Hello. I’ve been a long time lurker on this board. For the past year I’ve been looking in to the origin and spread of V13. This will be a rather long wall of text describing where I think V13/CTS5858 originated, and how it moved to where it is now. The general view is a southern Balkan origin and subsequent spread north along the Danube, I will suggest it happened the other way around.
I’m curious what the view of others is.
PS: I had a nice bunch of links to sources and info, but the boards won't let me post them, hopefully it's still clear without them.
About V13/CTS5856
Since people on this board are probably not familiar with sub-V13 SNP’s I’ll give a small introduction. According to estimates by the manager of the V13 NGS project the TMRCA of V13 is about 5750 years ago. Roughly 97% of V13 that has been tested downstream is CTS5856+, this SNP has a TMRCA of 4850 years ago. More than 90% of those tested downstream of CTS5856 fall in to four branches: Z5018, Z5017, S7461 and S3003. Of these S3003 is dominated by L540, which has a more recent expansion. Z5017 is dominated by CTS9320 which is also younger than most of the sub Z5018 branches. A very simplified phylogeny would look like this, all TMRCA’s are taken from the V13 NGS project, except for Z5017/18 -> apparently you won't get to see this untill I have 10 posts, I hope the text alone is clear enough.
The origin
The general theory is that V13/CTS5856 originated in the southern Balkan since it reaches its highest levels there. Based on recent analysis of V13*, CTS5856*, and its direct descendants, and some info about V13 in the Alps I think otherwise. It seems likely to me that CTS5856 and some of its oldest branches mutated in the border region of Germany, France and Switzerland, near Lake Constance and the sources of the Danube. In this region we find two V13* of the four we know. The Swiss origin of one of them is based on family lore and is not documented, but the family of which they would have descended is attested in Switzerland, so I'll assume it to be correct for now. Maybe these two V13* are related (they have not been NGS-tested), but their STR-profiles are very far apart, which suggests that even if they share a post V13 ancestor, their presence here must go back a long time. Apart from them we find a CTS5856*, a S7461* (the only known, all the rest of S7461 is in a common subbranch) and a Z5018* . Another CTS5856* doesn’t have an origin, but is GD9 from a SE-German. This seems too much to be a coincidence. I have to remark here that some of the CTS5856* have been tested through Big Y which has no coverage for Z5018, and doesn’t always cover Z5017. Since they were not found positive for any sub Z5017 or Z5018 SNP they might be Z5017* or Z5018* rather than CTS5856*, so they would still be very basal.
Assuming this points us to the origin of CTS5856 we might assume that a mixed, late-neolithic population in the northern Alps contained various branches of V13, from which one (CTS5856) would boom in the Bronze age. Given the presence of Z5018* and S7461* in this region it seems a group of related people moved away from this region of origin. Either they still considered themselves a “clan” of some sorts, and moved together for that reason, or they were part of a bigger movement that also included other Neolithic haplogroups like G-L497 (maybe a village or some villages that formed a tribal group moved, it would not be unlogic for different branches of CTS5856 to be living close to each other). They might have moved as a trickle or in one group, maybe as merchants/artisans, but given the fact that CTS5856 groups are still associated in the Southern Balkans it seems more likely to me that they moved as one group in a relatively short time span, retaining a common identity (even if this was part of a larger group).
This same region was a border region of the Roman empire, so it’s possible these V13*/CTS5856* arrived here with Roman soldiers from the Balkan. Another option is that they migrated from the Balkan following the Danube upstream. More testing in the Balkans would surely clarify this, but for now I’m inclined to see this as the region of origin rather than the other way around.
The reason
If CTS5856 really originated near the Alps, why did this group move? Maybe they were forced because of natural causes. About 3500BC the climate in Europe started worsening, by 3200BC the decline accelerated. The worst conditions are thought to have occurred from 3200BC to 2900BC. This so called “Piora oscillation” was first noticed in the Piora valley in the Alps, and there is evidence that glaciers in the Alps advanced, the tree line descended, and weather was substantially colder and wetter than before. A lot of the late Neolithic population in the Alps lived in “lake dwellings” at lake shores, or even on the lakes, and the level of these lakes rose and was subject to violent floods. Briefly, if you were a farmer in the Alps after 3200BC you had very good reasons to start looking for a better place to live.
If you look at the TMRCA of CTS5856 on the overview above (4850 years ago), you see this date has to be pushed back only a few percent to have CTS5856 and a few descendants present during the Piora-oscillation.
