What's the relationship between cultures, language families, and Y-dna

IronSide

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In another thread I made an argument assuming that a direct relationship exists between similar Y-dna in populations and similar language (if they have similar Y-dna they have similar language), and I was immediately warned not to assume such a thing.

What I had in mind but couldn't communicate it at the moment was this thought experiment :

Let's assume we have a population P, its members share a common mutation, which means they all descend from one man, this population is pure, no other population mixed with it in its lifetime, and so no other mutation defines it, this population occupies a single niche, so they are not divided in space, then it stands to reason that they speak the same language L, we can label such a population as an Atomic population

let's suppose that this population separates in two, P1 and P2, each with a specific mutation that defines it, and they are separated in space, occupying different niches, their separation in space and time lets them evolve two languages L1 and L2 that are descended from the original language L, let's assume that an external population X wants to occupy the same niche as P1 and eventually comes into contact with it, there are two possible situations :

1- they interact peacefully, forming a new population (X + P1) the language outcome of this new union is of three cases:
  • 1a : only one of the two languages survives, usually in this case the population of the surviving language is numerically far superior to the one that lost it.
  • 1b : both languages survives resulting in bilingualism,this case can continue, but usually as time progresses, this bilingualism disappears resulting in
  • 1c : a fusion of both languages into a new one, combining the lexical and grammatical properties of its predecessors
2- a war breaks out between the two competing populations, the victorious will control the niche, if the losing population survives, it will be ruled by the victorious one. The language outcome is :
  • 2a : only one language survives, this is also of two cases:
    • 2a1 : the language of the victors survives, while the language of the losers disappears, or forms a substrate to the dominant language.
    • 2a2 : the language of the losers survives, with the victors adopting their subjects language, this can only happen if they are vastly outnumbered.
  • 2b : both languages survives, resulting in bilingualism, resolves itself to either 2a1 or 2a2, or continues.

It is reasonable to assume that the second situation (war) was more common than the first one, in the old days, it is difficult to imagine two populations, with different languages, different appearance, different gods, would immediately decide to live together peacefully, they were all rather Xenophobic, obviously different is evil.

Situation 2a1 is obviously the best model to the Indo-European migrations, many native languages formed substrates to various IE branches, and so it follows that certain Y-dna haplogroups in these native populations spoke these languages, but later adopted the language of their masters.

Returning to our example, let's suppose population X passed it's language, with new population (X + P1), let's also assume that a new splinter group breaks off from this population, with all it's members descending from P1, its language would be that of X. Maciamo has demonstrated how E-V13 might be an assimilated IE haplogroup that expanded to the Balkans.

All human populations began as Atomic populations , gaining genetic complexity with time, it is then safe to assume that Y-haplogroups that appeared in an isolated niche must have spoken one language, haplogroups I,J,O,H,G are then each associated with a lost ancient language family.

Haplogroup E1b1b is an interesting example of how a lineage is associated with a language family, E1b1b is associated with the spread of the Afro-Asiatic languages, because no other lineage challenged E1b1b in its domain (Arabian peninsula and north Africa), E1b1b is 26000 years old, the languages spoken by his descendants are still related after all this time. E1b1a is similarly related to the Niger-Congo languages, haplogroup O forms a kind of a linguistic tree.
 
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Patrilineal warrior cultures based on endemic warfare at times produced strong correlations between the language and Y-dna, but cultures differ in how they value ancestry and some are matrilineal.
So you need also other data to argue the correlation in each case, also some cases are results from tribal confederations where the sequence of events is complex.
 
I guess my question was on E1b1b after all, why would the descendants of this old lineage, 26000 years old, develop languages that are clearly related in one family, but many ancient civilisations in the Near East, the Aegean, and south Asia spoke language isolates, many existing in the territory of haplogroup J2, all of them had similar cultures and practices, like bull leaping, which suggests a common origin, yet, they speak language isolates, why would the populations of E1b1b speak one language family, while J2 doesn't.
 
