More evidence that the PIE R1b people originated in the Maykop culture

http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2013/05/stanislav-grigorievs-ancient-indo.html

Dienekes is so right! I do also believe that ancient Indo-European clades of hg. R1b originally came not far from the South of the Caspian Sea (Zagros/Iranian Plateau). Later on hg. R1b moved more to the west into Asia Minor/Central Anatolia and formed the Halaf culture. And from that spot they spread into Europe maybe through Greece or maybe through North Caucasus.
But the fact is that ancient R1b folks that entered Europe were already Indo-European. R1b was NOT Indo-Europized by R1a or something, lol. I'm sure about that.

That is also a thought,

from what i see in maps I could say

1) that only R1a is enough to spread IE language,
yet that thread could exclude R1a from IE speakers

2) Tocharians, they spoke a kind of anatolian IE language they started migrate from minor-Asia Middle East, BUT THEY WERE R1a,

3) R1a is also common among Uraloid populations, could they spoke an Fino-Ugric language at first place?

so at least in case of Tocharian don't be sure to exclude R1a, although it is possible,
 
That is also a thought,

from what i see in maps I could say

1) that only R1a is enough to spread IE language,
yet that thread could exclude R1a from IE speakers

2) Tocharians, they spoke a kind of anatolian IE language they started migrate from minor-Asia Middle East, BUT THEY WERE R1a,

3) R1a is also common among Uraloid populations, could they spoke an Fino-Ugric language at first place?

so at least in case of Tocharian don't be sure to exclude R1a, although it is possible,
The oldest branches of R1a are from West Asia as you can see here: http://kurdishdna.blogspot.be/2013/05/r1a-tree.html#comment-form

If Tocharians were partly R1a folks it is possible that Tocharian R1a was just native to West Asian.

As you can see here (light blue line) oldest clades of R1a (m420) entered Europe via the Balkans. m420 is estimated to be 8000 years old!
1O-R1a.jpg
 
...I have always said that the first haplogroups to domesticate animals were hg J and R1b (as opposed to farming, first developed by E1b1b, G and T).

I'm not willing to concede this as fact. How do you explain the 27,000 year old dog found in the Czech Republic or the 31,700 year old specimen found in Goyet Cave? Is it now believed that R1b showed up in Belgium 32,000 years ago?

Granted, R1b probably worked with horses first and J probably domesticated cattle, but these topics are far from being accepted as hard fact by the scientific community.

**EDIT**

For those readers who may be new to this topic, Gobekli Tepe pre-dates the ancient Sumer civilization by at least 3,000 years (maybe even 4,000). This would make Gobekli Tepe the first/earliest/founding site of human built structures which required collective effort. It may even replace Sumer's claim of being home to "the cradle of civilization" you read about in school.

Gobekli Tepe is a historical game changer.
 
I was wondering if fishing was what enabled hunter-gatherers to form a village. If they were hunting land animals they would have to move around as the area would soon run out of animals to hunt. Keeping goats and cows would have to be small in numbers as the grass would be gone if too many animals. So fishing using boats would enable hunter-gatherers to form a village with a few cows and goats. They could have harvested plants like cabbage and such as chimpanzees ate plant food too. Over thousands of years the women would have found which vegetables were edible.
 
I'm not willing to concede this as fact. How do you explain the 27,000 year old dog found in the Czech Republic or the 31,700 year old specimen found in Goyet Cave? Is it now believed that R1b showed up in Belgium 32,000 years ago?

Don't be ridiculous. You know I was referring to the first animals domesticated for their meat, namely cattle, goat and pigs.

As for horses, it was probably both R1b and R1a who domesticated them in the steppes.
 
Re-read post 29.

I still don't know where you are getting at. I am not the one who said that Göbekli Tepe was founded by R1b people. I am the one who doubted that assumption.
 
The paper does not mention R1b. If the pre-Maykop civilization came from Mesopotamia, then they probably had a lot of E1b1b and J. I think you're taking the most common western european gene and trying to prove that it was a dominant marker of the first ancient advanced civilizations, but it doesn't work because they're all in Levant/Anatolia/Middle East. Thanks for doing this research thou.