The route
Still assuming the origin of CTS5856 is in the northwestern Alps, and this group started moving under impulse of bad climatic conditions, where did they go? The easiest path out of this region is to follow the course of the Danube river downstream, this will automatically lead to lower lying lands without the need to pass an obstacle like the Alps. In the period 3500-3000BC a certain type of luxury pottery was used along the upper Danube from Lake Constance to Lake Balaton (Boleraz ware), which shows that the Danube was used as a corridor for goods/ideas. There are also early models of carts found in this region, so the means to move with a group were also available. The evidence indicates the group followed the Danube downstream to current Hungary/Czechia, and stayed there for a longer time, at least enough generations for a number of SNP-mutations to happen. Listing the Sub-CTS5856 SNP’s found in this region would be too much detail, but it seems a number of sub Z5018 SNP’s mutated while the group was in this region. Less clear but possible is that S3003 and Z5017 mutated here. From a point of view of timing/probability that might seem likely also, as it would be strange for one branch to be several SNP’s deep while another had not yet mutated.
From a point of view of timing we are now probably somewhere around 2500BC. It seems this might be the same period as when R1b-L151 suddenly boomed and spread all over Northwestern Europe, and in this spread some branches of CTS5856 were also swept along. These branches are generally characterized by a mix of Iberian and British samples, and an absence in SE-Europe. This mix of Iberian and British samples reflects similar mixes in the R1b-L151 descendant groups.
It would seem R1b in its early stages should have been somewhere near CTS5856 when it was in the Austrian/Hungarian/Czechian region around the Danube, so part of CTS5856 could join R1b groups. Given that the majority of CTS5856 later moved south-east, where there is very little L151, it would seem logic that the overlap/contacts would be in the north, in Czechia or Southeast Germany. It just so happens that South-East Germany is exactly the place where the oldest Ancient dna R1b was found (Kromsdorf, ~2600-2500BC).
I have no idea why R1b boomed like it did. It would be interesting to know as it might be the same reason why CTS5856 boomed like it did. In fact, if you look at the spread of R1b over Northwest Europe you might think of CTS5856 as the “missing” southeastern branch.
Mixing in
Throughout the Balkan CTS5856 seems to appear in a proportion of about 2/1 to M269(xL51), which I’ll call M269* for short. CTS5856 reaches its highest levels in Albania, and M269* does in Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. This M269* is quite far from the main line of M269 (L151) and so does not seem connected directly to the R1b that took part of CTS5856 in its migrations as suggested before. It appears that M269* originated near the Caucasus. Yamnaya ancient dna samples that were tested belonged to this group.
Where did the CTS5856 and M269* meet and mix? Was it in the southern Balkans? There were Yamnaya in Bulgaria, so if CTS5856 descended the Danube they could have mixed with them. But the mixing might also have happened earlier. David Anthony writes that the largest settlement of Yamnaya in the west was in eastern Hungary. This settlement starts at about 3000BC, or roughly equivalent with when CTS5856 would have arrived here. Assuming mixing took place here it seems the CTS5856 group was assimilated in the M269* group (which to be clear would also have contained/assimilated other haplogroups, branches of J2b come to mind). This newly formed group would have had a mostly pastoral lifestyle, and probably used an Indo-European language closer to what was still spoken in the “homeland” (as these Yamnaya had only recently moved from there), and not so close to the languages dispersed by R1b (who would have boomed from a region where corded ware had reached, most likely carrying a branch of Indo-European ancestral to Baltic/Germanic/Celtic/Italic that had split off from the proto Indo European language earlier). This language would have been proto-Greek, thought to have been closer to Armenian than to other Indo-European languages. Armenian can have crossed the Caucasus to the south quite late, replacing/mixing with Urartu.
From Central-Europe to the Southern Balkans
Why then did this group move again and arrive in the southern Balkans? I always prefer explanations rooted in natural causes. CTS5856 might have moved from the Alps because of the Piora oscillation. The second movement might have been due to the 4.2kyr event. As the name suggests this event happened about 2200BC. It lasted about a century, and one of the effects was an intense aridification in the eastern Mediterranean. This coincides with the collapse of most of the Early-Helladic civilization in Greece, causing a depopulation of the Greek countryside. Although some centres of Early-Helladic culture continued untouched, others met a violent end. The important Early-Helladic settlement of Lerna was destroyed, and above its central “house of tiles” a Tumulus was erected. Archeologists generally reject any hypothesis of immigration (they assume the Greek language arrived with farmers at the start of the Neolithicum). However, with the current knowledge about CTS5856 and M269* it seems that there certainly was an immigration (unless these group originated in Greece itself).
