Latest Reich talk on ancient Dna

[Ygorcs]

On second thought, that would make proto-Italo-Celtic more archaic than proto-Tocharian, but isn't it meant to be the other way round? I know it isn't as obvious as with Anatolian, but I've never heard anyone mention proto-Italo-Celtic being older than proto-Tocharian.

Technically there are no "older" languages or language groups, they all derive from earlier forms of the language up to their common source. But in terms of split from the rest of the dialectal zone (of PIE in this case), Italo-Celtic is often considered to rival Tocharian in its archaic aspect. Some linguists place it right after Tocharian (which we don't know if it started to split only after they arguably established Afanasievo).

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Technically there are no "older" languages or language groups, they all derive from earlier forms of the language up to their common source. But in terms of split from the rest of the dialectal zone (of PIE in this case), Italo-Celtic is often considered to rival Tocharian in its archaic aspect. Some linguists place it right after Tocharian (which we don't know if it started to split only after they arguably established Afanasievo).

If Italo-Celtic is associated with Suvorovo (which would be the only possible CA Steppe->Europe migration afaik), wouldn't that make it a lot more archaic than Tocharian (likely Afanasevo)? Idk, I still like the idea of Yamnaya's Western expansion being Italo-Celtic-Illyrian (proto-Illyrian maturing in Vucedol and proto-Italo-Celtic maturing in contact zone with East BBs) and its Eastern expansion being proto-Tocharian (though I've toyed with the idea of Afanasevo not descending from Yamnaya but rather both descending from a Central Asian culture), as well as Kura-Araxes being proto-Anatolian, the Corded Ware spectrum going from proto-Germanic to Balto-Slavic to Indo-Iranian (though this spectrum and its descendants would include other languages such as Daco-Thracian-Cimmerian and Lusitanian-Belgian etcetera...), proto-Hellenic and proto-Armenian being from Late Yamnaya/Catacomb migrations into the Balkans and across the Caucasus respectively, and proto-Albanian I have no opinion as who knows really (first guess is Srubna and related to languages from that culture like perhaps Daco-Thracian-Cimmerian as it doesn't actually seem that closely related to what we know of Illyrian from what I've read, but afaik it also isn't really closely related to any language).

Literally none of what I wrote is useful in this debate but it's just what "feels" right to me. Some things I'll never believe in though (well unless there's new evidence), such as L51 originating in Yamnaya/Corded Ware (though I'm open to an earlier Steppe migration to Europe), Bell-Beakers of the L21 and DF27 branches speaking (proto-)Celtic (their linguistic affinities are interesting, personally I think L21 (and Central European DF27 immediately after contact with Rheinish CWC) spoke proto-Belgian-Lusitanian and DF27 when invading Iberia perhaps for the most part just took the Vasconic language of those they assimilated into (rather than exterminating like with L21)), or there ever having been some proto-Italo-Celtic-Germanic "Northwestern" language (i.e. Germanic is to be associated with Balto-Slavic and more distantly Indo-Iranian).

By the way, I think this proto-Lusitanian-Belgian connection needs to be looked into more, they are clearly even from my amateur understanding more closely related to each other than any other IE language and that fits perfectly with the original IE languages of L21 and DF27 before the linguistic replacement by U152 Celtic elites in Urnfield (q-celtic) followed by La Tene (p-celtic). So, after all of that, basically I think L51 BBs picked up IE (well, they COULD have spoken IE before that and just adopted a different IE language) from contact zones with Steppe-descended cultures they came across and dominated via elite status. Imagining P312 existing at the Upper Rhine or perhaps the Upper Danube, a Volkerwanderung of sorts would be triggered by the arrival of CWC in Germany. Those that migrated eastwards (U152, East BBs) mingled with and dominated Hungarian Yamnaya as is more or less indisputably seen with Hungarian Bell Beakers, picking up Italo-Celtic. Those that migrated down the Rhine and later to Britain (L21) are known to have been in heavy contact with elements of Rheinish CWC and would pick up their language (proto-Lusitanian-Belgian) - some DF27 would do the same but instead would migrate to Iberia, where instead of slaughtering most of the natives like L21 they would have (still with some slaughter of course!) picked up the Vasconic language of the natives as elites just as in all the other cases mentioned of language transferral. In other cases with DF27 language transferral would be more like with L21 - so L21 migrating down the Rhine (+ to UK) would be Belgian and DF27 that didn't adopt Vasconic (and perhaps was more violent and "exterminaty"?) would be Lusitanian. U106 would have made an earlier migration (via which route I don't know though I have basic ideas, this entirely depends on whether L51 was an original Bell Beaker lineage, or if it has a French or Central-Eastern European Urheimat) to the Single Grave culture where it would have picked up proto-Germanic - thus as both share a Western CWC origin, a proto-Germanic-Lusitanian-Belgian language could have existed around Eastern Germany before one branch of CW moved into Southern Scandinavia and the other continued Westwards to the Rhine. And just for fun, why not put the hypothesised Aegean language family and Anatolian together as proto-Aegean-Anatolian, associated with K-A spread (see Maciamo and others about e.g. Minoan descending from Kura-Araxes, and KA is the best candidate by far for Anatolian right now). Then you could go back EVEN further and say the KA branch that migrated Westwards would be proto-Aegean-Anatolian and that which migrated Eastwards would have spoken proto-Gutian, so K-A would be proto-Aegean-Anatolian-Gutian. God I love speculating, but it just feels so right. It probably is just simpler to say Suvorovo is the origin of proto-Anatolian though, via Ikiztepe, as that satisfies the need for proto-Anatolian to be a very early split. The problem with Suvorovo isn’t so much that there isn’t a trace in ancient Anatolian auDNA as heavy dilution explains that away, but rather that there isn’t a trace in Y DNA. There are loads more, less attested likely IE and possibly IE languages, but besides proto-Euphratean (which to my mind is almost guaranteed to be legitimate given this), none of the rest are that relevant to the basic question of IE spread and origins.

