New R1a map

LOL you're an amateur just like me and everyone in this forum. No one has "evidences" until we have ancient Y dna from Proto Celtic people.

BTW the Urnfield ancient DNA from Germany showed more R1a than R1b.


I just tried to show that little amount of R1a can be responsible for the spread of an IE language.

I'll readily admit I'm an amateur. Glad you will, too.

I don't think the small amount of R1a in western Europe is responsible for the Indo-European languages there. I don't see a reasonable argument that it could be. Much more sophisticated groups in much larger numbers have failed to transmit their languages over much smaller areas. Didn't happen.

BTW, if by "Urnfield" you are talking about the very un-Urnfield Lichtenstein Cave remains, there were two supposed R1a found there, a father and son, as well as one R1b. I say "supposed R1a" because, as far as I can tell from reading that report, which is in German, the scientists did not actually SNP test the remains, nor did they identify them as R1a. They simply identified them by haplotype and by their own numbering system that signified which set of remains was which. Hobbyists like you and me declared those two to be R1a based on their haplotype. Here is something I posted about them elsewhere, back in June:

rms2 said:
Regarding the two "R1a" individuals, M10 and M11, who were apparently father and son, as far as I can tell, they were not SNP tested (evidently no one was). The idea that they were R1a is a guess based on a 12-marker haplotype. The haplotypes of the 19 males from whom y-dna was obtainable are shown on page 93. The shared haplotype of M10 and M11 is "Y5" on that chart. It seems to me the notion that they were R1a hangs on a slender thread, i.e., that they have 19=15, 439=11, and 390=25. Someone tell me if I am missing something, but those two could just as easily be R1b, because there are plenty of R1b men who have those marker values. I don't see anything startlingly R1a about their haplotype.

Of course, I could be wrong. My German is pretty rusty. Maybe they tested them for M17, but I didn't see it in the report if they did.
 
The centum/satem division does in fact exist, and unless you are prepared to come forth and announce what it is that makes you an expert and gives you the power to abrogate it, it is what it is.

Besides that, there is the mere geographical fact that Indo-European languages are overwhelmingly spoken in the West, where R1a is scarce.

I do not deny that the Centum/Satem division exists, because it clearly does. But it is not the whole story. What I have been trying to say is that the Centum/Satem divisions are later innovations and that many common features in the branches of Indo-European do not obey to the Centum/Satem split. On top of that, the R1a/R1b division (or, well, I should perhaps more appropriately say, "R1a" v.s "no R1a", because that is much closer to reality) does not correlate as well with the Centum/Satem split as you might think it would.

I don't have all the answers. I am amazed when I run into so many folks who think they do.

Honestly, I really do not claim to have all the answers, but I have definitely observed a lot of other evidence (some which I have presented here) which paints the picture that you seem to have as extremely problematic.

The early Anatolian IE languages are especially archaic, as Anthony indicates in his book. If Euphratic in fact exists, that pushes Indo-European in that region still farther back in time.

They are archaic, yes, and they also have many innovations found nowhere else at the same time. This is certainly an argument that speaks for the Anatolian languages to be the first branch of IE to have diverged. However, even if we assume that Anatolian, diverged earlier, then we still must that the other branches of IE (which includes Celtic and the other western IE languages like Italic, Germanic and Greek) diverged from a common language at a later point.

Great. Hmmm. You are a guy who posts at Eupedia's Y-DNA forum. Gordon Whittaker is a linguist and professor at the University of Göttingen.

Your skepticism of Whittaker's work is duly noted.

No offense to you, but I find such a statement mildly insulting. The "call to academic authority" is quite flawed in my opinion. As a matter of fact, aquisition of an academic grade does not make people immune from commiting blunders. The world would be a better place if that was the case. My opinion is that authority in such discussions does not come from the academic grade, but from the arguments themselves. I see the linguistic methodology lacking in Whittaker's work (mind you, sound correspondence is part of the linguist's tools-of-trade since the 19th century), and thus I see it's argumentative authority quite diminished.

