When can we expect aDNA from Iberian Bell Beaker? Did they come to Iberia by boats?

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Carleton S. Coon wrote this about Bell Beakers - he suggested, that they sailed to Iberia from the East:

(7) THE COPPER AGE IN EUROPE NORTH OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
LANDS: DANUBIAN MOVEMENTS AND BELL BEAKERS

(...)

While Copper Age civilization was thus spreading westward along the
Danube and the lands to the north, a countermovement in the form of the
Bell Beaker invasion travelled eastward from the Rhine to the Danube,
and as far as Poland and Hungary. The remains of these Bell Beaker people
occupy single graves or groups of graves, rather than whole cemeteries;
they were apparently wandering traders, trafficking in metals, for their
gold spirals have been found in Danish graves of the corridor-tomb period.
They were thus in all likelihood rivals of the Battle-Axe people in their
search for amber.
It is not known how they went from Spain to central Europe. Sporadic
finds in France and northern Italy suggest the Rh6ne-Rhine and the
Brenner Pass routes as alternatives. 61 In neither case is the evidence very
satisfactory, and neither excludes the other. From the Rhine Valley as a center,
Bell Beaker expeditions moved eastward into Bohemia, Austria, Poland,
and Hungary; those who took part in these movements were eventually
absorbed into the local populations. The Bell Beaker people who
remained in the Rhinelands, however, came into intimate contact with the
Corded people, who had invaded from the east and northeast, and with the
corridor-tomb megalithic population to the north, whose domain extended
down into the Netherlands. These three, of which the Bell Beaker
element formed perhaps the dominant one, amalgamated to form an
Early Bronze Age cultural unit, the so-called Zoned Beaker people, who
invaded England and Scotland as the first important carriers of metal.
The Bell Beaker physical type is known to us from sixty or more skulls
from scattered burials in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, and
Hungary. 62 Of these, about one-third are truly brachycephalic, while
the others are, almost without exception, mesocephals. In the Rhine
country around Worms, three-fourths or more of the Bell Beaker crania are
brachycephalic; in Austria, one finds an equally high ratio; but in Bohemia
and Poland the high brachycephaly becomes less frequent, and at
Tokol in Hungary, in a series of ten crania, four are mesocephalic and
six are dolichocephalic.
63
So high is the mesocephalic ratio, and except for Hungary, so infrequent
the truly long-headed crania associated with this type, that the
mesocephals are clearly one branch of the main type, and not the product
of local mixture with long heads. Morphologically, the mesocephals are
essentially Bell Beaker.
The series of skulls from the Rhineland, including nine adult males, is
the most suitable for comparison (see Appendix I, col. 21). It is identical
in the cranial index mean with that of Furst's forty-four male Bronze Age
skulls from Cyprus, which have already been studied, and which have
been called Dinaric. The Rhenish crania are a little larger in vault dimensions,
and particularly in height; but are almost identical facially. Morphologically,
the two groups are also similar, but the Bell Beaker group is
more extreme in many ways; the browridges are often heavy, the general
ruggedness frequently greater. The faces are characteristically narrow, the
orbits medium to high, the nasal skeleton high and aquiline; the occiput
frequently flat. The stature for six males reached the high mean of 177 cm.
The deviation of the Rhenish Bell Beaker skulls, such as it is, from the
Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Dinaric form, lies in a Borreby direction.
It is, therefore, more than likely that the invaders mixed with the
descendants of the earlier Neolithic brachycephals, whose territory
stretched along the North Sea coast from southern Sweden to Belgium.
On the whole, however, at the period represented by the Worms crania,
the eastern or Dinaric element was the more important.
The Spanish Bell Beaker problem now stands in a somewhat clearer light
than before. The Dinaric type, with which the Rhenish Bell beakers are
associated, is one which entered the western Mediterranean by sea from
the east, and eventually moved, by some route yet to be determined in
an accurate manner, to the north, and eventually to central Europe.

The paucity of brachycephals in Spain may be due to the paucity of remains
of this culture in general. It is still possible, one might add, that
certain North African elements became involved in the Bell Beaker racial
type, but such an accretion is unnecessary and hardly likely.
The Bell Beaker people were probably the first intrusive brachycephals.
to enter the Austrian Alps, and the mountains of northeastern Bohemia,
for the push of Lake Dwelling Alpines southeastward toward the Balkans
happened later in the Bronze Age. (...)
In their Rhineland center, the more numerous Bell Beaker people had
constant relationships with the inhabitants of Denmark, who were still
burying in corridor tombs. Furthermore, the Corded people, one branch
of whom invaded Jutland and introduced the single-grave type of burial,
also migrated to the Rhine Valley, and here amalgamated themselves
with the Bell Beaker people, who were already in process of mixing with
their Borreby type neighbors. The result of this triple fusion was a great
expansion, and a population overflow down the Rhine, in the direction
of Britain.