Hopefully this rant while pointless, isn't meaningless and actually makes sense. As I said, it's mostly just what feels right, but I'm pretty certain that's how almost everyone decides what to believe anyway. As I’m not motivated by ideology, hopefully I’ve come to a broadly correct conclusion.

 

[halfalp]

If Italo-Celtic is associated with Suvorovo (which would be the only possible CA Steppe->Europe migration afaik), wouldn't that make it a lot more archaic than Tocharian (likely Afanasevo)? Idk, I still like the idea of Yamnaya's Western expansion being Italo-Celtic-Illyrian (proto-Illyrian maturing in Vucedol and proto-Italo-Celtic maturing in contact zone with East BBs) and its Eastern expansion being proto-Tocharian (though I've toyed with the idea of Afanasevo not descending from Yamnaya but rather both descending from a Central Asian culture), as well as Kura-Araxes being proto-Anatolian, the Corded Ware spectrum going from proto-Germanic to Balto-Slavic to Indo-Iranian (though this spectrum and its descendants would include other languages such as Daco-Thracian-Cimmerian and Lusitanian-Belgian etcetera...), proto-Hellenic and proto-Armenian being from Late Yamnaya/Catacomb migrations into the Balkans and across the Caucasus respectively, and proto-Albanian I have no opinion as who knows really (first guess is Srubna and related to languages from that culture like perhaps Daco-Thracian-Cimmerian as it doesn't actually seem that closely related to what we know of Illyrian from what I've read, but afaik it also isn't really closely related to any language).

Literally none of what I wrote is useful in this debate but it's just what "feels" right to me. Some things I'll never believe in though (well unless there's new evidence), such as L51 originating in Yamnaya/Corded Ware (though I'm open to an earlier Steppe migration to Europe), Bell-Beakers of the L21 and DF27 branches speaking (proto-)Celtic (their linguistic affinities are interesting, personally I think L21 (and Central European DF27 immediately after contact with Rheinish CWC) spoke proto-Belgian-Lusitanian and DF27 when invading Iberia perhaps for the most part just took the Vasconic language of those they assimilated into (rather than exterminating like with L21)), or there ever having been some proto-Italo-Celtic-Germanic "Northwestern" language (i.e. Germanic is to be associated with Balto-Slavic and more distantly Indo-Iranian).