Can't say it any better than this really.
 
...I imagined that R1b brought bronze working, while R1a provided the burial customs. If this new radiocarbon dating is correct, then it would seem that R1b brought both. In that case, it becomes increasingly likely that the Proto-Indo-European language itself was also brought by the more advanced and dominant partner (R1b), and adopted by the R1a population at the same time as the rest of the cultural package from Maykop... "

So you postulate that R1b (the more advanced and dominant partner) brought bronze, burial customs, and Indo-European language, as well as horse domestication (possibly in partnership with R1a as you mentioned before). Wow, that is quite a body of work and humankind is certainly appreciative of it.

I'm putting on the brakes though and saying the numbers don't add for R1b founding Gobekli Tepe. Yes I know that ebamerican made the initial statement on this thread, but I've observed a track record from R1b members and I won't be surprised if Gobekli Tepe is the next intended target. That's how you guys roll. However this is one claim (albeit probably the juciest of all) that R1b proponents aren't going to win, not logically anyway.

Humans using construction materials in a cohesive, intelligent manner at Gobekli Tepe-- and in my opinion the building of humanity's first civilization-- can be attributed to a mix of hg. I, J1, J2, and G2a. Maybe some lines of E as well.

This is surely a difficult pill to swallow for R1b members because I've noticed that members this particular hg. seem to pride themselves on being "the architects" of modern society.

Lucky for us more primitive haplogroups, we were able to muddle through long enough for R1b to arrive on their white horses to lead us forward on our journey. We unwashed heathens did build a really cool system of massive concentric stones (11,000 years ago) that somehow didn't tumble like a set of large dominos, and we did it all without a set of blueprints from our most evolved R1b chieftains. Whew, we dodged the bullet on that one. :)
 
Last edited:
What remains unclear is how R1b was part of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic expansion within the Middle East, but that the migrants who brought the Neolithic to Europe belonged only to G2a and E1b1b (and perhaps also J1, J2 and T). That may have been caused by a founder effect in the original population of Neolithic farmers who moved to Europe. Or it could be that R1b was confined to the north or east of the Fertile Crescent and decided to expand north across the Caucasus, while Levantine farmers moved to Europe. G2a would have brought agriculture from the Levant to eastern Anatolia, and R1b picked it up before moving north.


I think I had mentioned not that long ago that there are Kurgan stelae found in Southeastern Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia which are in date older than these found in the Steppes. Most of these traces were diminished by other conquering people.
 
Last edited:
That is also a thought,

from what i see in maps I could say

1) that only R1a is enough to spread IE language,
yet that thread could exclude R1a from IE speakers

2) Tocharians, they spoke a kind of anatolian IE language they started migrate from minor-Asia Middle East, BUT THEY WERE R1a,

3) R1a is also common among Uraloid populations, could they spoke an Fino-Ugric language at first place?

so at least in case of Tocharian don't be sure to exclude R1a, although it is possible,

Finno-Ugric languages are connected to Haplogroup N. There is no doubt that R1a people have a connection to the earliest Indo Europeans.
 
So you postulate that R1b (the more advanced and dominant partner) brought bronze, burial customs, and Indo-European language, as well as horse domestication (possibly in partnership with R1a as you mentioned before). Wow, that is quite a body of work and humankind is certainly appreciative of it.

I personally think that R1b people didn't invent agriculture, pottery, writing, city-states, and many other important early inventions or developments. Actually I've always claimed that R1b people didn't invent agriculture and that they didn't spread the Neolithic to Europe, going completely against the current of the vast majority of "professional" population geneticists, as well as from bloggers like Dienekes or Davidski.

R1b surely acquired agriculture from its Middle Eastern neighbours to the south (Levant). The only place where R1b might have spread the Neolithic is to the Pontic-Caspian steppes. But even there agriculture played only a minor role due to the harsh climate, and cattle and goat/sheep herding was the main means of subsistence. Hence my assumption that R1b might have domesticated these animals, as R1b was in the right region (eastern Anatolia) at the time and someone had to bring these domesticates to the steppes, so who better than R1b ?