But the Basques clearly have been surrounded for millennia by Celts and other Indo-Europeans! That much is obvious. Are you attempting to deny that?

Well, I definitely think it is worth to ask the question: have they really been surrounded for that long? Note that I do not have an answer here, but I definitely think that the relative scarcity of Celtic loanwords in Basque is outstanding. But it's clear that towards their southeast, the Basques were adjoined in Antiquity by the Iberians, another non-Indo-European people which inhabited a large stretch of Iberia, from the Roussillon to central-eastern Andalusia.

Note that the exact relationship of Basque and Iberian is unclear (the two languages may not have been part of the same language family, but it seems likely that there at least was some kind of a sprachbund between the two languages), but if we look today into the former areas of the Iberians, we also find large amounts of R1b.

If Basque marital tradition was matrilocal, which I believe it was, then you have the perfect scenario for the introduction of outsider y-dna and the retention of the maternal language, since, in a matrilocal society, the groom goes to live with the bride's family. The male children would carry their father's y-dna but would speak their mother's language.

I do not deny that early Basque marital tradition may have been matrilineal, but that does not explain how the Basques end up with non-Indo-European words for metal-working.

A similar scenario must surely explain how the Ossetians have become predominantly G2a over the centuries.

The Ossetian language, it should be noted, is the sole survivor of the Scythian/Sarmatian languages.

I think it likely the Beaker Folk spoke an early form of Celtic. How that happened exactly I cannot explained, but I don't feel the need for complete and tidy explanations of all facets of a phenomenon.

Sorry, I think that the fact that the Basque language, which is clearly an isolate language today, has "native" words for metals and metal-working which are clearly not borrowed from the Celtic languages is not just a tiny detail, this is in my opinion a very large obstacle.

The Kurgan Theory has plenty of problems. All other explanations of the spread of Indo-European have their problems, too.

Well, if we look at the core vocabulary of PIE, we do find common terms for agriculture, for domesticated animals (notably the horse!), for metal-working, and for warfare. This, in my opinion, narrows the context in which the language must have been spoken down quite a bit.

But I definitely do not except the "R1a is ultimately responsible for all Indo-European languages" idea. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I did not say this, but I think nonetheless that a strong case can be made that the original Proto-Indo-Europeans were indeed majorly carriers of R1a, and not R1b.
 
I did not mean to be insulting, but you seem to claim the ability to sweep Whittaker's work aside with a simple assertion that I am not really qualified to judge. Like I said, your skepticism is duly noted.

Regarding the last line of your post above, we disagree. I don't think the case for that is strong at all.
 
I am still left wondering where the ~5% R1a that justifies the shaded blob in France on Maciamo's map comes from. I know he said it was from a sample from Auvergne, but from what study? What was the sample size? For example, if it was 20, that would mean one man was R1a. If it was 100, 5 of them were. Could be much ado about nothing.
 
I did not mean to be insulting, but you seem to claim the ability to sweep Whittaker's work aside with a simple assertion that I am not really qualified to judge. Like I said, your skepticism is duly noted.

Regarding the last line of your post above, we disagree. I don't think the case for that is strong at all.

I think the Pontic-Caspian theory of IE origins is getting stronger all the time, in all areas (esp. linguistic and archaeological). The marginal dissenters are just that. The exact % of the original IE haplogroups is just a guess, and predominance of R1a would currently be the best probable solution (in terms of Ockham's razor). But only ancient DNA can make this probability a certitude. And the amended post-Gimbutas "kurgan theory" is perfectly comfortable with the notion that other haplogroups drawn into the IE vortex would have continued the expansion west of the Rhine and elsewhere.
 
I am still left wondering where the ~5% R1a that justifies the shaded blob in France on Maciamo's map comes from. I know he said it was from a sample from Auvergne, but from what study? What was the sample size? For example, if it was 20, that would mean one man was R1a. If it was 100, 5 of them were. Could be much ado about nothing.