Ultimately, the limiting factor is linguistics, because language relationships become flimsy after a few thousand years so broad correlation with DNA cannot be understood very well. The Nostratic hypothesis is probably not very sound, but it's interesting nonetheless that with those attempts at long-range comparisons some interesting patterns emerge as they pertain to genetics and archaeology. Consider the distribution of those hypothetical macro-families:

Makrofamilien.png


It would allow for some interesting speculations about gene-language correlations. Khoisan would correspond to Y-DNA A, of course. Dene-Caucasian would be Ust-Ishim and haplogroup K. Haplogroup E would be responsible for both Nostratic and perhaps Congo-Saharan, probably by way of the hypothetical 'Basal Eurasian' or 'Ethio-Somalian' aDNA that spreads with sedentism and agriculture. That would be in line with most Nostracisists locating the macro-family's origin in East Africa or thereabouts.
 
IronSide, I agree with your analysis and can give examples for each scenario.

- 1a: English, Irish, Scottish, German, Dutch and Swedish colonists live peacefully side by side in the original 13 colonies of the USA, but only English survives over time.
- 1b: Franks settled peacefully in Roman province of Germania inferior/Belgium, and both Latin and Frankish survive side by side for over 1000 years, then a linguistic boundary is established between majority groups (Flanders vs Wallonia)
- 2a1: Roman conquer Celtic-speaking populations and imposing Latin on them.
- 2a2: Germanic tribes invaded the Western Roman empire and carve kingdoms inside it, but are outnumbered and adopt Latin.
- 2b: Germanic tribes invade Switzerland, but local language (Latin) survives alongside German.

The only thing with which I might find something to say is when you write "haplogroups I,J,O,H,G are then each associated with a lost ancient language family". Maybe I misunderstood, but if you mean that the original language family of these haplogroups has become extinct, I'd say that:

- Dravidian evolved from men belonging to hg H
- some Caucasian languages evolved from men belonging to hg J
- Basque might be a survivor of an original language either of hg G or I (as the Basques are autosomally a blend of Mesolithic I2 and Neolithic G2a-dominant populations).
- Haplogroup O is the root of some Proto-Asiatic language that evolved into Austro-Tai (O1a), Austroasiatic (O2a1), Hmong-Mien (O3a2b) and Sino-Tibetan (O3a2c1).
 
I guess my question was on E1b1b after all, why would the descendants of this old lineage, 26000 years old, develop languages that are clearly related in one family, but many ancient civilisations in the Near East, the Aegean, and south Asia spoke language isolates, many existing in the territory of haplogroup J2, all of them had similar cultures and practices, like bull leaping, which suggests a common origin, yet, they speak language isolates, why would the populations of E1b1b speak one language family, while J2 doesn't.

that is not a language shift of a whole tribe, but maybe of just one man
TMRCA of E-V13, 5.4 ka is when some IE languages had allready develloped
the expansion of E-V13 probably happened within an IE tribe

.. sorry, that's just for E-V13, not E1b1b as a whole ..
 
I guess my question was on E1b1b after all, why would the descendants of this old lineage, 26000 years old, develop languages that are clearly related in one family, but many ancient civilisations in the Near East, the Aegean, and south Asia spoke language isolates, many existing in the territory of haplogroup J2, all of them had similar cultures and practices, like bull leaping, which suggests a common origin, yet, they speak language isolates, why would the populations of E1b1b speak one language family, while J2 doesn't.

Because of two things:

1) Geography: J2 territory is very mountainous (Caucasus, Anatolian plateau, Iranian plateau, Greece), which leads to isolation, the best way for languages to start differentiating from other related languages. Just look at the huge linguistic diversity in the Caucasus. Even in Switzerland, Swiss German, which is only a few centuries old, is spoken so differently from one valley to the next that the dialects are sometimes barely mutually intelligible.

