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The correlation between R1b and Bell Beaker is stunning...i wonder what were other I, G, J, E men doing at that time?? How is possible that they didn't partecipate in this expansions?
BB must have been a really closed sect of drunk archers
We have only been looking for DF27 since the summer of 2012. Before that, for about a year, we were looking for Z196. [More recently replaced by the equivalent Z195, which is easier to test with a chip.] And before that, it was just P312* (not U152, not L21, what the heck can it be?).
DF27 is hard to test, especially with one pass in one direction, so it doesn't show up in most chip tests. And even with NextGen sequencing, it can only be teased out of the BAM file with some luck. Deteriorated aDNA samples make that problem considerably worse. However: since 2012 it has become increasingly apparent that most of the old P312* (not U152, not L21) in western Europe was turning out to be DF27 -- though probably less than half of it will be Z195+. (And certainly there are other possibilities -- L238, DF99 and so on.)
Anyway, there are 25 samples in the new paper that qualify as P312* by the early 2011 standard (not U152, not L21). One of them (I0806, from present Quedlinburg, Germany) has previously been tagged as DF27+, and the upstream ZZ11+. Here's the whole list:
I2566
I5382
I1382
I1389
I1390
I0806
I3599
I4132
I5665
I2478
I4068
I4069
I4073
I4074
I5748
I5750
I7202
I2421
I2602
I5441
I7630
I2567
I2569
I5516
I5359
I expect that many of them were DF27+. Whether our BAM file wizards (Rich Rocca, Alex Williamson and others) are able to force them to admit it remains to be seen. Anyway, the embargo on those files has been lifted, and over the next few weeks a much closer look will be taken. So, stay tuned.
I was joking [emoji16].Drunk smiths and horse trainers is was I was thinking. Who preferred archery.
Here's an interview with David Reich where he speaks about this paper:
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/coming-focus
"So the question has always been, what propelled this spread? Was it movements of people or was it spread of this belief system, or some combination?We got data from more than 200 people from representative regions nearly everywhere the Beaker Complex was found—from Spain and Portugal to central and eastern Europe, from Italy and Sicily to Britain and the Netherlands. And we found that these populations were genetically heterogeneous. We found sites in Hungary and France where people with different ancestries, basically multiracial groups of people, are buried side by side with Beaker pots by their heads.
We found that the Beaker population in Iberia was genetically very different from the Beaker populations in central Europe. A very similar culture was shared by two biologically distinct groups. And the Iberian Beaker samples were genetically indistinguishable from the non-Beaker Iberians they lived among. One possible explanation is that a subgroup of people in Iberia developed a belief system that was different from that of their neighbors"
I was joking [emoji16].
They had horses in Spain/Portugal and Northern Europe but apparently not in Italy. While it was not so easy to import horses by ship in Sicily or Sardinia in Northern Italy it wasn't a problem but the first domesticated horses as far as i know appear for the fist time in the post-Beaker MBA contest of Barche di Solferino.
Excellent find, Jovialis...
Maciamo has always maintained, and many of us agreed, that in this case, pots were indeed just pots, not people. There wasn't a particular group of people who developed the pots and perhaps what was in them, a belief system, a burial system, as well as a certain kind of wrist guard, metallurgy etc. and then spread it.
Didn't a paper recently find that the wrist guards are earliest in the non-steppe admixed Beakers? Also, years ago, the blogger Maju had closely examined the finds in a Central European Bell Beaker grave and had pointed out the primitive nature of the artifacts. That was a good clue, I thought then, and think now. If memory serves, also the metallurgy of the first central European Beakers was practically non-existent, and when it did exist was pretty primitive.
So, perhaps, are we seeing a "new" group of people picking up not only the pots, and possibly the "religion" or belief system which went with it, the burial rites, but also the wrist guards and some better metallurgy. In that way, if I may be so bold as to disagree slightly with David Reich, the transformation would indeed have involved genetic admixture, with these "new" people absorbing MN genetics (probably somewhere in what is now Germany?) by admixture mostly with local women, and along with a new culture and new technology. With time, these now MN admixed "Beaker people" would also have gotten bronze metallurgy as it developed further east and southeast, and carried the whole "package" with them.