French legislation doesn't enable the development of DNA testing. So I agree that we can't really draw conclusions on France until we have a sufficient sample size.
 
I think the Pontic-Caspian theory of IE origins is getting stronger all the time, in all areas (esp. linguistic and archaeological). The marginal dissenters are just that. The exact % of the original IE haplogroups is just a guess, and predominance of R1a would currently be the best probable solution (in terms of Ockham's razor). But only ancient DNA can make this probability a certitude. And the amended post-Gimbutas "kurgan theory" is perfectly comfortable with the notion that other haplogroups drawn into the IE vortex would have continued the expansion west of the Rhine and elsewhere.

Obviously, we disagree, if by "the Pontic-Caspian theory of IE origins" you mean to equate the spread of IE with y haplogroup R1a.

"Ockham's Razor" would not certainly not attribute the spread of IE languages in the West to y haplogroup R1a. It requires a lot of special pleading and dulling of the razor to accomplish that trick.
 
French legislation doesn't enable the developpment of DNA testing. So I agree that we can't really draw conclusions on France until we have a sufficient sample size.

Yes, it would be nice if Maciamo reappeared on this thread to tell us how he got that figure for his map.
 
re
Obviously, we disagree, if by "the Pontic-Caspian theory of IE origins" you mean to equate the spread of IE with y haplogroup R1a.

"Ockham's Razor" would not certainly not attribute the spread of IE languages in the West to y haplogroup R1a. It requires a lot of special pleading and dulling of the razor to accomplish that trick.
I don't know who you are responding to here, but it obviously isn't me, since I do not assert any exclusive role to the haplogroup you seem to have an issue with.
 
re
I don't know who you are responding to here, but it obviously isn't me, since I do not assert any exclusive role to the haplogroup you seem to have an issue with.

I didn't use the word "exclusive" with regard to your previous post. I was obviously responding to you (and you know it or you wouldn't have quoted my post), but it doesn't matter.

I don't have an "issue" with any haplogroup, that would be ridiculous. What I have an issue with is the idea of the "predominance of R1a" among the original Indo-Europeans, whoever they were, if such a people can even be said to have existed.

Look at this thread. You have people here so enamored with that very simplistic notion that they are attributing the spread of the Celtic languages to R1a based on a supposed frequency of ~5% R1a in an unknown sample from Auvergne, France.
 
Look at this thread. You have people here so enamored with that very simplistic notion that they are attributing the spread of the Celtic languages to a supposed frequency of ~5% R1a in an unknown sample from Auvergne, France.

rms2 please, there's really no reason to get polemic.

What I would like to know from you, although I confess that it is somewhat offtopic, is your opinion on the Iberians (that is, the ancient non-Indo-European people of eastern Iberia).

I would like to add here that I will get back to a more formal, more elaborate reply regarding Whittaker's work.
 
What is especially "polemic" about what I posted, in contrast, say, with what you have posted on the same subject?

I am not certain what you mean by my opinion on the Iberians, but I suppose you are asking what y haplogroup I think was predominant among them. In answer to that, I would say that I do not know. It might have been R1b; it might have been E1b1b; it might have been G2a; it might have been I2 of some kind. I do not know.

How do you feel about the prevalence of R1a among some non-Indo-European speaking peoples?

Let's assume for a moment that Bronze Age steppe people were mostly R1a and spoke some kind of early Indo-European dialects. How did they, unsophisticated as they were, spread Indo-European language and culture all the way to the Atlantic, to the furthest shores of Ireland and Portugal? Other far more sophisticated and powerful peoples have failed to transmit their languages over much smaller areas. How did these Bronze Age R1as accomplish such a monumental task without actually moving west en masse themselves?

The Basque/Iberian thing is always the resort of R1a=Indo-European partisans. But think for a minute. Which is more likely, that the Basques have become more like their neighbors in terms of y-dna via admixture, or that the entire population of western Europe shifted its language and culture from Basque-like non-Indo-European to Indo-European? Which change is the more profound, the more startling, the more difficult to accomplish: the shift in y-dna of a small minority, or the shift in language and culture of a very much larger population over a very large geographic expanse?