E1b1b may be present over a huge territory in North and East Africa + the Middle East and Europe today, but the languages spoken spread relatively recently. The largest language in that family is Arabic, which spread only 1300 years ago. It originated near the Red Sea, close to all other ancient Afro-Asiatic languages (Egyptian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Akkadian, Amharic, etc.). All Semitic language have a fairly recent root in the Bronze Age (like IE languages), and Arabic replaced almost all of them relatively recently. Even in West Africa, Berber languages aren't 26,000 years old. Proto-Berber is estimated to be 10,000 years old, but Berber itself may only have spread with hg E-M81 in the last 2000 years.

2) Linguistic fusion: In desertic regions it's easy to replace existing languages because of the low population density, especially in ancient times. But the J2 region was historically one of the most densely settled part of the world since the Neolithic. Not only did agriculture originate there, but also early civilisations many millennia later. Due to the geographic parcelling described in point 1, Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations had plenty of time to evolve language isolates. When J2a people expanded from the Kura-Araxes culture during the Bronze Age, there is a good chance that they were outnumbered by the conquered populations in this densely populated region and that they adopted their language, or that the two languages blended, adding even more linguistic diversity.


In Europe, E1b1b was always in the minority and adopted the language of other tribes. The E-V13 expansion in the Balkans happened after a small number of E-V13 men has been assimilated by Indo-European invaders.
 
    • 2a2 : the language of the losers survives, with the victors adopting their subjects language, this can only happen if they are vastly outnumbered.

it is not always the case

England's common people was latinized until the romans departed and the angels, saxons and jutes arrived bringing the germanic Language to the common people.

we then have "germanic" Danish Vikings taking over french Normandy and losing their Germanic language to the norman french language .


we then have the norman "french" invasion of England resulting in french language being used .............but not by the common people


In the end the only conclusion is that the majority ( which is the common people ) retain their language regardless of the the nobility use.

The common people speak a maternal language ( from the mother ) and the nobility use a paternal ( invading ) language from the father. In the end the maternal language will always win out regardless of who is the victor or the loser.
 
    • 2a2 : the language of the losers survives, with the victors adopting their subjects language, this can only happen if they are vastly outnumbered.
it is not always the case

England's common people was latinized until the romans departed and the angels, saxons and jutes arrived bringing the germanic Language to the common people.

we then have "germanic" Danish Vikings taking over french Normandy and losing their Germanic language to the norman french language .


we then have the norman "french" invasion of England resulting in french language being used .............but not by the common people


In the end the only conclusion is that the majority ( which is the common people ) retain their language regardless of the the nobility use.

The common people speak a maternal language ( from the mother ) and the nobility use a paternal ( invading ) language from the father. In the end the maternal language will always win out regardless of who is the victor or the loser.

No, I would argue that the model is still correct.
England's common people was latinized until the romans departed and the angels, saxons and jutes arrived bringing the germanic Language to the common people.
both of these events are case 2a1.

we then have "germanic" Danish Vikings taking over french Normandy and losing their Germanic language to the norman french language .
this can be said to be case 2a2, and to some extent case 1a, as a consequence of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte.

we then have the norman "french" invasion of England resulting in french language being used .............but not by the common people
this is case 2b, because both languages(French,English) survived, but when you think about it, 2b resolved itself to 2a2, as French is no longer spoken among the English nobility.

There are also cases when 2b becomes 2a1, examples that come to my mind is a period of bilingualism between Urartian and Armenian , how Arabic replaced Greek, Persian, and Coptic, and how the Romans replaced Celtic languages, all after a period of bilingualism, even though the conquerors were the minority.
 
