Bronze Age mtDNA from South Bavaria

berun

Regular Member
Messages
1,084
Reaction score
183
Points
0
Results of the paper Female exogamy and patrilocality at the transition from Final Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age in Southern Germany might be available after the Scales of Movement in Early Village Societies workshop (24/11/2016):

The transition from the late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age in Central Europe is a time period for which human mobility has been vividly debated in archaeological research. This presentation contributes to these considerations using an interdisciplinary approach that integrates ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis, the determination of stable isotope ratios of strontium and oxygen in tooth enamel, and archaeological analysis of radiocarbon dated skeletal remains. They represent 83 human individuals from 6 sites of the Bell Beaker Complex and the early Bronze Age in the Lech Valley in Southern Bavaria, Germany. Mitochondrial DNA analysis documented a diversification of haplogroups over time. Strontium and oxygen isotope ratios disclosed more than half of the females to be non-local, while there were only single occurrences among the male and subadult individuals. This striking pattern of patrilocality and female exogamy prevailed between about 2500 and 1700 BC. It was independent of individual sites and their archaeological assignments to the Bell Beaker Complex or the Early Bronze Age. While the males ensured settlement continuity in a spatially limited area, the results indicate that the females were driving forces for regional and supra-regional communication and exchange at the dawn of the European Metal Ages.


One of the authors is Prof. Krause. The abstract seems to point that BB continually added extra mtDNAs and would confirm the high "exchange" of women in such culture. The autosomal effects of such extended exchanges is to be taken into account... Even so we know that BB provided in Germany their first R1b so that at least a first big migration of R1b must be accounted there.

The Lech Valley allows farming in the north, but in the south there is too rainfall to allow agriculture so that (cow)herders could inhabit long there. My bet is that such level of exchange is debt to the long travels that cowherders did. Per example even today there are in Spain cowherders that travel some 500 km from their winter station to their summer station in Andalusia.

After the BB the local culture of the area studied suppossedly was the Arbon culture (but not known graves!), so that whichever mtDNA they have found for such period it would be from outliers...(?). It's interesting that by 1700 BC, when such patrilocal system ended, the region was got by the Tumulus Culture, the precedessor of the Urnfiel culture, precedessor of the Hallstat culture, precedessor of the Celts.
 
This would confirm my 2009 hypothesis that when PIE invasions in central and western Europe (R1b branch) were mostly led by male explorers and conquerors who took local wives, becoming increasingly hybridised autosomally over time (very much like the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, especially in Mexico and the Andes). They probably practised polygamy like many traditional herding societies, considering how quickly haplogroup R1b spread. This theory explains why modern western European have far more Neolithic mtDNA than Steppe mtDNA. The patrilocality observed here means that the PIE invaders had a higher status and 'imported' wives a bit everywhere from the local populations. After a few centuries, the central and western European population had become genetically hybridised and culturally Indo-Europeanised, and the true Proto-Italo-Celtic and Proto-Germanic cultures emerged. 1700 BCE not only marks the transition to the Tumulus culture (Proto-Italo-Celtic) but also of the Nordic Bonze Age (Proto-Germanic).
 
I imagine a surplus of young men and women were produced, many of whom who would emigrate, maybe the females to mary into another tribe and the males to found a new colony elsewhere.
 
This would confirm my 2009 hypothesis that when PIE invasions in central and western Europe (R1b branch) were mostly led by male explorers and conquerors who took local wives, becoming increasingly hybridised autosomally over time (very much like the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, especially in Mexico and the Andes). They probably practised polygamy like many traditional herding societies, considering how quickly haplogroup R1b spread. This theory explains why modern western European have far more Neolithic mtDNA than Steppe mtDNA.

How do you explain then that Corded Ware (pro-Yamnaya) delivered R1a into the region even if Yamnayans had the "Armenian" R1b, but Bell Beakers (from Iberia) provided there the "Westerner" R1b by sure? Archaeology is not supporting such pattern to me.

