DNA of Iberians from Europe

Johannes

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I have exhausted my search for anyone here who had covered the Iberians from Europe. Even Maciamo on his "Genetic Origins of the Iberian People" skips the Iberians when he covers the Mesolithic and Neolithic and then skips into the Celts. Its incredible that no one has come out with the DNA of Iberians. Iberians were the first to inhabit Spain and Portugal. It is believed that they arrived from the farthest area of the Mediterranean during the Neolithic period (6,000-5,000 BCE). Some historians have stated that the Iberians were related to the Ligurians of Southern Gaul. Others have asserted that their originated in North Africa and migrated into Europe. While others claim that they were the same as the Basques. The Iberians did live very close to the Basques. Iberian towns were located from the Ebro River (hence the name "Iberian" and which is next to Navarra, the original homeland of the Basques) and settled all of the eastern sea board from Catalonia to Andalusia. During the 6th and 5th centuries the Celts arrived and occupied all of the center and northwest of the peninsula. In the center of the peninsula the Celts mixed with the Iberians and created the CeltiIberians. All of this but no DNA. It is clear that the bulk of the Iberian towns (and population) were located in the eastern seaboard of the peninsula and in southern Spain. When the Carthegenians colonized parts of southern Iberia they mixed with the locals. But it was the Romans who completely changed both the culture and the DNA of the Iberians. Did Iberians bring the R1b from Anatolia? Where they a proto-Celtic people? Were they related to the Basques? Or were the Iberians a Mesolithic people that carried I1a?
 
I don't think there is actually a known single origin for the Iberians at this point, although according to ancestrydna the average Spaniard/Portugese has about 51% Iberian.

During the Spanish Neolithic, we are looking at 2 groups of people; La Almagra, Cardium Pottery and Tardenoisian cultures making up the Iberian people before the Celts arrived to create the celtiberians
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/neolithic_europe_map.shtml#late_neolithic
 
When the Carthegenians colonized parts of southern Iberia they mixed with the locals. But it was the Romans who completely changed both the culture and the DNA of the Iberians.

Neither the Carthaginians nor the Romans came to Iberia in huge numbers. They were only foreign minorities who established themselves as ruling elites, while the bulk of the population were just the natives who were already there before, as it usually happens with military invasions. So trying to attribute any supposed large change in the DNA of the Iberians on either of them is not very plausible.

Culture is a very different thing. Cultural/religious/linguistic elements from one population can be easily adopted and assimilated by another one with totally different origins without requiring any large population interactions between the two.
 
So it seems like the Iberians were I2a, I1b, G2a, and E1b1?
 
QUOTE=Drac II;457778]Neither the Carthaginians nor the Romans came to Iberia in huge numbers. They were only foreign minorities who established themselves as ruling elites, while the bulk of the population were just the natives who were already there before, as it usually happens with military invasions. So trying to attribute any supposed large change in the DNA of the Iberians on either of them is not very plausible.

Culture is a very different thing. Cultural/religious/linguistic elements from one population can be easily adopted and assimilated by another one with totally different origins without requiring any large population interactions between the two.[ QUOTE]

I know the Carthaginians did not constitute a large amount of male soldiers to mate with Iberian women. But certainly the four Roman Legions stationed in Iberia did make a considerable amount of DNA to the peninsula. Plus many Romans migrated to Iberia for free lands and other means. Therefore a considerable amount of DNA from Italy and other places was transferred into Iberia. Iberia only contained about 4 millions. Therefore a several thousands of males will make a considerable contribution in the DNA. You sound Spaniard are pure or something. Are you saying Iberians are pure race????
 
Phoenician (and Carthaginians who were Phoenicias themselves) colonization was somewhat different from the Greek colonization and Roman one different as well.
Greeks founded ex novo and populated their cities with their people (like early English in western american coast for example), Punic colonization was more like a commercial influences in the other native populations and their cities were more like multicultural emporiums, while Roman colonization is more like a large group of Italic families who settled in the pre existent cities and pre populated with local people.
I.e group of Romans who settled in an existent and populated city of Celts in England.
 