By the way, I think this proto-Lusitanian-Belgian connection needs to be looked into more, they are clearly even from my amateur understanding more closely related to each other than any other IE language and that fits perfectly with the original IE languages of L21 and DF27 before the linguistic replacement by U152 Celtic elites in Urnfield (q-celtic) followed by La Tene (p-celtic). So, after all of that, basically I think L51 BBs picked up IE (well, they COULD have spoken IE before that and just adopted a different IE language) from contact zones with Steppe-descended cultures they came across and dominated via elite status. Imagining P312 existing at the Upper Rhine or perhaps the Upper Danube, a Volkerwanderung of sorts would be triggered by the arrival of CWC in Germany. Those that migrated eastwards (U152, East BBs) mingled with and dominated Hungarian Yamnaya as is more or less indisputably seen with Hungarian Bell Beakers, picking up Italo-Celtic. Those that migrated down the Rhine and later to Britain (L21) are known to have been in heavy contact with elements of Rheinish CWC and would pick up their language (proto-Lusitanian-Belgian) - some DF27 would do the same but instead would migrate to Iberia, where instead of slaughtering most of the natives like L21 they would have (still with some slaughter of course!) picked up the Vasconic language of the natives as elites just as in all the other cases mentioned of language transferral. In other cases with DF27 language transferral would be more like with L21 - so L21 migrating down the Rhine (+ to UK) would be Belgian and DF27 that didn't adopt Vasconic (and perhaps was more violent and "exterminaty"?) would be Lusitanian. U106 would have made an earlier migration (via which route I don't know though I have basic ideas, this entirely depends on whether L51 was an original Bell Beaker lineage, or if it has a French or Central-Eastern European Urheimat) to the Single Grave culture where it would have picked up proto-Germanic - thus as both share a Western CWC origin, a proto-Germanic-Lusitanian-Belgian language could have existed around Eastern Germany before one branch of CW moved into Southern Scandinavia and the other continued Westwards to the Rhine. And just for fun, why not put the hypothesised Aegean language family and Anatolian together as proto-Aegean-Anatolian, associated with K-A spread (see Maciamo and others about e.g. Minoan descending from Kura-Araxes, and KA is the best candidate by far for Anatolian right now). Then you could go back EVEN further and say the KA branch that migrated Westwards would be proto-Aegean-Anatolian and that which migrated Eastwards would have spoken proto-Gutian, so K-A would be proto-Aegean-Anatolian-Gutian. God I love speculating, but it just feels so right. It probably is just simpler to say Suvorovo is the origin of proto-Anatolian though, via Ikiztepe, as that satisfies the need for proto-Anatolian to be a very early split. The problem with Suvorovo isn’t so much that there isn’t a trace in ancient Anatolian auDNA as heavy dilution explains that away, but rather that there isn’t a trace in Y DNA. There are loads more, less attested likely IE and possibly IE languages, but besides proto-Euphratean (which to my mind is almost guaranteed to be legitimate given this), none of the rest are that relevant to the basic question of IE spread and origins.

Hopefully this rant while pointless, isn't meaningless and actually makes sense. As I said, it's mostly just what feels right, but I'm pretty certain that's how almost everyone decides what to believe anyway. As I’m not motivated by ideology, hopefully I’ve come to a broadly correct conclusion.

But why exactly DF-27 and S21 would have had a related IE dialect in common when DF-27 is actually way more close with U152 than S21 in the phylogenetic tree? This sounds confusing. And would mean that DF-27, S21 and U152 were already in a common tribe in Central Europe until the first two participated in a first wave and the latter in a second wave of expansion towards Western Europe.

I've been thinking to the late KA expansion to explain Anatolian Languages, Early KA was clearly local, with Neolithic Iranian y-dna such as G2b, while Late KA start to show R1b-V1636 also found in Pontic Steppe 1000 years earlier. But it would basically mean that it came from Pontic Steppe with R1b-V1636 and not Z2103, but the latter is way more dominant in today's Anatolia than the first one. Or maybe it came with both and only Z2103 stayed dominant, but it's hard to make it relevant. But there is Hajji Firuz and other locals who shows high Steppe. Dude this paper on Central and South Asia gonna destroy the just out Wang paper. They must be struggle to try finding a new scenario.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

But why exactly DF-27 and S21 would have had a related IE dialect in common when DF-27 is actually way more close with U152 than S21 in the phylogenetic tree? This sounds confusing. And would mean that DF-27, S21 and U152 were already in a common tribe in Central Europe until the first two participated in a first wave and the latter in a second wave of expansion towards Western Europe.

I've been thinking to the late KA expansion to explain Anatolian Languages, Early KA was clearly local, with Neolithic Iranian y-dna such as G2b, while Late KA start to show R1b-V1636 also found in Pontic Steppe 1000 years earlier. But it would basically mean that it came from Pontic Steppe with R1b-V1636 and not Z2103, but the latter is way more dominant in today's Anatolia than the first one. Or maybe it came with both and only Z2103 stayed dominant, but it's hard to make it relevant. But there is Hajji Firuz and other locals who shows high Steppe. Dude this paper on Central and South Asia gonna destroy the just out Wang paper. They must be struggle to try finding a new scenario.

Well it's because I'm saying L51 picked up Italo-Celtic, Germanic etc. from incoming Steppe people. We're still missing data from the LN/CA hierarchies though, and from LN/CA France and most places really.