(8) THE BRONZE AGE IN BRITAIN

The consideration of the Bell Beaker problem leads naturally to that of
the Bronze Age in the British Isles, where the Beaker people found their
most important and most lasting home. Coming down the Rhine and out
into the North Sea, they invaded the whole eastern coast of England and
of Scotland, and also the shore of the Channel.
The Beaker invasion of Britain was not a simple affair. Not only did the
newcomers land in many places, but they brought with them somewhat
different traditions. Although most of them brought zoned beakers and
battle axes, in consequence of their blending with the Corded people in
the Rhinelands, others, with the older type of bell beakers and with stone
wrist-guards of Spanish inspiration, seem to have entered unaffected by
Corded influence.
Like their predecessors the Long Barrow people, the new invaders who
went to England chose open lands for settlement, and eschewed the forest
of the Midlands, and the Weald of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent. Yorkshire
with its moors was a favorite spot, while other centers were Wiltshire and
Gloucestershire in the south, and Derbyshire and Staffordshire in between.
64 On the whole, the Beaker people chose the same regions which
had attracted the builders of the long barrows, except that the concentration
in Yorkshire was an innovation. The Beaker people did not exterminate
the Long Barrow people, who continued for a while to build
their characteristic earth-covered vaults, in some of which Beaker pots
have actually been found. The remains of the newcomers, however, are
always buried singly under round barrows, of a type which the Corded
people contributed to the Zoned Beaker complex.
In comparison with the Continent, Great Britain contains a great plenty
of Beaker skeletal material. The invasions which reached this island
brought the wholesale migration of a large population. Over two hundred
and sixty crania from England alone have been preserved and studied.
Out of a series of one hundred and fifty exhaustively analyzed by Morant,
the brachycephals exceed the pure long heads in the ratio of three to one,
while the intermediate forms are about equal in number to the latter.
This segregation would indicate that the blending between the Corded
racial element and its round-headed companions was incomplete at the
time of invasion, as well as afterward. In all the regions from which a
considerable number of skulls have been taken, the proportion between
round heads and long heads is constant, and this would indicate that the
survivors of the Long Barrow people were not buried in the tombs of the
invaders.
The Bronze Age people of England, as represented by this Beaker
series, were clearly heterogeneous. The three ancestral elements which met
in the Rhinelands may be distinguished easily. All three were tall, and
the mean stature of the whole group was about 174 cm.

He suggests, that Beaker Folks came to Spain from the East, but by boats, via the Mediterranean Sea?

And later on, they started spreading from Iberia towards Central Europe, then from there to Britain?

We really need aDNA samples from early Iberian Bell Beaker culture.
 
And this is what Coon wrote about Bronze Age people in Ireland:

He associated them with Bell Beaker physical type and he was right as we know today from aDNA.

He wrote, that they could come from either Iberia or Central Europe:

The thirty odd known Irish skeletons
of the Bronze Age, taken from short cists, were associated with food vessels
in most cases, or at least when there is known to have been any pottery.

The series as a whole 70 (see Appendix I, col. 26) is tall and slender
boned; the skulls, almost exclusively brachycephalic, are often thin walled;
the bony relief is rarely as prominent as in the British specimens. Metrically,
the Irish crania are narrower headed and narrower faced than the
Scottish, and are almost identical with the Adlersburg group in Germany,
and quite close to the series from Cyprus.
Their most notable difference
from the British group, which confirms their similarity to the skulls from
Cyprus, is in their narrow facial breadth. In this and in many other ways,
the Scottish skulls are intermediate between the English and the Irish.

The Irish Bronze Age people who were buried in association with food
vessels were, therefore, members of the racial type which was originally
linked with the Beaker complex
, without the associated Borreby and
Corded elements. Childe finds possible prototypes of the food vessels both
in Germany and in Spain.
71 Without doubt, in any case, there were movements
from northern Spain and the western end of the Pyrenees during
the Bronze Age, which brought halberds to Ireland, and thence to Scotland,
along with other cultural innovations. These movements were quite
late, but so, in all probability, was the spread of the Food Vessel people,
who often incinerated.
It is necessary to choose between two routes of invasion for the Food
Vessel people, for they were obviously not indigenous. The first, from
Germany and Holland, would be somehow separate from the Beaker invasions,
but yet would bring the most basic Beaker physical element. The
second is from Spain, where the Beaker people were probably only one of
a number of related brachycephalic groups.
(...)

Food vessels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Vessel
 
Iberian Bell Beaker will have R1b-DF27, no doubt about it.
 
Carleton S. Coon wrote this about Bell Beakers - he suggested, that they sailed to Iberia from the East:



He suggests, that Beaker Folks came to Spain from the East, but by boats, via the Mediterranean Sea?