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Haplogroup E1b1b is an interesting example of how a lineage is associated with a language family, E1b1b is associated with the spread of the Afro-Asiatic languages, because no other lineage challenged E1b1b in its domain (Arabian peninsula and north Africa), E1b1b is 26000 years old, the languages spoken by his descendants are still related after all this time. E1b1a is similarly related to the Niger-Congo languages, haplogroup O forms a kind of a linguistic tree.
Keep in mind that today's dominant languages are the ones coming from successful farmers and herders. The ones who built up population numbers, expended to new territories and conquered others. In this case, the true expansion of E1b1b didn't start in 26kya, but with Natufians (E1b1b1b2) right after Ice Age about 12kya. Well, at least around levant, Egypt and Arabia.
 
Keep in mind that today's dominant languages are the ones coming from successful farmers and herders. The ones who built up population numbers, expended to new territories and conquered others. In this case, the true expansion of E1b1b didn't start in 26kya, but with Natufians (E1b1b1b2) right after Ice Age about 12kya. Well, at least around levant, Egypt and Arabia.

afro-asiatic seems to be the language of the Natufians and may allready have split into several local languages before the time of the Natufians
E1b1b1 was probably an important part of the Natufian population, but I don't think they were the only ones, as the geomtric microliths probably didn't come from Africa
uptill know we have DNA from just 1 Natufian site, that is not representative for the whole population

there was an early expansion of E1b1 though, it split into 3 branches ca 24 ka
https://www.yfull.com/tree/E-M35/
 
The relationship between Y haplogroups and language families? How about:

A Khoisan, Nilo-Saharan
B Pygmy (extinct)
C1 Indo-Pacific, Australian
C2 Austric, Dene-Caucasian
D Ongan
E Niger-Congo
J1 Afro-Asiatic
J2 Kartvelian
L Elamo-Dravidian
R Eurasiatic
Q Amerind

These associations are speculative, of course. To make a plausible match between Y macro-haplogroups and proposed language macro-families, I think it is necessary to assume that these controversial macro-families have a greater time depth than is usually proposed. I think assumed rates of language change are based too often on observed post-neolithic rates of language change, when there was more contact between cultures, and faster rates of cultural change. Before the neolithic everyone lived in small hunter-gatherer bands, and neighbouring bands usually spoke the same language, or a closely related dialect, so languages probably evolved at a much slower pace. This was particularly likely to be the case when their environment was relatively unchanging. Khoisan languages, for example, may have had a slow rate of change in the 70 to 10 ka period.
 
The relationship between Y haplogroups and language families? How about:

A Khoisan, Nilo-Saharan
B Pygmy (extinct)
C1 Indo-Pacific, Australian
C2 Austric, Dene-Caucasian
D Ongan
E Niger-Congo
J1 Afro-Asiatic
J2 Kartvelian
L Elamo-Dravidian
R Eurasiatic
Q Amerind

These associations are speculative, of course. To make a plausible match between Y macro-haplogroups and proposed language macro-families, I think it is necessary to assume that these controversial macro-families have a greater time depth than is usually proposed. I think assumed rates of language change are based too often on observed post-neolithic rates of language change, when there was more contact between cultures, and faster rates of cultural change. Before the neolithic everyone lived in small hunter-gatherer bands, and neighbouring bands usually spoke the same language, or a closely related dialect, so languages probably evolved at a much slower pace. This was particularly likely to be the case when their environment was relatively unchanging. Khoisan languages, for example, may have had a slow rate of change in the 70 to 10 ka period.

Whether E was born in Africa or Eurasia is still unknown, but if it was born in Africa, its from North Eastern Africa (probably Egypt) I'd say and related to a group of Basal Eurasian or the root of Basal Eurasian shared with the element in Niger-Congo which is non-local West African and moved to Subsaharan Africa later. E1b1a might have been the branch moving South West (deeper into Africa) from North East Africa or the Near East and E1b1b moved later, from an Basal Eurasian proper branch, from the same source, West and North (North Africa, Levante).
E1b1a founded Niger-Congo, E1b1b might have formed Afro-Asiatic (more likely), or an unknown and now extinct language group.

