All Iberian men were wiped out by Yamna men 4,500 years ago

[MOESAN]

We need, I think, DNA of diverse burying traditions; maybe the El Argar label covers more than a period and some changes could have occurred in the peopling here and there; in El Argar space is tumuli's DNA or Cists DNA the same as Jars DNA??? Interesting I think.
THat said, the special sepultures traditions are not by force inherited directly from Minoans; some close traditions could have been adopted in far Southeastern Europe and even been adopted by more northern or northeastern people.
I did not obtain the very survey concerned here, helas.

 

[Ygorcs]

So, I wouldn't say that there was a "reappearance" of non-IE lineages, as "J" and most of "E" probably weren't there until the Bronze Age at the earliest. I am a little surprised, however, that they seem to be saying that the "J" lineages didn't appear until the Iron Age or perhaps later. Carthage did control a big portion of Iberia, but were there enough of them to make a huge change in yDna? Yes, there were some Roman veteran and other colonies, but were they predominantly "J", and were they a big enough percentage of the total population to make such a change? That leaves the Moorish domination. I could see it being responsible for E-M81, but all of the J1 and J2 as well? My understanding was always that by far the biggest contingent were North Africans, with the "Arabs" being a much smaller percentage at the top. There's also El Algar to consider. Do they have the samples to address that?

I don't know. I guess we have to wait to see the paper.

Yeah, I am very intrigued by all of this. Somehow to me the pieces do not seem to "fit" until more information is given. What I find especially hard to believe is that the modern Iberian population would not have much more Eastern Mediterranean and North African admixtures and plot much closer to North African and Levantine people if virtually all of the E1b1b, J2, J1 and even G2a and I2a had come much later with Carthaginians, Arabs, Maghrebis, Jews, Romans, Greeks and so on. In some of those cases the genetic connection would be very recent in historic proportions (Arabs and Maghrebis as late as 0.8-1kya).

Besides, I have never heard about the specific subclades of those "non-steppe" haplogroups being exactly the same, in their majority, as those found regularly in North Africa and the East Mediterranean. Do you guys know if the subclades in Iberia are close to those found outside of Europe? I doubt that, the usual suspects would've massacred our ears and eyes mentioning that fact all the time if that were true. LOL

If the significant increase in haplogroups like E and J is not to be associated with a corresponding increase in non-European admixture, should we then believe that, for instance, the Celtiberians (certainly not the same IE people as those 40% steppe-like Bronze Age Iberians) and later the Romans were particularly less enriched in steppe-like haplogroups and steppe-like admixture, thus changing the genetic landscape of Iberia during the Iron Age even before and far away from the Carthaginian and Greek colonies?

I have a really hard time believing that Carthaginians and Greeks spread so further inland, since much of Iberia by Roman times was definitely not particularly Phoenician and Greek culturally, despite the obvious influences from these civilizations, especially the northern part of Iberia, which is decisive because as we know the Reconquista caused a huge influx from the North towards the South, so the modern genetic landscape of Iberia probably owes a lot to the medieval genetic pool of Northern Iberia. In Galicia, for instance, J2 and E1b are found in 10.5% of the population each (21% total).

As for G2a and I2a, found in not insignificant percentages in much of Iberia, is it possible then that the surviving Neolithic-like population eventually spread tremendously during the Iron Age (maybe associated with the language family of Basques and Iberians?).

My instinct is to look for "European historic explanations" for that change, because I do not see an autosomal impact of non-Europeans that would justify the high proportion of non-R1b/R1a haplogroups in much of present-day Iberia.

 

[Angela]

Yeah, I am very intrigued by all of this. Somehow to me the pieces do not seem to "fit" until more information is given. What I find especially hard to believe is that the modern Iberian population would not have much more Eastern Mediterranean and North African admixtures and plot much closer to North African and Levantine people if virtually all of the E1b1b, J2, J1 and even G2a and I2a had come much later with Carthaginians, Arabs, Maghrebis, Jews, Romans, Greeks and so on. In some of those cases the genetic connection would be very recent in historic proportions (Arabs and Maghrebis as late as 0.8-1kya).

Besides, I have never heard about the specific subclades of those "non-steppe" haplogroups being exactly the same, in their majority, as those found regularly in North Africa and the East Mediterranean. Do you guys know if the subclades in Iberia are close to those found outside of Europe? I doubt that, the usual suspects would've massacred our ears and eyes mentioning that fact all the time if that were true. LOL

If the significant increase in haplogroups like E and J is not to be associated with a corresponding increase in non-European admixture, should we then believe that, for instance, the Celtiberians (certainly not the same IE people as those 40% steppe-like Bronze Age Iberians) and later the Romans were particularly less enriched in steppe-like haplogroups and steppe-like admixture, thus changing the genetic landscape of Iberia during the Iron Age even before and far away from the Carthaginian and Greek colonies?