And later on, they started spreading from Iberia towards Central Europe, then from there to Britain?

We really need aDNA samples from early Iberian Bell Beaker culture.

if they came by boat, why did they not head north if they where travelling east to west?
 
@FireHaired
Y-R1b-DF27 seems to me come from North, not the opposite way. I see nothing evident linking them with first genuine BBs if these ones came from South.
@Sile
I've nothing to prove it, just a suggestion: BBs could have been a branch of a larger group, and thise branch could have developped its specific style of pottery by partial isolation in SW Iberia before coming the new "in the wind" fashion? surely a good archeologist could find some prototypes of these beakers in East in preceding periods...
 
Double post.
 
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if they came by boat, why did they not head north if they where travelling east to west?

I've just found this map (which potentially explains both links to Yamna, and arrival by boats suggested by Coon):

https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/295267319296329269/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemi_Oba_culture

d1b318e1baa43c586c481396fbe6c01a.jpg


But that immigration did not have much genetic impact in Sardinia (contrary to what this map might suggest).
 
I've just found this map (which potentially explains both links to Yamna, and arrival by boats suggested by Coon):

https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/295267319296329269/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemi_Oba_culture

d1b318e1baa43c586c481396fbe6c01a.jpg


But that immigration did not have much genetic impact in Sardinia (contrary to what this map might suggest).


This map is a complete fantasy. The distribution of R1b subclades does not follow at all such a migration pattern. You have U152 in Italy, S116* in southern Iberia, DF27 in the rest of Spain and eventually L21 in Brittany and the British Isles - and it still doesn't account for all the Germanic U106. The only expansion pattern that works is a split of R1b subclade in Germany.
 
This map is a complete fantasy. The distribution of R1b subclades does not follow at all such a migration pattern. You have U152 in Italy, S116* in southern Iberia, DF27 in the rest of Spain and eventually L21 in Brittany and the British Isles - and it still doesn't account for all the Germanic U106. The only expansion pattern that works is a split of R1b subclade in Germany.

the theory behind the map is that Csepel Bell Beakers (2500 BC) are backmigrations of Portuguese Bell Beakers (2900 BC)
acording to linguists proto-Celtic should have developped in a subsequent stage, north of the Alps

it could explain R1b distribution if you asign Portuguese Bell Beaker to R1b-L11 and Csepel Bell Beaker to R1b-P312
Jutland Bell Beakers would then be R1b-U106
it would also match estimated TRMCA

also recently discovered Rathlin R1b-L21 DNA matches
 
the problem is that this stelae track (surely from Koch or Cunliffe?) supposed to cover AND BBs AND Celts genesis, doesn' t correspond to BBs places of occupation, or only from very far; the BBs propagation (for what I red) is rather from North or Central Portugal to South Portugal West Andalusia, and then northwards to Old Castlie, France, Catalunia, and then Northwards AND eastwards in central Europe.
Aside of that, I'm not sure the bulk of R-L11 was in S-W Iberia at first, rather I think the contrary, as said Maciamo: I see the demographic expansion of R1b P312 in west-central Europe -the today distribution of downstream SNPs leaves little doubt, I think, whatever the dates.
This doesn't exclude that first BBs (R1B or not) came from East. But the precise point of origin is still a mystery to me. Not by force CYprus or Anatolia as it seems Coon thought.
I still think genuine BBs whatever their remote origin, weighted little demically speaking spite their cultural influence upon diverse local elites, except some places here and there. I think late BBs were not the genetic sons of early BBs, or only in a very low level. Maybe I'm wrong, I wait more? THey diluted themselves among others.
 
One theory says that Beaker folks emerged as a mixture of Western Yamnaya and Vucedol peoples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vučedol_culture

This is what Marija Gimbutas wrote:

The Bell Beaker culture of western Europe which diffused between 2500 and 2100 B.C. between central Europe, the British Isles, and the Iberian Peninsula, could not have arisen in a vacuum. The mobile horse-riding and warrior people who buried their dead in Yamna type kurgans certainly could not have developed out of any west European culture. We must ask what sort of ecology and ideology created these people, and where are the roots of the specific Bell Beaker equipment and their burial rites. In my view, the Bell Beaker cultural elements derive from Vucedol and Kurgan (Late Yamna) traditions.