Of course we don't have yet any R1b of the right clade in Chalco Iberia, but also this problem is in Yamanya (but worse as Yamnayans delivered to the area several male waves if believing the last paper about chromosome X). None of such wave was "Armenian". So where such clade was hiding then...?
 
How do you explain then that Corded Ware (pro-Yamnaya) delivered R1a into the region even if Yamnayans had the "Armenian" R1b, but Bell Beakers (from Iberia) provided there the "Westerner" R1b by sure? Archaeology is not supporting such pattern to me.

Of course we don't have yet any R1b of the right clade in Chalco Iberia, but also this problem is in Yamanya (but worse as Yamnayans delivered to the area several male waves if believing the last paper about chromosome X). None of such wave was "Armenian". So where such clade was hiding then...?

Just read my R1a and R1b pages. I am not going to re-explain everything.
 
I imagine a surplus of young men and women were produced, many of whom who would emigrate, maybe the females to mary into another tribe and the males to found a new colony elsewhere.


If PIE practised polygamy, then it would automatically lead to an excess of single men, who would have be compelled to seek brides abroad. If land was also controlled by a few powerful men in the PIE tribes, young men with no land nor marrying prospect would have left and sought to conquer new lands and find brides abroad, among less technologically advanced peoples. If the PIE were warrior-like (a pretty well established fact, I believe) and they were militarily superior (metal weapons, horses), that would have been relatively easy. So they had the motives and the means. The rest is history, as they say...
 
Just read my R1a and R1b pages. I am not going to re-explain everything.

OK, let's go.

R1a is thought to have been the dominant haplogroup among the northern and eastern Proto-Indo-European language speakers, that evolved into the Indo-Iranian, Thracian, Baltic and Slavic branches. The Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in the Yamna culture (3300-2500 BCE). Their dramatic expansion was possible thanks to an early adoption of bronze weapons and the domestication of the horse in the Eurasian steppes (circa 4000-3500 BCE). The southern Steppe culture is believed to have carried predominantly R1b (M269 and M73) lineages, while the northern forest-steppe culture would have been essentially R1a-dominant. The first expansion of the forest-steppe people occured with the Corded Ware Culture (see Germanic branch below). The migration of the R1b people to central and Western Europe left a vacuum for R1a people in the southern steppe around the time of the Catacomb culture (2800-2200 BCE). The forest-steppe origin of this culture is obvious from the introduction of corded pottery and the abundant use of polished battle axes, the two most prominent features of the Corded Ware culture.

No ancient Y DNA samples from southern steppe. No Yamnayans found in the forest-steppe region (all maps point that this culture spread all over the European steppe). All known Yamnayans were "Armenian" R1b-Z2103, which don't fit a R1a expansion.

The archeological and genetic evidence (distribution of R1b subclades) point at several consecutive waves towards eastern and central Germany between 2800 BCE and 2300 BCE. The Unetice culture was probably the first culture in which R1b-L11 lineages played a major role. It is interesting to note that the Unetice period happen to correspond to the end of the Maykop (2500 BCE) and Kemi Oba (2200 BCE) cultures on the northern shores of the Black Sea, and their replacement by cultures descended from the northern steppes. It can therefore be envisaged that the (mostly) R1b population from the northern half of the Black Sea migrated westward due to pressure from other Indo-European people (R1a) from the north, for example that of the burgeoning Proto-Indo-Iranian branch, linked to the contemporary Poltavka and Abashevo cultures.
The three known samples of the Unetice culture were I2. And how a bunch of herders were able to colonize Corded Ware Europe and also expand to conquer their Pontic neighbours?