I have a really hard time believing that Carthaginians and Greeks spread so further inland, since much of Iberia by Roman times was definitely not particularly Phoenician and Greek culturally, despite the obvious influences from these civilizations, especially the northern part of Iberia, which is decisive because as we know the Reconquista caused a huge influx from the North towards the South, so the modern genetic landscape of Iberia probably owes a lot to the medieval genetic pool of Northern Iberia. In Galicia, for instance, J2 and E1b are found in 10.5% of the population each (21% total).

As for G2a and I2a, found in not insignificant percentages in much of Iberia, is it possible then that the surviving Neolithic-like population eventually spread tremendously during the Iron Age (maybe associated with the language family of Basques and Iberians?).

My instinct is to look for "European historic explanations" for that change, because I do not see an autosomal impact of non-Europeans that would justify the high proportion of non-R1b/R1a haplogroups in much of present-day Iberia.

I'm not quite following part of this. You think J1 and J2 were in Europe before the Bronze Age? It certainly doesn't seem to have been in Europe in the Neolithic. Maybe you're thinking the Chalcolithic?

Wouldn't J2 and J1 by definition have to come from the eastern Mediterranean? They entered Anatolia, the Levant, etc. and then on into Greece and westward from there, yes? The Neolithic G2 is also from Anatolia. The earliest "European" lineages would be C, then I. Are all others not European? R1 was in eastern Europe pretty early too, yes, although originally they were perhaps North Eurasian.

So, those y lines did indeed come from the eastern Mediterranean. I'm just surprised that they're saying not in the Bronze Age, and it all came during the Iron Age.

That does seem a bit strange.

As for the discordance between y and autosomal, if it was an almost totally male mediated migration in every case it might make sense.

I've seen runs with various methodologies where Spaniards as well as the Portuguese can be modeled as perhaps 9-10% North African. Wouldn't that make sense?

The eastern Mediterranean might look just like Neolithic ancestry, or at least might be confused with it.

 

[Angela]

yes, EEF, but while LBK has the least WHG admixture, the Iberian neolithic has the most

and a similar admixture event happened at the Iron Gates 8 ka
the Iron Gates HG were R1b-V88 and I2a-Z161
both appeared in Iberian neolithic

on the other hand, I2a-L161 seems to be a HG of Iberian origin

in British neolithic we have I2a-Z161 and I2a-L161 coming from Iberia plus I2a-M284
I2a-M284 seems to be a HG of British origin
these are 3 admixture events in a row, with 3 I2a clades and 1 R1b clade

and in Iberian neolithic it seems that after the admixture event, G2a2 and I2a-L161 each went their own seperate way

the same can be said about R1b-V88, who came from the iron gates
it was not found in a classical Iberian Carded Ware site, it was found in the remote Els Trocs cave in the Pyrenees

The "most" yes, but still around 30%, in some cases 20-25%. I have about the same amount of European hunter-gatherer (WHG and EHG). That's undoubtedly why older papers had the Iberian late Neolithic plotting near Tuscans.

 

[bicicleur 2]

I'm not quite following part of this. You think J1 and J2 were in Europe before the Bronze Age? It certainly doesn't seem to have been in Europe in the Neolithic. Maybe you're thinking the Chalcolithic?

Wouldn't J2 and J1 by definition have to come from the eastern Mediterranean? They entered Anatolia, the Levant, etc. and then on into Greece and westward from there, yes? The Neolithic G2 is also from Anatolia. The earliest "European" lineages would be C, then I. Are all others not European? R1 was in eastern Europe pretty early too, yes, although originally they were perhaps North Eurasian.

So, those y lines did indeed come from the eastern Mediterranean. I'm just surprised that they're saying not in the Bronze Age, and it all came during the Iron Age.

That does seem a bit strange.

As for the discordance between y and autosomal, if it was an almost totally male mediated migration in every case it might make sense.

I've seen runs with various methodologies where Spaniards as well as the Portuguese can be modeled as perhaps 9-10% North African. Wouldn't that make sense?

The eastern Mediterranean might look just like Neolithic ancestry, or at least might be confused with it.

it's about time this paper gets published
IMO this paper deals about a R1b(-DF27) turnover in Iberia 4.5 ka
which was followed by the J2 El Argar turnover 4 ka

it would explain todays presence of both R1b-DF27 and J2 in Iberia
and it would explain the 'Iberic' non-IE language along the eastcoast of Iberia 6th cent BC

 

[Ygorcs]

So how those native people of the Caucasus give their ancestry to Mesolithic Sweden HG Motala? And how most of Mesolithic HG samples from Eastern Europe, even the J* ones dont have CHG at all? Like you said some times before, CHG in Europe seems to predate a lot cultures like Maikop.