I think western Europe got its Indo-European language and culture from tribes who were predominantly R1b. Eastern Europe and India are a different story. There the carriers were predominantly R1a, which, by the way, is closely related to R1b. I am not sure who the original Indo-Europeans were. I am not sure it is even correct to speak in such terms, since Indo-European probably evolved via a series of complex interactions of peoples and was not a static thing.

No offense, Taranis, but what qualifies you to launch a formal, elaborate reply to Whittaker's The Case for Euphratic? Can you read Sumerian cuneiform like Whittaker and do the work he did? And what qualifies any of us here to properly assess the refutation you obviously intend to make? You did something similar with Koch's preliminary publication of his idea that Celtic evolved first within the Bronze Age Atlantic Trading Network. Koch's work, like Whittaker's, didn't fit the R1a kurgan template, so you attacked it. Yet Koch is perhaps the world's premier Celticist. Whittaker, likewise, is a linguist whose The Case for Euphratic is presented by no less an authority than Thomas Gamkrelidze.

I understand that this is not religious dogma and that the word of authorities is subject to counter argument even by the lowly denizens of forums like this one. But most of us here are unqualified to criticize Whittaker's work or Koch's work or Gamkrelidze's work or to properly assess such criticisms leveled by others.

So, honestly, you can spare me your criticism of Whittaker's work, unless you are secretly really James Patrick Mallory. What you said about it before was sufficient. Your skepticism, based on your unwavering adherence to the Kurgan Theory, has been duly noted.
 
You are talking about less than 20 km , these maps are not entirely accurate., so, HOW YES AND NO was correct in his statement ,in my opinion.

The other only explanation and its less accurate is the visigoth period, which is basically on the extreme border of Gallic lands of where they settled.


sure you know but we have to stress it: the french samples are not so well sampled concerning origin, and for Auvergne the sample is very too poor for extrapolating to much - wait and see...
and as says one of us, Auvergne (what Auvergnats: the industrial Clermont-Ferrand citizens?) is not to far from the ancient Burgundy territory - and FOREZ (between Clermont-Ferrand and Lyon approximatively) received a lot of Burgunds even if little fewer thantLyon and Savoie or S-Burgundy and S-Franche-Comté so ...) this region show more blonds than true Auvergne, as do Lyonnais and Savoie - the Lyonnais & Rhône-Alpes region of France show also some Y-I1, I do'nt know for Y-R-U106...
 
No offense, Taranis, but what qualifies you to launch a formal, elaborate reply to Whittaker's The Case for Euphratic? Can you read Sumerian cuneiform like Whittaker and do the work he did? And what qualifies any of us here to properly assess the refutation you obviously intend to make? You did something similar with Koch's preliminary publication of his idea that Celtic evolved first within the Bronze Age Atlantic Trading Network. Koch's work, like Whittaker's, didn't fit the R1a kurgan template, so you attacked it. Yet Koch is perhaps the world's premier Celticist. Whittaker, likewise, is a linguist whose The Case for Euphratic is presented by no less an authority than Thomas Gamkrelidze.

I understand that this is not religious dogma and that the word of authorities is subject to counter argument even by the lowly denizens of forums like this one. But most of us here are unqualified to criticize Whittaker's work or Koch's work or Gamkrelidze's work or to properly assess such criticisms leveled by others.

So, honestly, you can spare me your criticism of Whittaker's work, unless you are secretly really James Patrick Mallory. What you said about it before was sufficient. Your skepticism, based on your unwavering adherence to the Kurgan Theory, has been duly noted.