Phoenician (and Carthaginians who were Phoenicias themselves) colonization was somewhat different from the Greek colonization and Roman one different as well.
Greeks founded ex novo and populated their cities with their people (like early English in western american coast for example), Punic colonization was more like a commercial influences in the other native populations and their cities were more like multicultural emporiums, while Roman colonization is more like a large group of Italic families who settled in the pre existent cities and pre populated with local people.
I.e group of Romans who settled in an existent and populated city of Celts in England.
That is correct. Virtually all of Andalusia and the eastern sea board of Spain was populated by Roman veterans and other Italians who came to settle on free land given by the emperors. We don't know the exact numbers but they were large. Usually after 25 years of service in the army the emperor gave the veterans land. This was dome to facilitate integration and they basically helped establish the Latin culture in the Iberian peninsula. Also the vast majority of the veterans married Iberian women (Celtic and Iberian) and thus added to the DNA.
 
Neither the Carthaginians nor the Romans came to Iberia in huge numbers. They were only foreign minorities who established themselves as ruling elites, while the bulk of the population were just the natives who were already there before, as it usually happens with military invasions. So trying to attribute any supposed large change in the DNA of the Iberians on either of them is not very plausible.

Culture is a very different thing. Cultural/religious/linguistic elements from one population can be easily adopted and assimilated by another one with totally different origins without requiring any large population interactions between the two.
The Roman conquest of Iberia was not just a "military invasion." Many soldiers in the 200 year span settled in Iberia an mostly married local women. Except Gaul Iberia was the most important part of the Roman Empire. Four legions were stationed in Iberia and they were rotated for roughly 200 years. If a legion consisted of 8,000-10,000 men then in 200 years a lot of DNA was transferred into Iberia through sexual contact and marriage with local women. I am not saying the DNA contribution of Italians was huge but I think it was significant in altering certain parts of the Iberian peninsula, such as Andalusia and possibly Catalonia.
 
I know the Carthaginians did not constitute a large amount of male soldiers to mate with Iberian women. But certainly the four Roman Legions stationed in Iberia did make a considerable amount of DNA to the peninsula. Plus many Romans migrated to Iberia for free lands and other means. Therefore a considerable amount of DNA from Italy and other places was transferred into Iberia. Iberia only contained about 4 millions. Therefore a several thousands of males will make a considerable contribution in the DNA. You sound Spaniard are pure or something. Are you saying Iberians are pure race????

The population of Iberia during Roman times was about 6 million inhabitants:

https://books.google.com/books?id=N...is ordinarily estimated at 6,000,000"&f=false

"The population of Roman Iberia at its height is ordinarily estimated at 6,000,000"

Plus over 90% of the inhabitants lived in rural areas (see same source as above), in other words: farmers, shepherds, miners, fishermen, woodsmen, etc. These people would hardly have much contact with foreigners. In fact they would have had very little contact even with other native Iberians/Celts/Celtiberians from other distant parts of the very same peninsula, let alone with small foreign minorities from abroad.

So some few thousand Roman soldiers distributed in garrisons and cities through the geography of the peninsula are hardly an impressive number. To put the numbers of Roman soldiers you cited into perspective: they did not even make up 1% of the population of Roman-era Iberia.


The Roman conquest of Iberia was not just a "military invasion." Many soldiers in the 200 year span settled in Iberia an mostly married local women. Except Gaul Iberia was the most important part of the Roman Empire. Four legions were stationed in Iberia and they were rotated for roughly 200 years. If a legion consisted of 8,000-10,000 men then in 200 years a lot of DNA was transferred into Iberia through sexual contact and marriage with local women. I am not saying the DNA contribution of Italians was huge but I think it was significant in altering certain parts of the Iberian peninsula, such as Andalusia and possibly Catalonia.

There wasn't any huge migration of Romans into Iberia either. It was just a military conquest, just like that of the earlier Carthaginians and the later Visigoths, Vandals, Swabians and Arabs/Moors, none of whom brought more than a few thousand of their own people into an area that was already populated by millions of native inhabitants (the majority of whom couldn't care less about who was nominally in control of the government, as long as they left them alone and did not overtax them.) The majority of the Iberian and Celtic/Celtiberian population of the peninsula hardly had much contact with the foreign Roman minority:

https://books.google.com/books?id=f...a=X&ei=TQFrVc3iEITysAWtnYCYDg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ

"...it was only a small percentage of middle- and upper-class Spaniards who gained any direct contact with Rome and the Romans. It was only in the towns of Andalusia, the east coast and the Ebro valley that there was any marked transition to Roman manners and the Roman way of life, in the first century a.d. The great contrast between city and country that is so noticeable in modern Spain, must have existed then.""
 