Dzudzuana with ANF-like admixture dates to ~26kya. The "proto-CHG" people certainly existed somewhere, but CHG proper only coalesced and consolidated in the Caucasus long after Dzudzuana, probably changing the Caucasus region from an Anatolian-like to a more Iranian-like (CHG) genetic makeup. My bet then is that the CHG-like introgression into Eastern Europe happened after the LGM and probably during the Mesolithic, and by the Neolithic the CHG+EHG mixing process was already on an advanced state nearer the Caucasus (i.e. Pontic-Caspian steppe). Dzudzuana is so ancient that it precedes even the spread of WHG/EHG in Europe, which happened mostly during and after the LGM, so I think EuropeN people by the time of Dzudzuana Paleolithic people was completely different and probably not directly ancestral (not in big proportions) to people like Motala HG and Khvalynsk HG. If I understood the paper correctly, it was actually Dzudzuana that was more directly related to WHG (but with BE too).

 

[hrvclv]

Dzudzuana with ANF-like admixture dates to ~26kya. The "proto-CHG" people certainly existed somewhere, but CHG proper only coalesced and consolidated in the Caucasus long after Dzudzuana, probably changing the Caucasus region from an Anatolian-like to a more Iranian-like (CHG) genetic makeup. My bet then is that the CHG-like introgression into Eastern Europe happened after the LGM and probably during the Mesolithic, and by the Neolithic the CHG+EHG mixing process was already on an advanced state nearer the Caucasus (i.e. Pontic-Caspian steppe). Dzudzuana is so ancient that it precedes even the spread of WHG/EHG in Europe, which happened mostly during and after the LGM, so I think EuropeN people by the time of Dzudzuana Paleolithic people was completely different and probably not directly ancestral (not in big proportions) to people like Motala HG and Khvalynsk HG. If I understood the paper correctly, it was actually Dzudzuana that was more directly related to WHG (but with BE too).

This is how I, too, understood that paper. If we posit the Middle East as the obvious door out of Africa, we can imagine some people remained there, while others moved on. From the common core, those who moved west (y-dna I and mtdna U) replaced the old Aurignacian population (y-dna C and mtdna M). We are talking about very long periods of time. So there was plenty of time for genetic drift (plus, perhaps, some mixing with the locals) to give those western migrants a genetic signature of their own. We now know them as WHG.

Some similar sort of drift happened in Eurasia, resulting among others in what we identify as ANE (Mal'ta). Over time (post LGM expansion?), both populations moved, which resulted in the WHG - EHG cline, from Loschbourg to Motala to Samara. I see Dzudzuana as part of this cline. Later CHG proper would move into the Caucasus (Satsurblia, Kotias).

In Anatolia a back migration of WHG resulted in Anatolian Neo through intermixing with the Basal Eurasian who had remained there - somewhere (!).

We are a long way from the Iberian Bronze Age, I am aware of that. But the people who moved west from eastern Anatolia to Crete, Greece, etc.., and ultimately perhaps to Iberia can't have been Dzudzuana-like. Their origins were, in my opinion, more likely in the south west Caspian. And, yes, once mixed with some extra WHG, and diluted among farmer ancestry, there is a chance that their genetic signature might be mistaken for steppe. Y-dna will tell a lot.

 

[markod]

Is anyone familiar with the finer structure of Iberian haplogroups? I think "E" in Iberia is to some extent V13, which must be European and related to metal age expansions. The same is probably true for most J2 there. J1 is quite high in Iberia, but there are other peaks in France, the Carpathian Basin, Romania and Moldova. The latter are probably again related to Iron or Bronze age expansions from the Caucasus or Eastern Anatolia. Are the Iberian subclades more related to these kinds of J1 or the subclades found in North Africa?

 

[Angela]

it's about time this paper gets published
IMO this paper deals about a R1b(-DF27) turnover in Iberia 4.5 ka
which was followed by the J2 El Argar turnover 4 ka

it would explain todays presence of both R1b-DF27 and J2 in Iberia
and it would explain the 'Iberic' non-IE language along the eastcoast of Iberia 6th cent BC

That's how I've always seen it too. However, there's that vague reference in the article posted by Berun which says the El Argar samples show influence from "Russia". I don't know if they were referring to this Reich Lab paper or other research, and also, as Moesan pointed out, it may depend on the dates and burial styles of the samples at the El Argar sites. Perhaps there was first the arrival of J2 and then the R1b.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Angela]

As to yDna, almost all of the papers I could find were pretty old and didn't resolve the lineages very well. The only exception was this 2017 paper, but it's strictly on DF-27.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-07710-x

There's also Luis Alvarez et al from 2014, which has pretty nice resolution, but it's based on STRS and it's only of Zamorra province. (western part of Castille and Leon)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25123837

The Supplement shows all the samples and also the samples from North Africa. There was more J1 and J2 in the latter than I had expected.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/act...hb.22602&file=ajhb22602-sup-0001-suppinfo.pdf

In Wiki, there's data which cites Eupedia, and is Maciamo's work.