The specific correspondence between the Yamna, Late Vucedol, and Bell Beaker complexes is visible in burial rites which include grave pits under round barrows, the coexistence of cremation and inhumation rites, and the construction of mortuary houses.
(FIGURE 10-38) In armaments we see tanged or riveted triangular daggers made of arsenic copper, spear points of arsenic copper and flint, concave-based or tanged triangular arrowheads of flint, and arrow straighteners. In ornaments there are necklaces of canine teeth, copper tubes, or bird bones; boar tusks; and crescent-shaped pendants resembling breast plates. In solar symbolism we find sun or star motifs excised and white encrusted on the inside of braziers, or incised on bone or amber button-shaped beads. Techniques of ceramic decoration include stamping or gouging in zoned metopes, encrustation with white paste of delicate geometric motifs, zigzags, dashes, nets, lozenges, and dots or circles (a Baden-Kostolac-Vucedol tradition). Certain ceramic forms placed in graves, such as braziers and beakers, are from the Kurgan tradition. The Bell Beaker people, wherever they spread, continued the traditional ceramic art connected with their faith. Only the ritual importance of their uniquely beautiful stereotyped beakers could have motivated their production for hundreds of years in lands far from the homeland. The correspondences linking the Bell Beaker and Yamna with the Vucedol - in armament, costume, funeral rites, beliefs in life after death, and in symbolism - are precisely the most significant and revealing. It is very likely that the Bell Beaker complex is an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamna traditions formed after the incursion of the Yamna people into the milieu of the Vucedol culture, i.e., in the course of 300 to 400 years after 3000-2900 B.C.

Source:

M. Gimbutas, "The Civilization of the Goddess", pages 390-391.

Area of Vucedol culture:

Vucedol_culture_map.png


Compare with the map that I posted in post #826:

Kemi_Oba_plus_Vucedol.png


Maybe Beaker folks emerged when Kemi Oba culture (a branch of Yamnaya) invaded and mixed with Vucedol folks ???
 
I've just found this map (which potentially explains both links to Yamna, and arrival by boats suggested by Coon):

https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/295267319296329269/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemi_Oba_culture

d1b318e1baa43c586c481396fbe6c01a.jpg


But that immigration did not have much genetic impact in Sardinia (contrary to what this map might suggest).


they were apparently wandering traders, trafficking in metals

The result of this triple fusion was a great expansion, and a population overflow down the Rhine, in the direction
of Britain.

It's pleasing for me that little ideas i had mainly from looking at maps are the same as old ideas from skulls.

I think that map is likely correct except i'd add the possibility of a third stream north of the Carpathians to the Baltic and then North Sea with all three streams ending up fighting over the Isles.

I think some of Maciamo's maps hint at some of it also, for example L21 (if the label hasn't changed) looks to me like it may have been more widespread along the coast once and got pushed back by an expansion from the Rhine mouth area

http://www.disnorge.no/cms/system/files/offentlige_filer/Haplogroup-R1b-L21 Eupedia.gif

https://thecampblogbymike.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/haplogroup-r1b-s21.gif

It works especially if some of the source populations were originally small (e.g. traders/miners) but then expanded in size when they reached the Atlantic.

nb if this is correct they don't all have to be traders/artisans e.g. the ones taking the route through Hungary could still be migrating tribes.

#

I think that map is likely correct

By this I don't mean 100% accurate or anything - just that I think it gives the right general idea of a common source population taking different routes because of the physical geography.
 
if they came by boat, why did they not head north if they where travelling east to west?

Not sure if you mean this but i think Brittany is likely the key for the maritime group (if they existed) and Danube->Rhinemouth or Rhone-Rhinemouth is the key for another.

These groups eventually creating Atlantic Bronze (then maybe getting beat up later by iron age La Tene.)
 
the problem is that this stelae track (surely from Koch or Cunliffe?) supposed to cover AND BBs AND Celts genesis, doesn' t correspond to BBs places of occupation, or only from very far ...

Speculative story based on that map

stage 1) originally the stelae ppl are (ed: farmers?) in the Crimea getting hassled by PIE raiders and so first migration is some of them moving to Greece, Anatolia, southern Italy, Cyprus etc (east med by sea basically)

stage 2) PIE raiders take over original territory, mixing with the locals and adopting the stelae

stage 3) mixed PIE/stelae ppl expand down west coast of Black sea and into Hungary (tribal migration) but blocked for some time by LBK

stage 4) trader/artisan outriders from the blocked tribes split from main group with some taking the river route (ed:to Rhine mouth) and some the sea route to Iberia

stage 5) some of the trader/artisan groups expand along the Atlantic coast (maybe in under populated areas) and then hassle LBK from the west with bronze

stage 6) later whichever group ended up in Bohemia/Switzerland pushes the Atlantic Bronze ppl back cos they got all the iron.
 
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@ Not impossible... I don't know if first Stelae people were agriculturalists by origin, lack of detailed knowledge here (where were the first traces?).
My general point is still that BBs were never a huge population at first, except some local hotspots. I'm still perplex concerning their links with the P312-Y-R1b of Atlantic Europe...
nos vad deoc'h.
 

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