Romans were Italic and basically brothers of Celts.
My city had strong Roman colonization but it's true that outside modern Italy the modern Spain was the second strategical point in the Roman period for agriculture of the wheat due the sun and the climate.
 
From the time of Hadrian Italians were few in the legions who generally recruited locally.

Most Italian legionaries from Augustus onwards came from the north, notably Cisalpine Gaul.
 
I don't think there is actually a known single origin for the Iberians at this point, although according to ancestrydna the average Spaniard/Portugese has about 51% Iberian.

During the Spanish Neolithic, we are looking at 2 groups of people; La Almagra, Cardium Pottery and Tardenoisian cultures making up the Iberian people before the Celts arrived to create the celtiberians
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/neolithic_europe_map.shtml#late_neolithic

According to the DNA maps it seems the Iberians were a mix of the Meaglithic (I2a, I2b, G2a, and E1b1b) and Bell Beaker (EV13, G2a, I2a, R1b-P312) peoples. But since the Iberians arrive during the Neolithic roughly around 5,000-3,000 BCE they make a strong case for being candidates for R1b-P312.

So from 6,000-5,000 BCE it seems that Neolithic farmers who carried G2a, E-M78-81, E-V13, T, J1 were the first to enter the Iberian peninsula from the Balkans. Then from 3,000-2500 BCE we see an intrusion of R1b-P312 folk. According to scholars the Iberians arrived in the Iberian peninsula during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. This coincided with the entry of the Iberians into the Iberian peninsula. This makes sense because the earliest folk to arrive in Western Europe from the east had R1b. Aren't the Basques likewise R1b? can someone please tell me the R1b subclade of the Basques?

Therefore either the Iberians belong to the Printed Cordium Culture or to the R1b folk. In other words, they were either from Middle East or "Aryan" folk who spoke a pre-Indo-European language close to the Celts.
 
"There wasn't any huge migration of Romans into Iberia either. It was just a military conquest, just like that of the earlier Carthaginians and the later Visigoths, Vandals, Swabians and Arabs/Moors, none of whom brought more than a few thousand of their own people into an area that was already populated by millions of native inhabitants"

How can you possibly admit that there were "a few thousands"??? You make me laugh! I will agree with you on the Carthaginians and "Moors." But on others not. The Roman legions were composed of Italians until the Age of Augustus. After that the Romans became seriously decadent and they began to use foreigners or provincials in their armies. If you take 8,000 Italians per legion and multiply by four and 8 periods of rotation of service it comes to over 250,000 males. If they were all sexually starving and ready to settle, you can imagine the result. The same with the Germanics. On average German nations numbered 200,000. If you take Swabians and Goths only that is about half a million. Clearly not "a few thousands."
 
From the time of Hadrian Italians were few in the legions who generally recruited locally.

Most Italian legionaries from Augustus onwards came from the north, notably Cisalpine Gaul.

We can roughly divide the participation of Italians into the legions into two periods: 1) from the time of the founding of the Roman Republic all were Italians until the time of Julius Caesar. During that time all veterans were given lands for their serve (25 years usually). Then after the Carthaginians were defeated and the Romans conquered the Greek kingdoms (220-100 BC) the greedy Roman patriarchs took over all the lands in Italy. Thus most Italians had to move out of Italy into other lands. This is why the emperors gave lands in Gaul and Iberia to the veterans. After the Italians became hopelessly decadent the soldiers came usually from Gaul, Iberia, and Germany.
 
Romans were Italic and basically brothers of Celts. My city had strong Roman colonization but it's true that outside modern Italy the modern Spain was the second strategical point in the Roman period for agriculture of the wheat due the sun and the climate.

Not by the 1st century BCE. By the time of Julius Caesar, most Romans were very mixed with Greeks, Etruscans, and other North African-Middle Eastern peoples. This is why Romans were generally short, dark haired and eyed, and swarthy. They resembled Jews or Syrians more than Celts. And during the Roman Empire the Italinas became even more mixed by importation of blacks and more Semites. So no they are not related to Celts.
 