It is doubtful that the Bell Beaker culture (2800-1900 BCE) in Western Europe was already Indo-European because its attributes are in perfect continuity with the native Megalithic cultures. The Beaker phenomenon started during the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic in Portugal and propagated to the north-east towards Germany. During the same period Bronze Age steppe cultures spread from Germany in the opposite direction towards Iberia, France and Britain, progressively bringing R1b lineages into the Bell Beaker territory. It is more likely that the beakers and horses found across Western Europe during that period were the result of trade with neighbouring Indo-European cultures, including the first wave of R1b into Central Europe. It is equally possible that the Beaker people were R1b merchants or explorers who travelled across Western Europe and brought back tales of riches poorly defended by Stone Age people waiting to be to be conquered. This would have prompted a full-scale Indo-European (R1b) invasion from about 2500 BCE in Germany, reaching the Atlantic (north of the Pyrenees at least) around 2200 BCE.

The simple process would be to thing that such new R1b in Germany were carried by the BB itself (along extra mtDNA H and Iberian auDNA). Otherwise which archaeological evidences do you have for such BB+R1b invasion in France around 2200 ?

Ancient DNA tests conducted by Lee et al. (2012), Haak et al. (2015) and Allentoft et al. (2015) have all confirmed the presence of R1b-L51 (and deeper subclades such as P312 and U152) in Germany from the Bell Beaker period onwards, but none in earlier cultures. German Bell Beaker R1b samples only had about 50% of Yamna autosomal DNA and often possessed Neolithic non-Steppe mtDNA, which confirms that R1b invaders took local wives as they advanced westward. DNA samples from the Unetice culture (2300-1600 BCE) in Germany, which emerged less than two centuries after the apperance of the first R1b individuals in the late Bell Beaker Germany, had a slightly higher percentage of Yamna ancestry (60~65%) and of Yamna-related mtDNA lineages, which indicates a migration of both steppe men and women. That would explain why archeological artefacts from the Unetice culture are clearly Yamna-related (i.e. Indo-European), as they abruptly introduced new technologies and a radically different lifestyle, while the Bell Beaker culture was in direct continuity with previous Neolithic or Chalcolithic cultures.

I must consider also that Yamnyans also had I2 concealed somewhere in the steppes? Or that the ruling R1b elite had a big problem with their wifes prefering to deal most with I2 men?

R1b men may simply have conquered the Bell Beaker people and overthrown the local rulers without obliterating the old culture due to their limited numbers. Taking the analogy of the Germanic migrations in the Late Antiquity, the R1b invasion of the Bell Beaker period was more alike to that of the Goths, Burgunds and Vandals, who all migrated in small numbers, created new kingdoms within the Roman empire, but adopted Latin language and Roman culture. In contrast, the Corded Ware and Unetice culture involved large-scale migrations of steppe people, who imposed their Indo-European language and culture and conquered people, just like the Anglo-Saxons or the Bavarians did in the 5th century.

It's necessary to accept so that R1b-L51 appeared in the southern steppes of the Yamnyans (no samples), when all eastern tested Yamnayans were R1b-Z2103, and that both clades were sweept by the northern Yamnayans... (but they were all R1a). But even so the L51 refugees were quite smart to impose over the expanding BB culture, changing so their ruling class. Sorry but I prefer Asimov.
 
Results of the paper Female exogamy and patrilocality at the transition from Final Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age in Southern Germany might be available after the Scales of Movement in Early Village Societies workshop (24/11/2016):


Female exogamy and patrilocality is confirmed by genetic observations. Yamnaya People & Unetice BB culture from Western Europe at early bronze age share common MT-DNA (for example Bronze age Yamnaya sample I0440(age 2880-2665BC) and Unetice I0117 (age 2199-2064 BC) are both Mt-DNA I3a with same mutations, they were parent by the mother line) but not Y-DNA, so far none of them are parent by a male line. and IE langage reflect well such traditions as Female exogamy and patrilocality. Based on these observations, we can say that women were certainly an obvious vector of gene and culture and language transmission specialy between the Steppes and Western Europe.
 
Last edited:
I 've some doubt about the female biased eternal language transmission; what tells us the Y haplos and mt Haplos compared to languages? (with some excetions it's true): in Europe, in Steppes ??? Look at Kazakhstan transition and others (Finland). Not so clear.
 
