Where does R1b in Western Europe Come From?

Asturrulumbo

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It was originally thought that this gene is from the palaeolithic Cro-Magnons, but since this has been mostly discredited in the last few years, I thought it would be good to start a debate about from where the R1b folk reached western Europe (including Iberia). We know R1b had its origins probably in the Near East, but how dit it get to W. Europe? Africa? Mediterranean Europe? Where, asks I?
 
This issue has been discussed at length for the last 3 years. You can read my conclusions, based on archaeology and the age of all R1b subclades, here. It's a bit long and maybe a bit complicated for those not well versed in European and Middle Eastern prehistory and archaeology. That's why it is worth reading a few times (including the links to Wikipedia). Make sure to check the the migration maps I made to help readers visualise everything step by step.

At present I cannot think of any other theory that even remotely contradict the Bronze-age Indo-European origin of R1b. The Neolithic hypothesis doesn't make any sense at all (surely even less than the Paleolithic one).

The only thing that is still fuzzy is the timing of the crossing of R1b1b from northern Anatolia to the Pontic steppes, and whether of not the Hittite branch split before of after this. The rest is almost undeniable from the conjoined archaeological, phylogenetic and linguistic evidence.
 
The theory you present is quite plausible, but before saying some problems I think it has, let me know if I understood it correctly:
-The Proto-Anatolians brought R1b to Europe sometime in the early to middle Eneolithic (c. 3500-3000 BC)
-The Proto-Anatolian speaking peoples migrated from the west coast of the Black Sea to the Pannonian Basin in the middle Eneolithic (c. 2800-2500 BC), where they eventually developed Proto-Italo-Celtic
-In the late Eneolithic (c. 2500, 2000 BC), these people continued moving northwest to what is now Southern Germany, northern Austria and the Czech Republic
This sums up, I think, a part of your theory. Is that correct?
 
Also, since March I think, M269 is called R1b1a2, and not R1b1b2, at least according to the ISOGG, and it has changed many other haplogroup names in R1, for example:
-M18 is now the marker for R1b1c1, not R1b1a
-M73 is now the marker for R1b1a1, not R1b1b1
-L23/S141 is now the marker for R1b1a2a, nor R1b1b2a
And well... many more, I think... So it might be a good idea to revise some of those maps and charts to put them up to date with the current nomenclature
 
It is said that Western Europeans are the descendants of the Maykop people of Western Russia, however they do carry a different subclade of the R1b gene to Western Europeans, my best educated guess would be that the R1b Haplogroup originated in South-West Russia but then that gene mutated and diverged from the Maykop R1b subclade to the Celtic R1b subclade.
 
I'm pretty much with Maciamo on this issue. Nothing else seems to make as much sense.

Let's hope ancient y-dna starts providing some more answers soon.

It is interesting that thus far the oldest R1b in Europe that we know about is that single R1b individual from the Lichtenstein Cave discovery, circa 1,000 BC. After that, the bodies from the Aldaieta cemetery in the Basque country in Spain are the oldest, but they date from the early medieval period (6th century, as I recall). Next in age come the bodies of the warriors in the cave in Ergolding in Bavaria from the 7th century.

But that's it. No Neolithic, Mesolithic, or Paleolithic R1b has yet been found in Europe anywhere. Of course, that could change, but so far no R1b older than the Bronze Age has been found in Europe.
 

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