Not by the 1st century BCE. By the time of Julius Caesar, most Romans were very mixed with Greeks, Etruscans, and other North African-Middle Eastern peoples. This is why Romans were generally short, dark haired and eyed, and swarthy. They resembled Jews or Syrians more than Celts. And during the Roman Empire the Italinas became even more mixed by importation of blacks and more Semites. So no they are not related to Celts.

Was there some big discovery of ancient Dna from Republican Rome and then from the time of Julius Caesar and then again from the later Empire and they were all compared and somehow I missed it? Or is this anthrofora genetics and history, perhaps?

These are guesses, and not very well informed guesses either. Had you actually done any academic research into the subject you would know that the number of Sub Saharan Africans imported into Europe by the Romans was very small; the empire only reached the Sahara. (It's true we have the remains from the Roman era of a rather wealthy SSA woman in northern Britain, but these are exceptions rather than the rule, I think.)There was trade with SSAfrica, yes, and East Africa, and so some were bought and sold, but nothing like the numbers who came into Iberia, for example, especially Portugal after the New World was conquered. Watching "The Gladiator" doesn't count as a history lesson, you know.

Second of all, slaves came from all the Roman conquests, which means there were just as many, if not more, British and Gallic and German and Dacian and Thracian slaves as there were Greeks, and Syrians, and then Jews. You might find it interesting to read about how the sale of slaves from Gaul made Caesar such a wealthy man that he was able to buy the support of the Roman mobs.

Third of all, many slaves were freedmen who had sold themselves into slavery.

Fourth of all, slaves were used, used up, usually, all over the empire, on the galleys, in the mines, and on the latifundia, and not just in Italy, and increasingly so as the Empire went on. Given the results from Ralph and Coop discussed below, most of them didn't survive to procreate. Not even the many women put to work in brothels were allowed to keep their children, as the many grave sites full of newborns and aborted fetuses can attest. It wasn't like the American south where because the importation of slaves from Africa was outlawed relatively early on they had to breed them; for a long time during the Empire there was always a new rebellion on the horizon, so they could afford to "waste" them. It's certainly a terrible thing, but those were terrible times, very brutal indeed.

Now, it's true that the slave system during the Roman Empire was different from that of the American south in that the exceptionally able slaves sometimes managed to get their manumission and rise in society, occasionally to great heights, because "racism" as we understand it today didn't really exist. You have to imagine an American south where enslaved Africans were present, but also freed Africans who owned their own shops, and a few who could become very wealthy, and even wind up in the national legislature. It's difficult to imagine, yes, but that's how it was in the Greek and Roman worlds.

So, you would think there would have been some gene flow into the "native" population from these freedmen, whom one would have to assume included Gauls and Germans and Dacians as well as Greeks and Syrians and Jews, unless you think the northerners were dumber and less able on average than the Easterners. Of course, that might have been true to a certain extent. An educated Greek scribe or Syrian entertainer or Jewish metal merchant might have been a lot more valuable than some farmer from the north who might just be sent to a latifundia or mine, but I don't think we know enough to speculate about that.

As to how many manumitted slaves there might have been in any particular country, of what particular ancestry, and how much gene flow there might have been into the "native" population, I don't know. I used to think there must have been a significant amount of it. However, if Ralph and Coop were correct in their IBD study (and don't modify their results in their new upcoming paper), there has been no significant inflow of new genetic material into Italy since about 300 BC, which is late enough for the Celts (Gauls) into northern Italy, and the Greeks diffusing up from Magna Graecia, but not late enough to incorporate hordes of slaves from anywhere, either from Europe or the Near East.

"There is relatively little common ancestry shared between the Italian peninsula and other locations, and what there is seems to derive mostly from longer ago than 2,500 ya. An exception is that Italy and the neighboring Balkan populations share small but significant numbers of common ancestors in the last 1,500 years."

Also, "we have seen significant modern substructure within Italy (i.e., Figure 2) that predates most of this common ancestry, and estimate that most of the common ancestry shared between Italy and other populations is older than about 2,300 years."

I have wondered if perhaps it doesn't register as "new" gene flow because it's just the same old "Near Eastern" farmer ancestry that came into Europe with the Neolithic, but they seem to indicate not. Also, there's the "Italian cline" to consider, where, as Ralph and Coop put it, the Italian cline shows a " distinctly bimodal distribution of numbers of IBD blocks that each Italian shares with both French-speaking Swiss and the United Kingdom, and that these numbers are strongly correlated. Furthermore, the amount that Italians share with these two populations varies continuously from values typical for Turkey and Cyprus, to values typical for France and Switzerland."