I 've some doubt about the female biased eternal language transmission; what tells us the Y haplos and mt Haplos compared to languages? (with some excetions it's true): in Europe, in Steppes ??? Look at Kazakhstan transition and others (Finland). Not so clear.
The human baby is educated by women. The first words he is taught are by women. His 1st language is the maternal one. Almost all IE languages used the same sounds for "Mum". Finish is uralic type.
 
The human baby is educated by women. The first words he is taught are by women. His 1st language is the maternal one. Almost all IE languages used the same sounds for "Mum". Finish is uralic type.
Almost all languages on Earth kids use use mum or mama for mother. That's because first spoken sound of infants is mamamamamama. Other sounds like baba, tata, dada, nana are used for other family members, but without strong preferences for same family member. For example baba means father in hindu but grandma in Slavic languages.

Otherwise you are right that first language is taught by mother.
 
Almost all languages on Earth kids use use mum or mama for mother. That's because first spoken sound of infants is mamamamamama. Other sounds like baba, tata, dada, nana are used for other family members, but without strong preferences for same family member. For example baba means father in hindu but grandma in Slavic languages.

Otherwise you are right that first language is taught by mother.
Other thing , I don't know if I am right but the Basque culture gives us an example of the link between the Mt-DNA and the Language. Basque Language has nothing to do with the other IE lanuages and is supposed to be one of the oldest european language, Then It's rather surprising to find the newbie Y-DNA R1b-M269 at high level among the Basques, in the other hand, it 's quite satisfactory that the oldest European Mt-DNA U8 of Paleolithic origin for example is found at the highest level among the Basques people who are using a language whose some says it's of paleolithic origin. Then we observe, again, among the Basques a kind of relationship between the Mt-DNA and the language transmission but no link with the Y-DNA. I don't know if I am clear.
 
Other thing , I don't know if I am right but the Basque culture gives us an example of the link between the Mt-DNA and the Language. Basque Language has nothing to do with the other IE lanuages and is supposed to be one of the oldest european language, Then It's rather surprising to find the newbie Y-DNA R1b-M269 at high level among the Basques, in the other hand, it 's quite satisfactory that the oldest European Mt-DNA U8 of Paleolithic origin for example is found at the highest level among the Basques people who are using a language whose some says it's of paleolithic origin. Then we observe, again, among the Basques a kind of relationship between the Mt-DNA and the language transmission but no link with the Y-DNA. I don't know if I am clear.
It seems to be the case. Basque might as well be the original language of first farmers who came from Anatolia. Though heavily modified after 7 thousand years.
 
After some 4000 km and some 3000 years the EEF arrived to the Pyrenees, were we find R1b-V88 and E. No cases in the middle. As I think that EEF had not airplanes I'm inclined to think that not all EEF clades have been found or that there were Mesolithic clades that got the farmer train. In Iberia these cases could be amplified by the extension of the territory as well as by the diverse ecosystems present.
 
By the way the case of women speaking Basque and R1b men speaking IE only could be supported for Celtic, Latin and Spanish.
 
The human baby is educated by women. The first words he is taught are by women. His 1st language is the maternal one. Almost all IE languages used the same sounds for "Mum". Finish is uralic type.

Some Bretons of the low nobility in Brittany until the 19°Cy were breast-feeded and nursed by Breton speaking wet-nurses in a surrounding world of Breton speakers but they knew and spoke French spite having heard far more Breton at first! Could you imagine dominant classes seeing their first (direct) descendants speaking another language than their own?
 
Some Bretons of the low nobility in Brittany until the 19°Cy were breast-feeded and nursed by Breton speaking wet-nurses in a surrounding world of Breton speakers but they knew and spoke French spite having heard far more Breton at first! Could you imagine dominant classes seeing their first (direct) descendants speaking another language than their own?
In this case, no doubt , the children kept deep rooted Breton language in mind but they learn the french language for social ascension. A kind of balance between maternal language and state elite language happens often. Some time the balance is in favor of state sometimes not. Latin and French were written spoken in use by the Brits elite until 1400, then finaly they , all social layers including the elite, started to use their own popular English maternal language. I think if the state elite language didn't arrive to be used by the popular social layers , then the state language has no chance to survive. If French is still in use in Brittany nowadays, it's because it was also used by Breton people, nothing else.
 