A possible scenario is that the aridification had consequences reaching up to the Hungarian plains, maybe good lands for agriculture and/or pastoralism became scarcer because of the draught, or maybe trade suffered from the collapse of societies to the south. It’s imaginable that a group broke away/was forced out and moved south, with a majority of CTS5856 descendants. They went south east along the Danube, and settled in the depopulated countryside of the southern Balkans. In Greece they quickly merged with the remnants of the Early Helladic society to form the basis of the Mycenaean civilization. The Greeks themselves believed they had come from somewhere else, and they believed they had come in two waves. A second wave would have been the Dorians, coming to Greece from the North-west somewhere between the Bronze age collapse (1200BC) and 900BC. Again the archeological specialists doubt there was anything like Dorians and that there was any immigration at all in this period.
The coming of the Dorians and CTS9320
If the V13/M269* group had really spread proto Greek to the Southern Balkan, then presumably most of their languages/dialects were still close together by 1200BC (that even seems to have been the case for the native Macedonian language in the hayday of the Macedonians), moreover throughout the Aegean Bronze age there were close ties between Greece proper and Albania. Assuming the 'Dorians' were quasi-Greek speaking mostly CTS5856/M269*’s from Albania there is an interesting possibility: CTS9320 originated much later than the earlier branches of CTS5856. Given its large presence in Albania we might suspect it originated there in a population boom during the Aegean Bronze age, and was an important component of the Dorian tribes. That would explain the spread of this latecomer to Greece, from where it could have spread further to Bulgaria by colonization (or maybe not recorded movements from the west Balkans eastward).
The Greek colonization and Roman occupation
The rest of the spread of V13/CTS5856 follows logically from the well recorded Greek colonization. V13/CTS5856 reaches levels comparable to Greece in Southern Italy and Sicily. Later on it would have been spread even wider by Roman occupation, either through Italian legionnaires descended from Greek colonists, or by Thracian troops stationed at the limes and in England. The current CTS5856 in most of Northwestern Europe would then have two principal sources: a first dispersion along with R1b between 3000 and 2000BC, and a second dispersal due to Roman occupation.
Any thoughts?
I’m curious what the view of others is.
PS: I had a nice bunch of links to sources and info, but the boards won't let me post them, hopefully it's still clear without them.
About V13/CTS5856
Since people on this board are probably not familiar with sub-V13 SNP’s I’ll give a small introduction. According to estimates by the manager of the V13 NGS project the TMRCA of V13 is about 5750 years ago. Roughly 97% of V13 that has been tested downstream is CTS5856+, this SNP has a TMRCA of 4850 years ago. More than 90% of those tested downstream of CTS5856 fall in to four branches: Z5018, Z5017, S7461 and S3003. Of these S3003 is dominated by L540, which has a more recent expansion. Z5017 is dominated by CTS9320 which is also younger than most of the sub Z5018 branches. A very simplified phylogeny would look like this, all TMRCA’s are taken from the V13 NGS project, except for Z5017/18 -> apparently you won't get to see this untill I have 10 posts, I hope the text alone is clear enough.
The origin
The general theory is that V13/CTS5856 originated in the southern Balkan since it reaches its highest levels there. Based on recent analysis of V13*, CTS5856*, and its direct descendants, and some info about V13 in the Alps I think otherwise. It seems likely to me that CTS5856 and some of its oldest branches mutated in the border region of Germany, France and Switzerland, near Lake Constance and the sources of the Danube. In this region we find two V13* of the four we know. The Swiss origin of one of them is based on family lore and is not documented, but the family of which they would have descended is attested in Switzerland, so I'll assume it to be correct for now. Maybe these two V13* are related (they have not been NGS-tested), but their STR-profiles are very far apart, which suggests that even if they share a post V13 ancestor, their presence here must go back a long time. Apart from them we find a CTS5856*, a S7461* (the only known, all the rest of S7461 is in a common subbranch) and a Z5018* . Another CTS5856* doesn’t have an origin, but is GD9 from a SE-German. This seems too much to be a coincidence. I have to remark here that some of the CTS5856* have been tested through Big Y which has no coverage for Z5018, and doesn’t always cover Z5017. Since they were not found positive for any sub Z5017 or Z5018 SNP they might be Z5017* or Z5018* rather than CTS5856*, so they would still be very basal.