If slaves came from Britain and Gaul and Germany and Dacia as well as Greece and the Near East, did they decide to send all the slaves from the Near East to the south and all the Germans and Gauls to the north for some reason? That doesn't seem to make any sense either, so maybe they're correct.

See: Ralph and Coop for the source of the quotes.
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555

As for physical appearance, the Romans were by no means all short and dark. Regardless, what would that have to do with whether the Italics were related to the Celts? You are aware that the two languages are very related yes? And that they came from the steppe, presumably, with the Indo-Europeans? And that the Yamnaya Indo-Europeans were "darker" than modern Europeans, even darker than many modern Italians or Iberians? You're also aware that not all the "Celtic" tribes were fair? Have you ever heard of the Silures? Perhaps you haven't read all the recent papers about the relatively recent selection for "fairness" in Europe and it's relationship to the environment?

I would suggest you use our search engine. It's quite good...there are numerous papers and discussions which might help you catch up.
 
According to the DNA maps it seems the Iberians were a mix of the Meaglithic (I2a, I2b, G2a, and E1b1b) and Bell Beaker (EV13, G2a, I2a, R1b-P312) peoples. But since the Iberians arrive during the Neolithic roughly around 5,000-3,000 BCE they make a strong case for being candidates for R1b-P312.

So from 6,000-5,000 BCE it seems that Neolithic farmers who carried G2a, E-M78-81, E-V13, T, J1 were the first to enter the Iberian peninsula from the Balkans. Then from 3,000-2500 BCE we see an intrusion of R1b-P312 folk. According to scholars the Iberians arrived in the Iberian peninsula during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. This coincided with the entry of the Iberians into the Iberian peninsula. This makes sense because the earliest folk to arrive in Western Europe from the east had R1b. Aren't the Basques likewise R1b? can someone please tell me the R1b subclade of the Basques?

Therefore either the Iberians belong to the Printed Cordium Culture or to the R1b folk. In other words, they were either from Middle East or "Aryan" folk who spoke a pre-Indo-European language close to the Celts.

I've read that R1b in Basuqe, Iberians, and SouthWest French belong mostly to R1b-DF27(subclade of P312). I've read about DF27 subclades which are "Basque-specific". So, R1b in Basque may be mostly from pretty recent founder effects.

It don't think it came with Iberians because they only existed in Iberia, while P312 also exists in Celts, Basque, Italics, Germans, and probably: Estruscans and all the other pre-Roman people of Italy. Iberians weren't Indo European. And Aryan is a name only used for some Indo Iranians from South, Central, and West Asia. It's not used for all Indo Europeans. It's meaning has been perverted to mean Indo European or white or European.
 
Romans were Italic and basically brothers of Celts.
My city had strong Roman colonization but it's true that outside modern Italy the modern Spain was the second strategical point in the Roman period for agriculture of the wheat due the sun and the climate.

From what I've heard there probably is a close relationship between Celts and Italics. The Bronze age Urnfield culture was in Italy and Central Europe, and was at least partly culturally ancestral to the Gauls and Italics. The high amount of R1b-U152 in Italy and Central Europe clearly reflects this.

Also, Tuscans can fit as about 50% Bronze age Hungarian and 30% Unetice or Urnfield(Using Eurogenes ANE K8). Either way there's clear Yamnaya, Corded Ware, etc. related blood in Tuscans, as there is in France and Germany(Former Gaulish lands).
 
The Ancient Iberians are an interesting subject. I wish there was someone here who knew a lot about them. My guess is their language(and Basque) arrived in Neolithic times.

So, their Y DNA originally was probably mostly G2a, I2a, T, H, R1b1(xM269), and E1b-M78(That's what Neolithic Y DNA suggests, see here) and their overall genetic makeup would have been like Middle Neolithic European genomes(40-50 WHG, 60-50 ENF).

When using ANE K8 to estimate Middle Neolithic Spanish(Basque, Iberian, and related speakers?), Bronze age German, and Middle Eastern(NW Africa, Near East) proportions for Iberians, most come out with even amounts of Bronze age German/MN Spanish and the remaining being Middle Eastern. Basque though come out ~70% MN Spanish and ~30% Bronze age German, with no Middle Eastern.
 

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