- for I know the first babies sounds are rather ‘baba’ or ‘papa’, before ‘mama’ (nasalised sound which requires a lowering of the soft palate (velum) - ‘dada’, ‘tata’ seem coming a little bit later in the baby’s mouth - it is surprising that the basis for a lot of words meaning ‘mother’ seems coming after the basis used for ‘father’ or other family words (frequently the basis ‘baba’ and ‘dada’ seem more often used for male relatives) – I’ve no answer to date for this question -
- the meaning put in these primary sounds are adults interpretations, not the babies ones – apparently the rôle of the male genitor or « social father » is not so small, spite it’s the mums or the nurses who are the most often in contact with babies -
- all that tell us nothing concerning « language » transmission -
- it seems evident the first language heard tends to be the mother’s one ; if it is the father’s one, no problem – if mothers and fathers speak as a rule different languages (« maternal » or not!) we are in front of a lot of different situations : social level / political organisation of both, levels of both cultures, pop’ number of both ethnies – I doubt things are so simple than believed sometimes – and I doubt a dominating male elite in sufficient number (even if the ruled peole are more numerous) leaved its sons to speak a foreign language of vanquished people ; it depends on the way of mixing : a progressive absorbtion of foreign females going along a progressive colonization of new lands don’t give way – according to me – to the lost of the elite langage – I can think the colonisation by male warriors far from their basis and taking in a generation or two numerous local foreign wives can lead to the lost of this elite warriors langage, even quickly then ( I’ve no example to give, I only imagine here)– Franks lost their langage (in Gaul only) but it took some generations and they were maybe in a position of cultural inferiority (in their own minds) and I suppose it occurs in an alliance system with ancient local elites ; the role of females here is not so evident, I did not hear of polygamy among Franks at the time they lost their Germanic language -

- I don’t see the Roman (Latin) language was the result of Roman mothers to Gaulish children -
- I don’t see the Turkic language in Kazakhstan was the result of East Asian females -
- The curious « normanno-french-anglo-saxon » aspect of English is the result of a complicated history with changes in the status of diverse elites and a feudal system of matrimonial exchanges and alliances of elites -
- Finnish in Finland is not the result of only females ruled by more « European » males ; a big number of these males were Finnic speaking too ; it’s even the contrary ; it’s the female DNA which is the more « European » in Finland -
- we have only the Basque question ; but do we know what languages were spoken by the diverse branches of Y-R1b in Europe or elsewhere ? In specific conditions males as well as females can change langague after some generations of diglossia, it depends on several conditions as I write above -
- in fact every language shift deserves a peculiar study – but it seems to me the most often the langages shifts occurred with new male elites against ancient male elites ; I don’t see an evident sex biased transmission in favor of females -

Voyager I don't disagree completely with you - but in a mix males elite - vanquished females, the children are - I think - quickly bilingue, after it depends of status - oor the most -
 
- I doubt a dominating male elite in sufficient number (even if the ruled peole are more numerous) leaved its sons to speak a foreign language of vanquished people -
Looks at William the Conqueror, Father line from the elite Viking warrior , mother was from french popular social layer. What language did he talk? answer: French, all these Normans did not understand even a Nordic word. All talked the local French of that time. How do you explain that? I think examples like that are numerous. And I believe the Frank nobles lost their Germanic roots in France by the same mechanism in few generations, exactly the same story as the English language.
 
Discutable: he and his fellows were already incorporated in a network of feudal-like INDIVIDUAL relations where ethnic and clannic concepts were evacuated. To answer our question we need examples of FIRST GENERATION abandon of male elite languages due to foreign mothers input. I don't think things are so simple... But I'm ready to accept if we can have several sincere esxamples.
 

This thread has been viewed 17212 times.

Back
Top