It's a pretty amazing example of how quickly people can absorb technology and beliefs and then run with it. It reminds me of what happened with chariot technology in the Near East. In fact, one of the things I admire about the "Indo-Europeans" is their adaptability and the way in which they can borrow and quickly absorb technology etc. from other peoples.
The other thing that strikes me is that it is incorrect to see Beakers as a Europe wide phenomenon. It wasn't: in fact, it was very scattered, as the maps above show, at least initially. Later it would diffuse.
Yes, i meant the first domesticated horses in Italy.
If i remember correctly apart from Central Europe, horses were tamed even in Copper age Spain or Portugal
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Ygorcs, if BB appear amidst CWC it was by war and by looting or exchanging females stealt or got also an extra steppe component (BB puts an end to CWC and R1a males), or the CWC said to BB come on to our lands and share your beer with us, getting then females with steppe after the fun. The case is that first BB had zero or much less steppe admixture, so coming directly from steppe is not a possibility. Now you MUST provide a culture and genetic trail for pre-BB people outside such areas.
If the bell-shaped phenomenon has its origin in Portugal, which is what sustains science, the hardest thing to believe is that it expanded to the center of Europe and beyond as a kind of fashion, without the intervention of people, since the phenomenon or whatever you want to call it, they were not only ceramic pieces, they were also a way of burying people that imply questions of deep beliefs and religious values, this is difficult to expand as a fashion.
Therefore, the most likely hypothesis would be:
Expansion of the phenomenon from Portugal to the rest of Europe and North Africa, by individuals mixing WHG and EEF without steppe, it is not known yet if these individuals were R1b or not and spoke an Indo-European or Basque language, time will tell, a mixture of these individuals with people from the steppe in central Europe and later expansion of this mixture to the rest of Europe including a reflux to the Iberian peninsula.
Who knows? In the chalcolithic settlement of Zambujal in Portugal there are some remains of horses, however their number increase suddently with the Bell Beaker..
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so the case that evens such R1b line was not from the steppe was right, when someone finds it in Kura-Araxes is what logics point out, even so some die-hard steppists said the Caucasian R1b was roaming almost lost there.
If the bell-shaped phenomenon has its origin in Portugal, ....the most likely hypothesis would be:
Expansion of the phenomenon from Portugal to the rest of Europe and North Africa, by individuals mixing WHG and EEF without steppe, it is not known yet if these individuals were R1b or not and they spoke an Indo-European or Basque or Iberian language, time will tell, mix of these individuals with people from the steppe in central Europe and later expansion of this mixture to the rest of Europe including a reflux towards the Iberian peninsula.
You have no such evidence that all the first BB groups had zero or much less steppe admixture. Those who spread steppe admixture were Central European BBs. You apparently think about this issue as if BB and CWC were solid modern nation-states that have a definite identity and an organized and closed ethnic community. That was of course nonexistant in the early Bronze Age. BB was evidently a continental and multicentered phenomenon. I wouldn't expect genetic homogeneity from such a culture especially in the era much before easy long distance travel. The first Bell Beakers may have lacked steppe ancestry for the simple and perfectly plausible reason that they did not have the same ancestral roots nor even the same language as those that eventually expanded a lot from Central Europe. Many devices and aesthetic patterns of Western culture were rapidly adopted by 127 million Japanese people without almost any genetic influx.
In the case of the Central European Bell Beakers, given that they were already very mixed with EEF we can even imagine that that cultural change could even have involved some genetic introgression, even if not directly from the first BBs, but from later assimilated people carrying the same culture elsewhere.
Also, honestly, we must all remind that CWC was only superseded by BB in a few places. It is not like CWC ceased to exist and BB occupied its entire territory. Actually, the diffusion of BB people was clearly very concentrated to the west of most CWC territories, overlapping with them and replacing them in just a few areas.
For Central European BBs to have steppe admixture they did not have to come from any CWC group. There were other routes of steppe expansion from the southeast and east, instead of the northeast, and Baden culture, among others, demonstrate that.
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