Honestly, you really misunderstand the point I am making. I get where you're coming from, and I understand your point, but I don't think that you really fully understand what I was trying to say. This is not about the Kurgan hypothesis, this also not about me bashing Whittaker or Koch (by the way, Koch explicitly said in his paper that his reinterpretation of the origin of the Celtic languages does not conflict with the Kurgan hypothesis), but the basic criticism that I have, and I have that criticism without any reservations, is that any new hypothesis should be subject to absolute scrutiny and a diligent methodology.
I do not mind new an innovative hypotheses at all, please do not get me wrong there. Science would not get ahead if nobody was posting new radical new ideas. But, if they do not follow their methods with absolute diligence, I want to know why.
Do not get me wrong: I do not criticize the persons in question, I do not criticize the knowledge they have accumulated (which, on certain specific fields in question, no doubt is greater than mine) nor their ideas, but I do criticize their methodology. No matter what field of science you are in, the benchmark of scrutiny and diligence should be the same. Linguistics is a field of science. Why should a lesser standard apply for linguistics than for other fields of science?
 
R1a is one thing and the Indo-European urheimat is another. I do think that a good case can be made for the predominance of R1a among the PIEuropeans of the Pontic-Caspian. But if it turns out that this was incorrect it will make no difference to the urheimat theory at all.
Since you wish to confuse the two I guess you're more interested in talking to yourself. Carry on. I like my mainstream authorities better than your marginals.
 
R1a is one thing and the Indo-European urheimat is another. I do think that a good case can be made for the predominance of R1a among the PIEuropeans of the Pontic-Caspian. But if it turns out that this was incorrect it will make no difference to the urheimat theory at all.
Since you wish to confuse the two I guess you're more interested in talking to yourself. Carry on. I like my mainstream authorities better than your marginals.

as per link which says this southern swedish lands was originally gothic ( german ).
Would it mean that the Goths where originally an east-germanic tribe , with R1a that first moved into southern sweden and then later moving to modern polish lands, then black sea area etc etc etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Götaland

where they called something else before

could they be original Pomeranian culture?
 
I am not certain what you mean by my opinion on the Iberians, but I suppose you are asking what y haplogroup I think was predominant among them. In answer to that, I would say that I do not know. It might have been R1b; it might have been E1b1b; it might have been G2a; it might have been I2 of some kind. I do not know.

I also seem to have the impression that you do not want to know because you have your pre-fabricated opinion that R1b must be Indo-European.

How do you feel about the prevalence of R1a among some non-Indo-European speaking peoples?

Well, first off I would only associated R1a1a with the Indo-Europeans, and in many cases that I can think of, it's prevalence elsewhere can be explained by historic processes (Arabization of Libya - which was partially Greek previously, Turkification of Anatolia and Central Asia, etc.). But this really isn't my point. The point is that we have the evidence from ancient DNA that a mass immigration of R1a-bearing people occured into Central/Eastern Europe with the Corded Ware period.

Anyways, do you think that R1b was the "original" Indo-European haplogroup, because that seems the point you're trying to make.

Let's assume for a moment that Bronze Age steppe people were mostly R1a and spoke some kind of early Indo-European dialects. How did they, unsophisticated as they were, spread Indo-European language and culture all the way to the Atlantic, to the furthest shores of Ireland and Portugal? Other far more sophisticated and powerful peoples have failed to transmit their languages over much smaller areas. How did these Bronze Age R1as accomplish such a monumental task without actually moving west en masse themselves?

Well, consider for a moment that the language situation in Antiquity was a vastly different one from today, and the areas across which non-Indo-European languages were spoken in Western Europe was considerably larger than the tiny blotch of the Basque country: Aquitanian (the ancestor language of Basque) was probably spoken all the way to the Garonne, and from there to the Central Pyrenees. Iberian was spoken across a large arc from the Roussillon to eastern Andalusia.

The Basque/Iberian thing is always the resort of R1a=Indo-European partisans. But think for a minute. Which is more likely, that the Basques have become more like their neighbors in terms of y-dna via admixture, or that the entire population of western Europe shifted its language and culture from Basque-like non-Indo-European to Indo-European? Which change is the more profound, the more startling, the more difficult to accomplish: the shift in y-dna of a small minority, or the shift in language and culture of a very much larger population over a very large geographic expanse?