R1 can be associated with Pre-Proto-Indo-European languages, as well as other branches considering its age.

O-M122 seems to be associated with Sino-Tibetan languages.

[h=3][/h]
 
I agree, E is a prime candidate for Basal Eurasian, as well as being the main Y haplogroup of many speakers of Niger-Congo languages today.

I think R1 is still found in some indigenous Siberian populations.

Yes, O2 (O-M122) seems to be associated with Sino-Tibetan, whereas O1 seems to be associated with Austric language speakers. O descended from K via NO. N is associated with the Uralic language family.

There was an early dispersal of haplogroups K and C throughout Eurasia and Sahul, and I suspect they dispersed together. There's no reason why even small bands of hunter-gatherers can't include more than one Y haplogroup. Ust Ishim, Oase and Tianyuan were haplogroup K, whilst Goyet, Kostenki and La Brana were haplogroup C.

If Proto-Dene-Caucasian started with C2, it could have spread to nearby K and its descendants, so that proto-Sino-Tibetan speakers happened to be mainly haplogroup O2. Haplogroup C2 is still common in North East Asia, and is found amongst Na-Dene speakers in North America, and in some North Caucasian populations.
 
afro-asiatic seems to be the language of the Natufians and may allready have split into several local languages before the time of the Natufians
E1b1b1 was probably an important part of the Natufian population, but I don't think they were the only ones, as the geomtric microliths probably didn't come from Africa
uptill know we have DNA from just 1 Natufian site, that is not representative for the whole population

there was an early expansion of E1b1 though, it split into 3 branches ca 24 ka
https://www.yfull.com/tree/E-M35/

there were maybe y haplogroup H and T present among the natufians in addition to e1b1b1b2
i don't think there were j came later from the north same goes for r1b probaly also came from north
 
these are the haplogroups that came out of K

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_K-M9

yes i know (y)
y haplogroup H found in ppnc site remain in motza :)so maybe it was present also in natufians .....:unsure:
about y haplogroup t i am not sure i guess so time will tell .....:unsure:
what we know for sure is that some of natufian remains that were found were e1b1b1b2-z830

p.s
another option that just crossed my mind they could belong to y haplogroup C in adition to the e1b1b1b2
 
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R1a1a and R1b-M269 is from same languange or kin languages each other? It is not clear. R1a1a is PIE or R1b-M269 is PIE-ized or R1b-M269 is PIE and R1a1a is PIE-ized or Both is PIE or Neither is PIE?
 
R1a1a and R1b-M269 is from same languange or kin languages each other? It is not clear. R1a1a is PIE or R1b-M269 is PIE-ized or R1b-M269 is PIE and R1a1a is PIE-ized or Both is PIE or Neither is PIE?

Among the earliest presumably IE speaking ancient populations was R1a dominant (Corded Ware, Usatovo, Sintashta). So this is the sure thing, everything else is speculation at this point, but I think that more haplogroups, especially R1b, possibly I2 and J, were present in the time PIE was initially formed. If you go back further in time, a R1a forager clan seems to be the safest anchor point, but I guess they lived in a community which was not dominated by one haplogroup after all.
 
I agree, E is a prime candidate for Basal Eurasian, as well as being the main Y haplogroup of many speakers of Niger-Congo languages today.

Whats up with the people quoting R1, O2, yet for E never a number is added. Due to its age the only appropriate thing is to use E1b1b etc. O2 formed 28100 years ago, R1 formed 28200 years ago, E formed 65k years ago, E1b1b separated from the Bantu E1b1a 41200 years ago, far earlier than either O2 or R1 were formed.. As for you suggesting J1 is "proto-Afro Asiatic"... J1-P58 spread primarily with the Proto-Semitic speakers. Older clades of J1 have nothing to do with the AA. Yet J-P58 is more AA in terms of numbers than any E-M35 branch. They played alot more role in spreading the proto-Semitic.
 

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