Also, those supposed Greek colonists had Iberian Y DNA (all had R1b (I'm assuming the Rs to be R1b, someone get Genetiker out of prison), one specifically P312), so I don't think it says much. Idk how they plot though. EDIT: Why do they name things so badly, they split the group into a Greek group and a Hellenic group... There is Y DNA J at that site.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Spanish CA Bell Beakers confirmed to be multicultural (non-early BB there's someone with Y DNA E1b1b1a, mtDNA M1a1b1 (Typo and Y DNA N1a1b1 instead? It could be mtDNA M I guess),

 

[halfalp]

Well it's because I'm saying L51 picked up Italo-Celtic, Germanic etc. from incoming Steppe people. We're still missing data from the LN/CA hierarchies though, and from LN/CA France and most places really.

Also, those supposed Greek colonists had Iberian Y DNA (all had R1b (I'm assuming the Rs to be R1b, someone get Genetiker out of prison), one specifically P312), so I don't think it says much. Idk how they plot though. EDIT: Why do they name things so badly, they split the group into a Greek group and a Hellenic group... There is Y DNA J at that site.

I think your L-51 hypothesis dont work. They wouldn't just take IE languages, but also Horses, Weapons and basically the whole Steppe package. Sounds too hurry for a true scenario.

Also i dont know what is that " Greek Colonists " context you are talking about.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I think your L-51 hypothesis dont work. They wouldn't just take IE languages, but also Horses, Weapons and basically the whole Steppe package. Sounds too hurry for a true scenario.

Also i dont know what is that " Greek Colonists " context you are talking about.

Did BB have horses? They wouldn't have to take anything else, they would have already been warlike and proficient metallurgists. I know Gimbutas said they had horses (well I think she did) but I haven't really seen any proper evidence of BBs having horses.

Greek colonists is because we have data from a Greek colony in Spain.

 

[halfalp]

Did BB have horses? They wouldn't have to take anything else, they would have already been warlike and proficient metallurgists.

In a 2015 paper from Mathiesen he talked about somes BB individuals that had " osteological " evidence of horse riding and some BB archeological remains had horse bones. Their primary weapon was the Bow and Arrow, so they were probably already mounted cavalry.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

In a 2015 paper from Mathiesen he talked about somes BB individuals that had " osteological " evidence of horse riding and some BB archeological remains had horse bones. Their primary weapon was the Bow and Arrow, so they were probably already mounted cavalry.

I did some quick Googling - if they did actually ride horses, there is barely any evidence of it at all. A bit odd if they came from, say, Yamnaya. Just as an example, the Wikipedia doesn't mention horses at all (a rubbish metric but you get the point, the evidence is scarce and incidental at best). The English, French and Italian Wikis don't mention horses at all, and in the German one it's in the context of an author who believed horses were originally domesticated in Western and Central Europe - maybe he saw a wild horse amongst the Bell Beakers and just assumed?

Also, it's interesting regarding the fact that there is substantial North African-related ancestry in Andalusia even before the Moors - they do look different to people from Barcelona a lot of the time, probably distinguishable the majority of the time. Check footballers from Barcelona and compare them to Andalusians - a lot of the Spaniards from the NE look like Pique, Puyol, Iniesta etc. while a large minority looks like Xavi and Pep Guardiola.

 

[halfalp]

I did some quick Googling - if they did actually ride horses, there is barely any evidence of it at all. A bit odd if they came from, say, Yamnaya. Just as an example, the Wikipedia doesn't mention horses at all (a rubbish metric but you get the point, the evidence is scarce and incidental at best).

Yes the evidences are scarce, but. An horse from Hungary or Czech republic in a BB context did show different physiology than previous wild horses, more leaning towards domesticated ones. And well, here i'm gonna extrapolate but, we see Steppe / Yamnaya ancestry in Iberia while Yamnaya still existed... They didn't came here by foot. Yes, wheeled vehicules draw by cows was already present in Funnelbeaker, but Steppe / Yamnaya / Botai, it's very hard to believe maybe not both CWC and BB, but if Bell Beakers didn't already have Horses, it cannot came from somewhere else.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Yes the evidences are scarce, but. An horse from Hungary or Czech republic in a BB context did show different physiology than previous wild horses, more leaning towards domesticated ones. And well, here i'm gonna extrapolate but, we see Steppe / Yamnaya ancestry in Iberia while Yamnaya still existed... They didn't came here by foot. Yes, wheeled vehicules draw by cows was already present in Funnelbeaker, but Steppe / Yamnaya / Botai, it's very hard to believe maybe not both CWC and BB, but if Bell Beakers didn't already have Horses, it cannot came from somewhere else.

