918. So of course they will be the same Hg. One German family had taken over the thrones of three large countries, and indeed, many more.

To include them as evidence of a trend is misleading.

I am not sure why I even bother replying to such stupidity. Yes, these monarchs were cousins, but not on their paternal lines ! These are three distinct Y-DNA lineages. So what's your point ?

We have no data on most of the Czars of the past, or the Kaisers of the past. The Kaisers' immediate predecessor, the Holy Roman Emperor, wasn't even hereditary, but elected!

I never mention the Kaiser's Y-DNA because the Hohenzollern's haplogroup hasn't been tested yet. I mentioned the Habsburgs (R1b-L2), who were hereditary emperors of Austria (then Austro-Hungary). You said above that you were a historian. I can't believe you graduated without knowing that. Additionally, the Habsburgs were also elected Holy Roman Emperors from 1440 until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, apart from a brief interlude in 1742-45. So even if the title was officially an elected one, it effectively became hereditary one from 1440.


The French monarch controversy is still debated: G2 or R1b?

It's not controversial anymore. They were R1b-U106. The two G2a samples were from unreliable sources: blood from a stained handkerchief that could have belonged to anyone, and a presumed severed head of Henry IV that had been lost for centuries.

However, you ignore the fact that EVERY SINGLE INDO EUROPEAN SOCIETY WAS MONOGAMOUS and founded upon the marriage bond. I know a thing or two about classical history -- and all of the talk on this board, on this thread and others, which talks about Indo Europeans choosing multiple wives -- is so contra to history that I am routinely shocked that any serious person would post it.

We have a huge corpus of Sanskrit, Greek, Hittite, Latin, Oscan, Gothic, Slavonic, Tocharian, Gaelic, and Armenian texts, many of which date from not too far after the Indo European migrations, and several later ones which in some fashion relay the facts about these societies.

Within all of those texts, many of which I have read in their original form, there is ZERO evidence for the "chieftain mating" or "polygamy" or "imbalanced male migration" or theories that people post.

If anything, it is just the opposite: in the oldest Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin texts, we hear tales of the higher classes having strict arranged marriages and far fewer children than the others.

By monogamous do you mean a man that has only one sexual partner (like modern Christians) or that has only one official wife but is allowed concubines or mistresses ? When I say polygamous, I don't care about whether the wives are official or not. I include concubines and mistresses, which is why I often write 'wives/concubines'. What matters in terms of population genetics is whether men could have spread their Y-DNA lineages quickly by having children with many women. History shows that this was always the case. Even Christian kings had more often than not many illegitimate children from mistresses (think Henry I, Henry VIII and Charles II in England, or Henry IV, Louis XIV and Louis XV in France). And your claim that in all historically recorded Indo-European societies men only had one wife is equally wrong anyway. Hinduism clearly allowed polygamy and the practice was only abolished by the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955. The ancient Celts also practised polygamy, and even though Germanic people were more often monogamous, polygamy was sometimes practised. Mind you, even Charlemagne, the great defender of Christianity, had ten known wives or concubines and children with most of them.
 
I expect Maciamo and others to defend this position also in relation to N1c?
 
I expect Maciamo and others to defend this position also in relation to N1c?

Would you care to elaborate on what you mean by that ?
 
In Scandinavia, the samples that you say were ordinary people belong to the haplogroups that are the three that are dominant today in that region (R1a-Z284, R1b-U106, and I1). That makes sense. But keep in mind that the The Nordic Bronze Age samples date from 1000 years after the German Bell Beaker samples. That's a long time for Neolithic lineages to be replaced.

One is from Corded Ware period(R1a-Z284) and two are from 2000 BC(I1, R1b-U106*). By LNBA I meant Late Neolithic and Bronze age. The Bronze age ones were all R1b and I1.
 
That N1c was spread by elite dominance as evidenced also in relatively large numbers in nobility.

Yes, most probably, although the Uralic population was always very small historically (Finland had only a few thousands inhabitants 1000 years ago), so it wouldn't have been a fairly quick replacement.
 
One is from Corded Ware period(R1a-Z284) and two are from 2000 BC(I1, R1b-U106*). By LNBA I meant Late Neolithic and Bronze age. The Bronze age ones were all R1b and I1.

And yet modern Scandinavians have both Corded Ware R1a and Nordic Bronze Age R1b + I1. That's what I was trying to explain to you. The tombs tested typically represent only one small part of society, either the elite or a group of newcomers that haven't mixed with the earlier inhabitants yet. In the case of the German Bell Beaker, both are true, and that's why you get 100% R1b (when in fact society was much more diverse than that).
 
Yes, most probably, although the Uralic population was always very small historically (Finland had only a few thousands inhabitants 1000 years ago), so it wouldn't have been a fairly quick replacement.

The population at the end of Viking Age was even in the lowest estimates at 50-80.000 and they are going to publish much higher estimates soon as new settlements are found in increasing numbers.

Estonia and Livonia was more populous before the "Northern Crusades" than Finland.

That leaves the rich Karelia also without much studies done after it went to Russia.

One problem is that most people dont really know anything about Baltic Finns or Finnic in general in these forums.
 

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