"Although R1b prevails in much of Western Europe, a key difference is found in the prevalence in Iberia of R-DF27 (R1b1a1a2a1a2a). This subclade is found in over 60% of the male population in the Basque Country and 40-48% in Madrid, Alicante, Barcelona, Cantabria, Andalucia, Asturias and Galicia.^[9] R-DF27 constitutes much more than the half of the total R1b in the Iberian Peninsula. Subsequent in-migration by members of other haplogroups and subclades of R1b did not affect its overall prevalence, although this falls to only two thirds of the total R1b in Valencia and the coast more generally.^[8] R-DF27 is also a significant subclade of R1b in parts of France and Britain. However, it is insignificant in Italy; R-S28/R-U152 (R1b1a1a2a1a2b) is the prevailing subclade of R1b in Italy, Switzerland and parts of France, although it represents less than 5.0% of the male population in Iberia. This underlines the lack of any significant genetic impact on the part of Rome, even though the Latin spoken in the Roman Empire was the most significant, or main, source of the modern Spanish and Portuguese language. R-S28/R-U152 is slightly significant in Seville and Barcelona, at 10-20% of the total population, although it is represented at frequencies of only 3.0% in Cantabria and Santander, 2.0% in Castille and Leon, 6% in Valencia, and under 1% in Andalusia.^[8] Sephardic Jews I1 0% I2*/I2a 1% I2 0% Haplogroup R1a 5% R1b 13% G 15% Haplogroup J2 2 25% J*/J1 22% E-M2151b1b 9% T 6% Q 2% ^[10]Haplogroup J, mostly subclades of Haplogroup J-M172 (J2), is found at levels of over 20% in some regions, while Haplogroup E has a general frequency of about 10% – albeit with peaks surpassing 30% in certain areas. Overall, E-M78 (E1b1b1a1 in 2017) and E-M81(E1b1b1b1a in 2017) both constitute about 4.0% each, with a further 1.0% from Haplogroup E-M123 (E1b1b1b2a1) and 1.0% from unknown subclades of E-M96.^[11] (E-M81 is widely considered to represent relatively historical migrations from North Africa)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_Iberian_Peninsula

 

[CrazyDonkey]

https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/10/03/inenglish/1538568010_930565.html

The prehistorian Roberto Risch, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, told EL PAÍS at the time that findings from the La Bastida dig, in the Spanish southeastern region of Murcia, had uncovered “a great surprise.”

“We realized that the Iberian peninsula was not only colonized by the first Neolithic migration wave 8,000 or 9,000 years ago but also by a later one 4,500 years ago, which brought with it a very different culture,” he said.


War axes and carts with four wheels can be found in the layers of earth that date back 4,500 years. “From then on, almost all men’s tombs were filled with weaponry, adornments, displays of wealth. The archaeology reveals marked signs of a hierarchical society that broke with the old egalitarianism of the early Neolithic period,” said Risch.

The findings from Reich’s research team are also backed up by a study published last year by geneticists Dan Bradley from Trinity College in Dublin and Rui Martiniano from Cambridge University. This research team announced they had discovered a “discontinuity” in the Y chromosome during the Bronze Age in the Iberian Peninsula, after studying the DNA of the remains of 14 people found in archaeological sites in Portugal.

“In terms of why the Y chromosome was replaced, we could speculate that the populations from the steppes had superior technology, better weapons and also domesticated horses that could have given them an advantage in war,” says Martiniano.

First, the Reich finding of 100% y-dna replacement is based on a total of 151 samples. Were these elite burials post-replacement? In the new "hierarchical" society that followed, were non-elites, "peasants", excluded from the cemeteries and left to bury their dead elsewhere, willy-nilly? If endogamy was practiced, that would have sealed off access to the ruling lineages, with polygamy likely further accentuating the imbalance.

That doesn't mean that this isn't a case of "barbarians behaving badly", but neither can we jump to the conclusion that other causes weren't involved (climate change, drought, crop failures, starvation, plague, continuing violence, etc.).