A horse in Hungary could easily be of Hungarian Yamnaya origin. Come on, surely you realise that with all the excavation of BB remains we'd be expecting more than just a possible domesticated horse. I'm pretty sure this horse-riding thing is a myth - and almost certain that horseback archery isn't the case at all as you said as that's very advanced. We don't even know if Yamnaya attacked on horseback, though it's more Wagnerian to think that way.

 

[halfalp]

A horse in Hungary could easily be of Hungarian Yamnaya origin. Come on, surely you realise that with all the excavation of BB remains we'd be expecting more than just a possible domesticated horse. I'm pretty sure this horse-riding thing is a myth - and almost certain that horseback archery isn't the case at all as you said as that's very advanced. We don't even know if Yamnaya attacked on horseback, though it's more Wagnerian to think that way.

There is actually a lot in every BB site of horse remains. The sole problem is that scientific want a perfectly preserved horse wich teeth shows sign of extreme biting. I personally dont have any problem with the idea.

It makes me think when Barros-Daamgard put their paper on Botai and everybody was like " oh see! yamnaya didn't do it, botai did it! " i was like, dude, yamnaya and botai are neighbors, were do you think horses came into europe, from arabia?

I think there is way more cringy hypothesis that BB mounted cavalry hypothesis on the market actually.

Also why would Yamnaya be Horse Raiders and Bell Beakers not? It doesn't really make sense, if Yamnaya were Horse-Raiders virtually all peoples they encounter would also becoming Horse-Raiders. Like Mongols or Native Americans.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

There is actually a lot in every BB site of horse remains. The sole problem is that scientific want a perfectly preserved horse wich teeth shows sign of extreme biting. I personally dont have any problem with the idea.

It makes me think when Barros-Daamgard put their paper on Botai and everybody was like " oh see! yamnaya didn't do it, botai did it! " i was like, dude, yamnaya and botai are neighbors, were do you think horses came into europe, from arabia?

I think there is way more cringy hypothesis that BB mounted cavalry hypothesis on the market actually.

Also why would Yamnaya be Horse Raiders and Bell Beakers not? It doesn't really make sense, if Yamnaya were Horse-Raiders virtually all peoples they encounter would also becoming Horse-Raiders. Like Mongols or Native Americans.

Well seeing as Bell Beakers have practically no evidence backing up possession of domesticated horses, you've just given an argument that Yamnayans weren't horse-raiders. Also, if Suvorovo had horses that practically rules out a BB origin from them. The only site, btw, with any real evidence of horses is Csepel island - which was occupied previously by Yamnaya.

 

[halfalp]

Well seeing as Bell Beakers have practically no evidence backing up possession of domesticated horses, you've just given an argument that Yamnayans weren't horse-raiders. Also, if Suvorovo had horses that practically rules out a BB origin from them. The only site, btw, with any real evidence of horses is Csepel island - which was occupied previously by Yamnaya.

Csepel Island was a BB site. I dont understand your conclusion on " yamnayans weren't horse-raiders ".

 

[Angela]

Where on earth do you people get this stuff?

There was no horse mounted "cavalry" until thousands of years after Yamnaya. Please check the sources before posting.

 

[Pip]

Elite females likely mostly mated with elite males, while elite males mostly mated with non-elite females, which would mean that the progeny of the first would be less admixed than that of the second. Individual elite males, due to polygamy, could produce significantly more progeny than elite females.

Selection bias might also have occurred, if only elites were buried in the cemeteries once the "newcomers" gained control. The daughter of an elite male and non-elite "concubine" was much more likely, than a son of the same parentage, to be married off to a less- or non-elite spouse, meaning that she might not have counted as an elite (or eligible for elite burial), while he did.

I would like to return to this suggestion, pretty much overlooked. It provides a rational explanation; and if correct, would imply that the level of 'Steppe DNA' in the Iberian late Chalcolithic is probably significantly overstated, with the skeletons found in the cemeteries only being those from the elite Steppic lineages. The samples analysed could be unrepresentative of the general population, with non-Steppic people excluded.

The important question is - is it true? Is this sex-specific pattern replicated in other Steppic populations? If it is, then this would provide convincing circumstantial evidence that what Crazy Donkey suggested is actually what was happening. What does the data have to say about Corded Ware samples, for instance - are the females more Steppic on average? And Yamnayan samples - are the females less CHG-infused?

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Not sure if mentioned but it's interesting how those Greek colonists are so similar to the BA Mycenaeans, even if they were apparently Phoenicians it got me thinking about Greek origins.