Assuming this points us to the origin of CTS5856 we might assume that a mixed, late-neolithic population in the northern Alps contained various branches of V13, from which one (CTS5856) would boom in the Bronze age. Given the presence of Z5018* and S7461* in this region it seems a group of related people moved away from this region of origin. Either they still considered themselves a “clan” of some sorts, and moved together for that reason, or they were part of a bigger movement that also included other Neolithic haplogroups like G-L497 (maybe a village or some villages that formed a tribal group moved, it would not be unlogic for different branches of CTS5856 to be living close to each other). They might have moved as a trickle or in one group, maybe as merchants/artisans, but given the fact that CTS5856 groups are still associated in the Southern Balkans it seems more likely to me that they moved as one group in a relatively short time span, retaining a common identity (even if this was part of a larger group).
This same region was a border region of the Roman empire, so it’s possible these V13*/CTS5856* arrived here with Roman soldiers from the Balkan. Another option is that they migrated from the Balkan following the Danube upstream. More testing in the Balkans would surely clarify this, but for now I’m inclined to see this as the region of origin rather than the other way around.
The reason
If CTS5856 really originated near the Alps, why did this group move? Maybe they were forced because of natural causes. About 3500BC the climate in Europe started worsening, by 3200BC the decline accelerated. The worst conditions are thought to have occurred from 3200BC to 2900BC. This so called “Piora oscillation” was first noticed in the Piora valley in the Alps, and there is evidence that glaciers in the Alps advanced, the tree line descended, and weather was substantially colder and wetter than before. A lot of the late Neolithic population in the Alps lived in “lake dwellings” at lake shores, or even on the lakes, and the level of these lakes rose and was subject to violent floods. Briefly, if you were a farmer in the Alps after 3200BC you had very good reasons to start looking for a better place to live.
If you look at the TMRCA of CTS5856 on the overview above (4850 years ago), you see this date has to be pushed back only a few percent to have CTS5856 and a few descendants present during the Piora-oscillation.
The route
Still assuming the origin of CTS5856 is in the northwestern Alps, and this group started moving under impulse of bad climatic conditions, where did they go? The easiest path out of this region is to follow the course of the Danube river downstream, this will automatically lead to lower lying lands without the need to pass an obstacle like the Alps. In the period 3500-3000BC a certain type of luxury pottery was used along the upper Danube from Lake Constance to Lake Balaton (Boleraz ware), which shows that the Danube was used as a corridor for goods/ideas. There are also early models of carts found in this region, so the means to move with a group were also available. The evidence indicates the group followed the Danube downstream to current Hungary/Czechia, and stayed there for a longer time, at least enough generations for a number of SNP-mutations to happen. Listing the Sub-CTS5856 SNP’s found in this region would be too much detail, but it seems a number of sub Z5018 SNP’s mutated while the group was in this region. Less clear but possible is that S3003 and Z5017 mutated here. From a point of view of timing/probability that might seem likely also, as it would be strange for one branch to be several SNP’s deep while another had not yet mutated.
From a point of view of timing we are now probably somewhere around 2500BC. It seems this might be the same period as when R1b-L151 suddenly boomed and spread all over Northwestern Europe, and in this spread some branches of CTS5856 were also swept along. These branches are generally characterized by a mix of Iberian and British samples, and an absence in SE-Europe. This mix of Iberian and British samples reflects similar mixes in the R1b-L151 descendant groups.
It would seem R1b in its early stages should have been somewhere near CTS5856 when it was in the Austrian/Hungarian/Czechian region around the Danube, so part of CTS5856 could join R1b groups. Given that the majority of CTS5856 later moved south-east, where there is very little L151, it would seem logic that the overlap/contacts would be in the north, in Czechia or Southeast Germany. It just so happens that South-East Germany is exactly the place where the oldest Ancient dna R1b was found (Kromsdorf, ~2600-2500BC).
I have no idea why R1b boomed like it did. It would be interesting to know as it might be the same reason why CTS5856 boomed like it did. In fact, if you look at the spread of R1b over Northwest Europe you might think of CTS5856 as the “missing” southeastern branch.