Note that at Valencina de la Concepción:

After what seems like a long period in the reduction of activity in the 27th century BCE, the tholos of La Pastora was probably built, with very different architectural characteristics: without great slabs of slate, but with a roofed chamber with a false stone dome, an important technical and aesthetic innovation, and with a “heretical” orientation towards the south east, facing away from the sunrise. “It is very probable that these changes in the monumental architecture were due to were due to changes in the social and ideological sphere, including, perhaps, religious “heterodoxies”, the researcher adds.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2018/...-site-in-all-recent-iberian-prehistory/120856

Note that this was following "a long period in the reduction of activity in the 27th century BCE," or a possible preceding population decline. The significant change in burial practices and orientation could be an indication of the takeover by an invading element - Valencina de la Concepción was neither walled nor fortified.

There is further indication that the troubles didn't stop there, with the end of occupation of the site "between the the 24th and 23rd centuries BCE" with "the possibility that the end of the Valencina settlement was due to a social crisis" involving "the possibility of a violent episode".

Further, "paleoenvironmental data" indicate that "between the 24th and 23rd centuries BCE, a period of greater aridity and dryness began globally", which on "the Iberian Peninsula saw the end of chalcolithic way of life and the abandonment of some of the most important sites with ditched enclosures", coinciding with "the end of the Old Kingdom in the Nile Valley, with a great crisis that brought about the end of the period of construction of the great pyramids."

 

[Ygorcs]

I'm not quite following part of this. You think J1 and J2 were in Europe before the Bronze Age? It certainly doesn't seem to have been in Europe in the Neolithic. Maybe you're thinking the Chalcolithic?

Oops, I guess I wasn't very precise in my wording before. Let me explain it better now. I think the sum of J1, J2 and E1b1b nowadays is too large, in some Iberian regions verging on 1/3, to have left relatively little North African and Levantine/Southwest Asian admixture (that's what I meant by Eastern Mediterranean, sorry I forgot for a moment that Greece and Anatolia is also on the eastern side of the Mediterranean... LOL!). I also think that such a heavy contribution from non-Europeans would've probably shifted Iberians significantly on the PCA charts away from other Western/Southwestern Europeans and much closer to West Asian/North African populations (unless we assume that they were also affected by the waves of North Africans and West Asians... unlikely in my opinion).

There's also the issue that the non-"steppic" Y-DNA haplogroups are found in large percentages in places that were never under the direct and permanent dominion of Arabs, Berbers and Carthaginians (E1b1b IIRC is found in comparatively significant proportions in Galicia for example).

Wouldn't J2 and J1 by definition have to come from the eastern Mediterranean? They entered Anatolia, the Levant, etc. and then on into Greece and westward from there, yes? The Neolithic G2 is also from Anatolia. The earliest "European" lineages would be C, then I. Are all others not European? R1 was in eastern Europe pretty early too, yes, although originally they were perhaps North Eurasian.

Yes, but that was a long time before J1 and J2 may have arrived in larger percentages in Iberia, and definitely way earlier than the supposed arrival of these haplogroups mainly with colonization processes as late as those of the Carthaginians, Arabs and Berbers. More than enough time for J1 and J2 to be associated with completely different autosomal makeups depending on the region where they came from.

My point is that, since modern Iberians are still firmly on the "European side" and not that close to North Africans or Levantines, much of those J1, J2, E1b1b or G2a may have come from other European populations, already heavily shifted to EEF and, much less so, Steppe BA, during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age and as late as the Iron Age (Celtiberians - clearly a late arrival on Iberia considering their language was just too close to Gaulish to be indigenous to Iberia since the Bronze Age - and Romans).

Considering the possibility that these haplogroups arrived much earlier, during the Chalcolithic or Bronze Age, more or less contemporary to the "steppicization" of Iberia, I think it's more likely that much of it came from heavily EEF/ANF+CHG regions like Bronze Age Anatolia/Greece, so that their contribution would be masked in Iberia due to the heavy presence of Neolithic Iberian EEF and BA Bell Beaker-like CHG/EHG + EEF. If they had mostly come from the Levant or North Africa, wouldn't we expect much more Natufian or Levant_Neolithic in modern Iberians than there is in fact?

I also have a hard time believing that Carthaginians left a more widespread and long-lasting genetic impact than the Romans, who had in Iberia some of the highest concentration of Roman colonies, controlled virtually the entire peninsula and didn't actually get beaten by invaders until more than 500 years after their conquest.

But last of all, I'd really want to know if the J1, J2 and E1b1b subclades that are most frequently found in Iberia are really closer to those found in North Africa, Levant and Arabia (consistent with the idea that the Carthaginians, Arabs and Berbers really contributed much more than we'd thought to the Iberian genetic pool) - and not to those found in the rest of Europe.