I'm pretty certain continuity isn't the whole story though, as they are too Y DNA J dominant whereas Greece now has a lot of other Y DNA lineages that are also not consistent with e.g. Slavic origin (Z2103 for example, likely the bearer of proto-Hellenic speech). The Mycenaean samples we have are afaik entirely Y DNA J, whereas today the same region only has about 20%. Given for the most part the similarity with the Minoans (in both auDNA and Y DNA), it's easy to wager that the bulk of the Greek population was mainly descended from "Pelasgians" of similar stock to the Minoans, perhaps both with origins in the Kura-Araxes culture.

The modern South Greeks have 5 major haplogroups: J2, E-V13, R1b-Z2103, R1a and I2a. The I2a and R1a can be mostly explained by Slavic introgressions, and the J2 mostly came from Anatolia via the Aegean likely en mass around the same time as it arrived on Crete (so with Kura-Araxes as a best guess given that expansion was pretty much necessarily through warfare and elite dominance, leaving K-A as the only real candidate) - but we already have the J2 accounted for in aDNA so that isn't an issue. That leaves E-V13 and R1b-Z2103, the first of which based on amongst other things the farmer Scythian sample were probably SE European food-producing serfs whose Y DNA also spread with Steppe migrants and the second of which represents the Steppe migrants themselves.

So for the Athenians as a proxy to prove my point (though using the Spartans would make that point even clearer), I imagine in the class system they had that their hereditary nobility would be strongly Z2103 descending from the original invaders (comparable in elitism even to medieval British nobility - a countable number of families were in this class and they owned huge amounts of the most fertile land as well as being amongst the only actual citizens and traditionally also the mainstay of the cavalry - so they resemble medieval nobility rather a lot). Their middle class was cultural rather than economic and made up of people of both high and low wealth (mainly merchants, artisans and labourers), the largest group of which - the metics - were foreign non-citizens who made up at least a third of the population. In the scenario of the Pelasgians being J2 and of higher class than those they conquered, and later themselves being dominated by R1b-Z2103 warriors from the Steppe, I'd guess that their descendants made up the bulk of this non-metic middle class and, along with the metics (who were more than likely of East Mediterranean origin and so J2), that would make the majority of the Greek populace of respectable rank Y DNA J2 with a minority of Z2103 from e.g. extramarital affairs of the nobility as well as any original mixing that took place around the same time the new IE hierarchy was formed. So, finally, there's the slaves and those socially above them who were freed, who mostly worked on the land for their superiors and were perhaps heavily E-V13. Despite E-V13 showing signs of rapid population growth and expansion similar to the IEs, the higher concentration in the Balkans in opposite correlation to Y DNA R1 indicates that E-V13 was originally a SE European population whose Y DNA was picked up by Steppe folk who spread it across Eurasia. They would have arrived in SE Europe after the pioneering G2a wave of agriculturalists, though when after that they arrived I have no idea. Perhaps they were related to the non-Danubian farmers that entered Italy (Maciamo suspects E-V13 entered through Sicily too; and we also have one example of the parent clade of E-V13 in the Croatian Cardial Neolithic and an actual example of E-V13 in Spain also during the Cardial period). So, if this logic isn't overly specious (and of course it won't be like the nobility is "pUrE aRyAn R1s!!!", the previous dominant-now-middle class J2s, and the serfs good-for-nothing racially inferior and destined-to-be-conquered E-V13s), based on the social structure of Greece, current Y DNA frequencies and the order in which cultures (and their likely main Y DNA lineages) of the region dominated and then were dominated themselves, we should expect three different clusters amongst Athens and especially the Mycenaeans: the CHG-enriched J2-dominant "normal Greek" one we already have, a Z2103-dominant upper class with somewhat increased Steppe ancestry, and an E-V13 peasantry with somewhat less of CHG and especially EHG.