Actually, you're the one who's making a bigger assumption here, since people cannot replace their genes, but they can obviously swap their language.

But, my opinion the questions must be asked differently:

- Was the Beaker-Bell Culture Indo-European speaking? I would answer that question with no, because then we have a huge problem explaining how the Basques ended up with their indigenous terms for metals and metal-working, instead of borrowing them from Proto-Indo-European or Celtic (which would be expected). If you know an alternative how the Basque language, at a later or earlier point, acquired such terms, please tell me.

- Was the Beaker-Bell Culture carriers of R1b-carrying? I would say it is possible, if not likely, but of you look at the structure of R1b, it carries quite the inverse spread pattern of the historic Beaker-Bell Culture.

- Note that if we answer the above question with "no", the possibility that R1b was indeed carried by a branch of Indo-European peoples becomes inevitable. If what you say about people acquiring majority R1b via intermixing is a possibly, a later spread of R1b (that is, only during the Bronze Age) is also a firm possibility.

I think western Europe got its Indo-European language and culture from tribes who were predominantly R1b. Eastern Europe and India are a different story. There the carriers were predominantly R1a, which, by the way, is closely related to R1b. I am not sure who the original Indo-Europeans were. I am not sure it is even correct to speak in such terms, since Indo-European probably evolved via a series of complex interactions of peoples and was not a static thing.

We are talking in both cases only about specific subclades of R1b-L11 and R1a-M417, which makes the statement that they are "closely related" dubious since you have to go back into the Mesolithic/Paleolithic for them to be just exactly that.

Unless you are arguing for Paleolithic continuity of the Indo-European languages (which doesn't really make any sense because, as mentioned, PIE was a language that included agricultural terms, words for domesticated animals and for metal-working), this really doesn't make any sense. Note that this is also a partial (valid) criticism of Euphratic, and of the hypothesis that the Indo-European languages are purportedly Neolithic in age.

So, honestly, you can spare me your criticism of Whittaker's work, unless you are secretly really James Patrick Mallory. What you said about it before was sufficient. Your skepticism, based on your unwavering adherence to the Kurgan Theory, has been duly noted.

Well, I will get back to this at some later point. I would like to reiterate that my scepticism of the Euphratic hypothesis has not the slightest to do with the question wether the Kurgan hypothesis is correct or not. If you are trying to tell me something else with that, well that is not my problem.
 
What do you mean exactly?

Well, if we assume that R1b indeed entered Europe via southwestern Iberia from the early 3rd millennium BC (the oldest Beaker-Bell sites are from Portugal, bear that mind), would we really expect two large subclades (U106 and S116), one mainly in Central and Northern Europe and the other in all of Western Europe (including Italy). You have the same problem when you look at the major subclades of S116 (L21, U152, Z196). I would argue that a Central European entry point for R1b into Western Europe is far more likely to explain the pattern of R1b subclades than the entry from the Southwest.

For that reason, I believe that either: R1b "hijacked" the Beaker-Bell culture in the reverse direction, or R1b has an even later entry into Western Europe that occured only during the Bronze Age.
 
Well, if we assume that R1b indeed entered Europe via southwestern Iberia from the early 3rd millennium BC (the oldest Beaker-Bell sites are from Portugal, bear that mind), would we really expect two large subclades (U106 and S116), one mainly in Central and Northern Europe and the other in all of Western Europe (including Italy). You have the same problem when you look at the major subclades of S116 (L21, U152, Z196). I would argue that a Central European entry point for R1b into Western Europe is far more likely to explain the pattern of R1b subclades than the entry from the Southwest.

The Bell Beakers are recorded first in Iberia and a bit later in Netherlands. We can figure out two groups of R1b L11 evolving respectively in S116 (Iberia) and U106 (Netherland).
Note that highest variance for R1b U152 is not Central Europe but south eastern France which means that a lots of Italian and Central European U152 came from the West and the south which is really consistent with a Bell Beaker spread. (from the south west to the rest of Europe)
 

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