 

[Ygorcs]

This is how I, too, understood that paper. If we posit the Middle East as the obvious door out of Africa, we can imagine some people remained there, while others moved on. From the common core, those who moved west (y-dna I and mtdna U) replaced the old Aurignacian population (y-dna C and mtdna M). We are talking about very long periods of time. So there was plenty of time for genetic drift (plus, perhaps, some mixing with the locals) to give those western migrants a genetic signature of their own. We now know them as WHG.

Some similar sort of drift happened in Eurasia, resulting among others in what we identify as ANE (Mal'ta). Over time (post LGM expansion?), both populations moved, which resulted in the WHG - EHG cline, from Loschbourg to Motala to Samara. I see Dzudzuana as part of this cline. Later CHG proper would move into the Caucasus (Satsurblia, Kotias).

In Anatolia a back migration of WHG resulted in Anatolian Neo through intermixing with the Basal Eurasian who had remained there - somewhere (!).

We are a long way from the Iberian Bronze Age, I am aware of that. But the people who moved west from eastern Anatolia to Crete, Greece, etc.., and ultimately perhaps to Iberia can't have been Dzudzuana-like. Their origins were, in my opinion, more likely in the south west Caspian. And, yes, once mixed with some extra WHG, and diluted among farmer ancestry, there is a chance that their genetic signature might be mistaken for steppe. Y-dna will tell a lot.

I speculate in a way very similar to yours, only with two differences:

1) I think the drift separating WHG from EHG happened even before and independently from the mixing with ANE among the EHG and (probably) the pre-Villabruna Europeans among the WHG, but I do realize that they were probably shifted even more apart from each other when the EHG mixed with ANE (which probably brought haplogroups R1b, R1a and Q1a to EHG) and maybe also a tiny bit with CHG-like people spreading northwards in the Late Paleolithic/Mesolithic (accounting for that J* as far north as Karelia for instance);

2) I also think the Anatolian_Neo population derives mainly from WHG-like and already BE-admixed Dzudzuana people spreading from the Caucasus/Armenian Plateau into Anatolia proper, mixing there with additional Basal Eurasian (or BE-enriched) people and also maybe with some WHG-like people that either still lived in Western Anatolia (they had migrated to Europe earlier) or back-migrated there. In my opinion, based on what the new Caucasus paper asserted, Anatolian_Neo was mainly the result of an "internal affair" of West Asian people mixing before the Mesolithic/Late Paleolithic, resulting in Dzudzuana + additional WHG-like (UHG?) and BE-like populations living in LGM Anatolia.

In my opinion, the genetic signature of North African and Levantine people should be bigger and pull Iberians much further apart from the rest of Western Europeans if all the J1, J2, E1b1b, G2a and so on had come with the mainly non-European conquests by Carthaginians, Arabs, Berbers and so on. In my opinion they certainly contributed strongly, but those haplogroups probably existed there before the Late Iron Age. And Iberians are still pretty "European-like" because much if not most of those haplogroups possibly came with people who were themselves pretty enriched in EEF or in a mix of ANF and CHG that, further admixed with WHG and EHG/CHG-enriched Iberian people from the Bronze Age onwards, may get easily confused with "Neolithic Iberian" or "Bronze Age steppe". Considering that, I'd say much of that contribution came from Southern Europe and Anatolia, not North Africa, the South Levant or Arabia.

 

[Angela]

Oops, I guess I wasn't very precise in my wording before. Let me explain it better now. I think the sum of J1, J2 and E1b1b nowadays is too large, in some Iberian regions verging on 1/3, to have left relatively little North African and Levantine/Southwest Asian admixture (that's what I meant by Eastern Mediterranean, sorry I forgot for a moment that Greece and Anatolia is also on the eastern side of the Mediterranean... LOL!). I also think that such a heavy contribution from non-Europeans would've probably shifted Iberians significantly on the PCA charts away from other Western/Southwestern Europeans and much closer to West Asian/North African populations (unless we assume that they were also affected by the waves of North Africans and West Asians... unlikely in my opinion).

There's also the issue that the non-"steppic" Y-DNA haplogroups are found in large percentages in places that were never under the direct and permanent dominion of Arabs, Berbers and Carthaginians (E1b1b IIRC is found in comparatively significant proportions in Galicia for example).




Yes, but that was a long time before J1 and J2 may have arrived in larger percentages in Iberia, and definitely way earlier than the supposed arrival of these haplogroups mainly with colonization processes as late as those of the Carthaginians, Arabs and Berbers. More than enough time for J1 and J2 to be associated with completely different autosomal makeups depending on the region where they came from.

My point is that, since modern Iberians are still firmly on the "European side" and not that close to North Africans or Levantines, much of those J1, J2, E1b1b or G2a may have come from other European populations, already heavily shifted to EEF and, much less so, Steppe BA, during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age and as late as the Iron Age (Celtiberians - clearly a late arrival on Iberia considering their language was just too close to Gaulish to be indigenous to Iberia since the Bronze Age - and Romans).