The point I'm making is that people don't seem to give enough credit to the idea of social stratification, which is of utmost importance when talking about dominant lineages (such as R1b-L51). R1b-L51 was clearly an elite lineage, and given its complete underrepresentation amongst the elite-dominated Corded Ware and Yamnaya cultures we shouldn't expect to find it in any of those cultures, meaning L51 would at least be a thousand years distant to Hungarian Yamnaya and around the same for German CW. Bell Beaker R1b arrived on the scene around 2500 BCE, and with tmrca of L51 and Z2103 being around 4500 BCE that means Bell Beaker is at least two millennia distant from tmrca with Yamnaya. Sure, it could be the case that L51 occupied the Western Steppe and expanded Westwards early, but given Z2103 itself practically appears out-of-nowhere on the Steppe there's no reason why a Steppe origin of L51 should be blasphemy. It could, just like the missing Z2103 amongst the Mycenaeans (though I used the example of the Athenians for hierarchy), be "hidden" amongst other cultures which lack obvious elites - elites which would be L51. We've only just now for example discovered a North African previously "hidden" amongst Iberian BBs, and despite the huge increase in samples we still have few Spanish BBs from before the main Central European expansion. We don't even have ANY samples from Los Millares or VNSP, the main hierarchies of the Spanish Bell Beaker period. Someone must have spread copper metallurgy to them, and the only real candidates are J2 and R1b-L51. Incidentally, it may actually even be likely that they do not share a common origin given Los Millares was periphery to the Bell Beaker culture whereas VNSP was complete with the BB cultural package from the beginning.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Is it just the case that they tease us? I mean, if they wanted to they could publish this all a LOT quicker and also be more open on say Twitter about their unpublished research. Instead, a spectacle is being made out of it, and it's taking years out of us poor forum dwellers' lives. Why not just pay (or ask) to borrow hundreds of skulls all at the same time from various different museums and collectors, extract the data and spend the next year writing papers? What progress have we actually made in identifying the formation of Yamnaya since 2015? Instead of sampling the Repin culture, they've gone on a Caucausian, Iranian and Central Asian goose-chase for the missing source of CHG to prove a Middle Eastern origin of PIE. I do believe in a Middle Eastern origin, but the obvious thing to do if you wanted to figure out the origin of a culture is to find out about its immediate predecessor. Assuming they aren't morons, why haven't they done this?

I'm pretty sure it's because they want to have a "broader sampling of all cultures" instead of going straight for the Indo-European throat, given how saccharine they are to appease left-wing sensibilities (if you ever see a Reich talk count how many times he goes on about something like us all being mixed, nobody is pure, let's rejoice in our shared humanity etc.). We just need to be more open in our interests, that's all. Instead of aDNA swiftly finding out what most people want to know, we must deepen our understanding about all peoples and share our interest equally. Surely if only a handful of us knew what we were doing and had access to the right equipment, software and plenty of samples we could solve virtually everything to do with PIE in a matter of weeks. Sample Repin culture - was it R1b-M269, if so what subclade? If not, then Yamnaya must have external origins. Use samples from the North Caucasus, Ukraine and Central Asia preceding Yamnaya - oh, the North Caucasus is full of people like Progress and the Ukraine has mixes of EHG with WHG and EEF belonging to Y DNA R1a, and we have Z2103 in Central Asia which appears to be a CHG-enriched version of Yamnaya still heavy on ANE? Okay, so we need to see where the Z2103 from this Central Asian sample came from, use these samples from NE Iran, Central Asia preceding this culture and the Steppe again etc. This is a massive rant but it's just so BORING having to wait months between papers. I mean, with Olalde for example, why did he stagger the publication of those Bell Beaker samples over the span of TWO YEARS perhaps with more to come, why not just do it all in one paper? To keep getting paid? Ugh.

 

[Yetos]

Not sure if mentioned but it's interesting how those Greek colonists are so similar to the BA Mycenaeans, even if they were apparently Phoenicians it got me thinking about Greek origins.

I'm pretty certain continuity isn't the whole story though, as they are too Y DNA J dominant whereas Greece now has a lot of other Y DNA lineages that are also not consistent with e.g. Slavic origin (Z2103 for example, likely the bearer of proto-Hellenic speech). The Mycenaean samples we have are afaik entirely Y DNA J, whereas today the same region only has about 20%. Given for the most part the similarity with the Minoans (in both auDNA and Y DNA), it's easy to wager that the bulk of the Greek population was mainly descended from "Pelasgians" of similar stock to the Minoans, perhaps both with origins in the Kura-Araxes culture.

The modern South Greeks have 5 major haplogroups: J2, E-V13, R1b-Z2103, R1a and I2a. The I2a and R1a can be mostly explained by Slavic introgressions, and the J2 mostly came from Anatolia via the Aegean likely en mass around the same time as it arrived on Crete (so with Kura-Araxes as a best guess given that expansion was pretty much necessarily through warfare and elite dominance, leaving K-A as the only real candidate) - but we already have the J2 accounted for in aDNA so that isn't an issue. That leaves E-V13 and R1b-Z2103, the first of which based on amongst other things the farmer Scythian sample were probably SE European food-producing serfs whose Y DNA also spread with Steppe migrants and the second of which represents the Steppe migrants themselves.