Mixing in
Throughout the Balkan CTS5856 seems to appear in a proportion of about 2/1 to M269(xL51), which I’ll call M269* for short. CTS5856 reaches its highest levels in Albania, and M269* does in Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. This M269* is quite far from the main line of M269 (L151) and so does not seem connected directly to the R1b that took part of CTS5856 in its migrations as suggested before. It appears that M269* originated near the Caucasus. Yamnaya ancient dna samples that were tested belonged to this group.
Where did the CTS5856 and M269* meet and mix? Was it in the southern Balkans? There were Yamnaya in Bulgaria, so if CTS5856 descended the Danube they could have mixed with them. But the mixing might also have happened earlier. David Anthony writes that the largest settlement of Yamnaya in the west was in eastern Hungary. This settlement starts at about 3000BC, or roughly equivalent with when CTS5856 would have arrived here. Assuming mixing took place here it seems the CTS5856 group was assimilated in the M269* group (which to be clear would also have contained/assimilated other haplogroups, branches of J2b come to mind). This newly formed group would have had a mostly pastoral lifestyle, and probably used an Indo-European language closer to what was still spoken in the “homeland” (as these Yamnaya had only recently moved from there), and not so close to the languages dispersed by R1b (who would have boomed from a region where corded ware had reached, most likely carrying a branch of Indo-European ancestral to Baltic/Germanic/Celtic/Italic that had split off from the proto Indo European language earlier). This language would have been proto-Greek, thought to have been closer to Armenian than to other Indo-European languages. Armenian can have crossed the Caucasus to the south quite late, replacing/mixing with Urartu.
From Central-Europe to the Southern Balkans
Why then did this group move again and arrive in the southern Balkans? I always prefer explanations rooted in natural causes. CTS5856 might have moved from the Alps because of the Piora oscillation. The second movement might have been due to the 4.2kyr event. As the name suggests this event happened about 2200BC. It lasted about a century, and one of the effects was an intense aridification in the eastern Mediterranean. This coincides with the collapse of most of the Early-Helladic civilization in Greece, causing a depopulation of the Greek countryside. Although some centres of Early-Helladic culture continued untouched, others met a violent end. The important Early-Helladic settlement of Lerna was destroyed, and above its central “house of tiles” a Tumulus was erected. Archeologists generally reject any hypothesis of immigration (they assume the Greek language arrived with farmers at the start of the Neolithicum). However, with the current knowledge about CTS5856 and M269* it seems that there certainly was an immigration (unless these group originated in Greece itself).
A possible scenario is that the aridification had consequences reaching up to the Hungarian plains, maybe good lands for agriculture and/or pastoralism became scarcer because of the draught, or maybe trade suffered from the collapse of societies to the south. It’s imaginable that a group broke away/was forced out and moved south, with a majority of CTS5856 descendants. They went south east along the Danube, and settled in the depopulated countryside of the southern Balkans. In Greece they quickly merged with the remnants of the Early Helladic society to form the basis of the Mycenaean civilization. The Greeks themselves believed they had come from somewhere else, and they believed they had come in two waves. A second wave would have been the Dorians, coming to Greece from the North-west somewhere between the Bronze age collapse (1200BC) and 900BC. Again the archeological specialists doubt there was anything like Dorians and that there was any immigration at all in this period.
The coming of the Dorians and CTS9320
If the V13/M269* group had really spread proto Greek to the Southern Balkan, then presumably most of their languages/dialects were still close together by 1200BC (that even seems to have been the case for the native Macedonian language in the hayday of the Macedonians), moreover throughout the Aegean Bronze age there were close ties between Greece proper and Albania. Assuming the 'Dorians' were quasi-Greek speaking mostly CTS5856/M269*’s from Albania there is an interesting possibility: CTS9320 originated much later than the earlier branches of CTS5856. Given its large presence in Albania we might suspect it originated there in a population boom during the Aegean Bronze age, and was an important component of the Dorian tribes. That would explain the spread of this latecomer to Greece, from where it could have spread further to Bulgaria by colonization (or maybe not recorded movements from the west Balkans eastward).
The Greek colonization and Roman occupation
The rest of the spread of V13/CTS5856 follows logically from the well recorded Greek colonization. V13/CTS5856 reaches levels comparable to Greece in Southern Italy and Sicily. Later on it would have been spread even wider by Roman occupation, either through Italian legionnaires descended from Greek colonists, or by Thracian troops stationed at the limes and in England. The current CTS5856 in most of Northwestern Europe would then have two principal sources: a first dispersion along with R1b between 3000 and 2000BC, and a second dispersal due to Roman occupation.
Any thoughts?