Considering the possibility that these haplogroups arrived much earlier, during the Chalcolithic or Bronze Age, more or less contemporary to the "steppicization" of Iberia, I think it's more likely that much of it came from heavily EEF/ANF+CHG regions like Bronze Age Anatolia/Greece, so that their contribution would be masked in Iberia due to the heavy presence of Neolithic Iberian EEF and BA Bell Beaker-like CHG/EHG + EEF. If they had mostly come from the Levant or North Africa, wouldn't we expect much more Natufian or Levant_Neolithic in modern Iberians than there is in fact?

I also have a hard time believing that Carthaginians left a more widespread and long-lasting genetic impact than the Romans, who had in Iberia some of the highest concentration of Roman colonies, controlled virtually the entire peninsula and didn't actually get beaten by invaders until more than 500 years after their conquest.

But last of all, I'd really want to know if the J1, J2 and E1b1b subclades that are most frequently found in Iberia are really closer to those found in North Africa, Levant and Arabia (consistent with the idea that the Carthaginians, Arabs and Berbers really contributed much more than we'd thought to the Iberian genetic pool) - and not to those found in the rest of Europe.

OK, now I understand. As I said above, I always assumed that a good portion of the J2 in Iberia came during the Bronze Age, part of the wave that hit Greece, then Italy, then Iberia and which came from Anatolia. We'll have to see what they say in the paper.

In terms of the "E" lineages, in the Alvarez paper to which I linked above, there were 10 E-M78, 12 E-M81 and 6 E-M123. The E-M78 is probably Greek (or Italian), but the Greek footprint (of the first millenium B.C.) is even smaller than the Carthaginian one. Other than some of the El Algar artifacts, is there a big presence of, say, Minoan or Mycenaean ware?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/act...hb.22602&file=ajhb22602-sup-0001-suppinfo.pdf

I think we can probably assign the E-M81 to the Moorish invasion. There was only one "E" in all the samples so far and the authors call it sporadic contact. Plus, E-M81 is very young. There's some mtDna "L" as well, of course. In either this paper or one of the other ones I cited they date the lineages to the time of the early part of the invasion period. I guess that might have been enough time for their ancestry to be lost and for them to be able to blend in and avoid deportation. After all, although in some areas the North African autosomal ancestry may reach 20%, the academics seem to have settled on around 9% for an average.

Now, why they ended up more in the western part of the peninsula, I have no idea. Perhaps the Portuguese crown was more tolerant for longer? Perhaps it was part of the deliberate population shuffling that sent northerners south and southerners north also sent people east and west? I don't know.

As to the Romans, as I said, the colonia were a few hundred people each. As an aggregate they could have had an effect, of course, but they couldn't all have been J2, given that it only reaches about 30-40% in the highest areas of Italy, less in the northwest and Pianura Padana. Plus, they must have had some U-152, and in Andalusia (and Extremadura), where most of the colonies were located, U-152 reaches only 1% of the population. (There does seem to be some sort of founder effect in Seville, however, with at least 10%) Of course, maybe they were all reshuffled as well.

Oh, Alvarez does compare the North African and Iberian lineages. As I said, though, it's one province.

From Wiki, part of which comes from Maciamo, I think, there is the following:

"Haplogroup J, mostly subclades of Haplogroup J-M172 (J2), is found at levels of over 20% in some regions, while Haplogroup E has a general frequency of about 10% – albeit with peaks surpassing 30% in certain areas. Overall, E-M78(E1b1b1a1 in 2017) and E-M81(E1b1b1b1a in 2017) both constitute about 4.0% each, with a further 1.0% from Haplogroup E-M123 (E1b1b1b2a1) and 1.0% from unknown subclades of E-M96.^[11] (E-M81 is widely considered to represent relatively historical migrations from North Africa)".

It's definitely a puzzle.

 

[Aaron1981]

Isn't the oldest Steppe beaker in Spain (EDIT: It isn't, but it is from basically the exact same time frame)? Regardless, the samples ARE too few and far between to have a chronology. It could just be the case that we happened to find some of the earliest Steppe beakers in one place compared to later Steppe beakers in another place, when in actuality the Steppe beakers could have moved from the latter place to the former. I don't know, though, why it is so impossible that some of the Steppe amongst the Beaker folk could have been acquired through admixture with CWC women. We are so used to the idea that R1b folk blended with farmer women, resulting in diluted Steppe autosomal signature, but why can't the opposite occur? Beaker Steppe samples are geographically virtually on top of prior Corded Ware samples. I think the Beaker folk (in the maritime hypothesis I subscribe too) would have had Steppe admix anyway, but only in the Chalcolithic Balkans sense.