So for the Athenians as a proxy to prove my point (though using the Spartans would make that point even clearer), I imagine in the class system they had that their hereditary nobility would be strongly Z2103 descending from the original invaders (comparable in elitism even to medieval British nobility - a countable number of families were in this class and they owned huge amounts of the most fertile land as well as being amongst the only actual citizens and traditionally also the mainstay of the cavalry - so they resemble medieval nobility rather a lot). Their middle class was cultural rather than economic and made up of people of both high and low wealth (mainly merchants, artisans and labourers), the largest group of which - the metics - were foreign non-citizens who made up at least a third of the population. In the scenario of the Pelasgians being J2 and of higher class than those they conquered, and later themselves being dominated by R1b-Z2103 warriors from the Steppe, I'd guess that their descendants made up the bulk of this non-metic middle class and, along with the metics (who were more than likely of East Mediterranean origin and so J2), that would make the majority of the Greek populace of respectable rank Y DNA J2 with a minority of Z2103 from e.g. extramarital affairs of the nobility as well as any original mixing that took place around the same time the new IE hierarchy was formed. So, finally, there's the slaves and those socially above them who were freed, who mostly worked on the land for their superiors and were perhaps heavily E-V13. Despite E-V13 showing signs of rapid population growth and expansion similar to the IEs, the higher concentration in the Balkans in opposite correlation to Y DNA R1 indicates that E-V13 was originally a SE European population whose Y DNA was picked up by Steppe folk who spread it across Eurasia. They would have arrived in SE Europe after the pioneering G2a wave of agriculturalists, though when after that they arrived I have no idea. Perhaps they were related to the non-Danubian farmers that entered Italy (Maciamo suspects E-V13 entered through Sicily too; and we also have one example of the parent clade of E-V13 in the Croatian Cardial Neolithic and an actual example of E-V13 in Spain also during the Cardial period). So, if this logic isn't overly specious (and of course it won't be like the nobility is "pUrE aRyAn R1s!!!", the previous dominant-now-middle class J2s, and the serfs good-for-nothing racially inferior and destined-to-be-conquered E-V13s), based on the social structure of Greece, current Y DNA frequencies and the order in which cultures (and their likely main Y DNA lineages) of the region dominated and then were dominated themselves, we should expect three different clusters amongst Athens and especially the Mycenaeans: the CHG-enriched J2-dominant "normal Greek" one we already have, a Z2103-dominant upper class with somewhat increased Steppe ancestry, and an E-V13 peasantry with somewhat less of CHG and especially EHG.



The point I'm making is that people don't seem to give enough credit to the idea of social stratification, which is of utmost importance when talking about dominant lineages (such as R1b-L51). R1b-L51 was clearly an elite lineage, and given its complete underrepresentation amongst the elite-dominated Corded Ware and Yamnaya cultures we shouldn't expect to find it in any of those cultures, meaning L51 would at least be a thousand years distant to Hungarian Yamnaya and around the same for German CW. Bell Beaker R1b arrived on the scene around 2500 BCE, and with tmrca of L51 and Z2103 being around 4500 BCE that means Bell Beaker is at least two millennia distant from tmrca with Yamnaya. Sure, it could be the case that L51 occupied the Western Steppe and expanded Westwards early, but given Z2103 itself practically appears out-of-nowhere on the Steppe there's no reason why a Steppe origin of L51 should be blasphemy. It could, just like the missing Z2103 amongst the Mycenaeans (though I used the example of the Athenians for hierarchy), be "hidden" amongst other cultures which lack obvious elites - elites which would be L51. We've only just now for example discovered a North African previously "hidden" amongst Iberian BBs, and despite the huge increase in samples we still have few Spanish BBs from before the main Central European expansion. We don't even have ANY samples from Los Millares or VNSP, the main hierarchies of the Spanish Bell Beaker period. Someone must have spread copper metallurgy to them, and the only real candidates are J2 and R1b-L51. Incidentally, it may actually even be likely that they do not share a common origin given Los Millares was periphery to the Bell Beaker culture whereas VNSP was complete with the BB cultural package from the beginning.

It is more simple,

the more North you move to Greece, the more palaiolithic I1 and Neolithic G you find in antique
the more the south, the more J2,
Dorians might have very low J2,

the most ancient of the Greeks are not minoans or myceneans,
it is a tribe in Makedonia Epirus and Thrace that is more than 60% palailithic mt DNA and palaiolithic I1

 

[markod]

It might be a good idea to look at the burial contexts of known BB samples. There was no caste system and no concubinage - this is completely impossible, though instances of polygamy there might have been.

You need to accept what the data says. The same thing that happened in the UK and Ireland also happened in Germany/France/Iberia. The BBs replace everyone else, and in some places the complex societes vanish annd give way to more primitive groups. No aristocracies/castes/centralization of power and women.