Yes, but where did the M269+ guys come from if not from the Steppe? Hunter-gatherers did not have such mobility. How did they suddenly appear near the Samara river a few hundred years later from a central European or SW European origin (if this is what you are insinuating). Perhaps there is some western steppe population that has plenty of EHG but lower on the CHG side. I know the Greater Caucasus paper had some steppe populations, rich in EHG, but had very low CHG, but unfortunately it's still in pre-print, and we are all awaiting that data patiently.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Yes, but where did the M269+ guys come from if not from the Steppe? Hunter-gatherers did not have such mobility. How did they suddenly appear near the Samara river a few hundred years later from a central European or SW European origin (if this is what you are insinuating). Perhaps there is some western steppe population that has plenty of EHG but lower on the CHG side. I know the Greater Caucasus paper had some steppe populations that had very low CHG, but unfortunately it's still in pre-print, and we are all awaiting that data patiently.

Could I see this Samara L51 sample you're talking about? And I believe M269 originated in the Balkans, and that it and its subclade L23 were heavily involved in spreading copper metallurgy from its earliest stages (I do not believe in a Steppe origin for L23, and probably not for M269 (but M269 is very old, so that could still be the case)). As for EHG/CHG presence - I haven't looked into that much, but it is clearly very broad (as it could have been carried to Western Europe by so many different cultures - I believe the source was primarily that of the Corded Ware culture).

All I am basing this off of is that (a) Yamnaya and its Danubian branch have only been found to be dominated by Z2103 (and it is Z2103 that dominates the R1b of the Balkans today, with virtually no presence of L51); and (b) some of the earliest L51 branches have been found around the Western Mediterranean islands. The rest of the ideas I've had, mostly from Tomenable ultimately, are based around these alarm bells against the hypothesis of a Steppe origin of L51.

 

[Ygorcs]

I find it really hard to believe that R1b-L51 and R1b-Z2103 came into Europe from homelands absolutely apart from each other. IIRC L23 split into L51 and Z2103 only as late as around 4000 BC, when, as we know from the Caucasus paper, the bulk of the genetic makeup of the Pontic-Caspian people was already pretty much settled (including high amounts of CHG mixed with EHG, with only some minor extra CHG later up to the Yamnaya period). By the Chalcolithic, a few centuries later, Z2103 was already dominant in that region. And by the time L51 and Z2103 diverged Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog I were smoothly morphing, gradually, into Sredny Stog II and Repin, and later the cultural synthesis that formed the Yamnaya horizon. It's very doubtful that Z2103 and L51 were too far apart from each other. I can definitely speculate about an origin of L51 in the Carpathian Basin, or maybe in the Black Sea coast of the Balkans (Bulgaria, Romania), but not much further than that, on the fringes of the reach of the Pontic-Caspian cultures. The peoples who spread Z2103 and L51 were also probably speakers of very similar dialects (the IE subfamilies now), so they probably came from the same cultural and geographic origin. In my opinion, we'll end up finding out that L51 was a Western Steppe lineage that was initially minor, but later took advantage of the expansion of the steppe clans out of their original reach and boomed already outside the steppe and its immediate surroundings (maybe Central Europe).

 

[Ygorcs]

As for EHG/CHG presence - I haven't looked into that much, but it is clearly very broad (as it could have been carried to Western Europe by so many different cultures - I believe the source was primarily that of the Corded Ware culture).

How? There was no CWC presence west of Germany and south of Austria. Via the Bell Beakers, who anyway had a lot of EHG+CHG steppe ancestry (so basically all the women should have been CWC with little or no mixing with women of other origins - unlikely)? And would all these L51 males have simply adopted the language of their subjugated CWC women and spread them to regions where CWC people had never lived? That is possible, but I do not think it is probable (certainly not for all the huge territory conquered by L51 males; it's a different case when you see a regional but relatively minor and isolated outlier, like the Basques for instance), especially in heavily patriarchal and patrilineal societies.

 

[halfalp]

What i found crazy, is that they have found J? in Epipaleolithic France, but also J? in Mesolithic extreme north-east Iran. It's even more widespread that what we knew with R1b for exemple.

 

[hrvclv]

I know I keep harping on this, but... have you guys read this ?

https://indo-european.eu/2018/08/on...p-r1b-l51-in-late-repin-early-yamna-settlers/

The article proposes that L51 in Hungary came early from a Late Repin / early- or pre-Yamna culture still light in CHG. They would have made room for themselves in the Hungarian plain, and would have been displaced by the arrival en masse of later Yamna men. They would then have moved north and west into Bell Beaker territory, along routes some of them had perhaps already explored (?).

I find the arguments very convincing.