I also never say that they invented burial customs ! The new data I mentioned in the OP seems to point that the kurgan (tumulus) type of burial, i.e. the one undeniably associated with the steppe cultures and later Indo-European migrations, might well have originated in the Middle East (not necessarily with the R1b people who exported the practice to the steppes). In any case, there are plenty of types of burial practices, and the most impressive were those of the Megalithic people (mostly G2a and I2) of Western Europe and of the ancient Egyptians (mostly E1b1b, G and T).

But as far as bronze working is concerned, I do see a link with R1b. Indo-European languages are not an invention, and they are undeniably spoken mostly by R1a- and R1b-dominated societies nowadays.

As for the horse domestication, as I said, R1a played as much a role as R1b, and there were probably some G2a3b1 among them as well.

I'm putting on the brakes though and saying the numbers don't add for R1b founding Gobekli Tepe. Yes I know that ebamerican made the initial statement on this thread, but I've observed a track record from R1b members and I won't be surprised if Gobekli Tepe is the next intended target. That's how you guys roll. However this is one claim (albeit probably the juciest of all) that R1b proponents aren't going to win, not logically anyway.

Frankly, I don't care. It's not a battle, and I am not on anybody' side, R1b or other.

Humans using construction materials in a cohesive, intelligent manner at Gobekli Tepe-- and in my opinion the building of humanity's first civilization-- can be attributed to a mix of hg. I, J1, J2, and G2a. Maybe some lines of E as well.

The first civilizations arose in the late Bronze Age. I agree that they were composite of many haplogroups. However Göbekli Tepe was not a civilisation, perhaps not even a culture, merely a settlement. At that time (Mesolithic to early Neolithic), most human populations were still living in tribes of closely related individuals. Hunter-gatherers may have settled down at Göbekli Tepe, but they were still a large extended family, primarily belonging to one haplogroup.

But Göbekli Tepe was not the only such settlement, and it is likely that all haplogroups present in the Fertile Crescent played their role in the Neolithic development. Agriculture arose in the Levant, domestication in the Taurus and Zagros mountains, and pottery appears to have first be made in Northeast Asia, then was diffused westward through Siberia. All were originally developed by different haplogroups. Actually even domestication could be attributed to different haplogroups depending on the animal.

On the other hand, there was probably precious little hg I in the region at the time. The present-day I2 found in Kurdistan almost certainly came with R1a from Eastern Europe (perhaps via Central Asia) during the Bronze Age or later. On the other hand, R1b has always been part of the Middle Eastern landscape at a reasonably high frequency (+10%).


This is surely a difficult pill to swallow for R1b members because I've noticed that members this particular hg. seem to pride themselves on being "the architects" of modern society.

Lucky for us more primitive haplogroups, we were able to muddle through long enough for R1b to arrive on their white horses to lead us forward on our journey. We unwashed heathens did build a really cool system of massive concentric stones (11,000 years ago) that somehow didn't tumble like a set of large dominos, and we did it all without a set of blueprints from our most evolved R1b chieftains. Whew, we dodged the bullet on that one. :)

You don't seem to understand that the R1b people who lived in the Middle East 7,000 or 10,000 years ago share very little autosomal DNA with the R1b people of modern Europe. I have explained at length before (e.g. here) that R1b men constantly blended with local population (read women) on their long journey from the Middle East to Western Europe via the North Caucasus, Pontic Steppes, Balkans and Central Europe. I actually think that the original Mesolithic/Neolithic R1b carried autosomal genes that would fit better in the West Asian or Gedrosian admixtures in Dienekes' Dodecad Project.

Besides, you are not representative of the Y-haplogroup you carry. Whatever their haplogroup, people whose ancestors all come from the same region are more autosomally similar with one another than they are with geographically distant people who share the same haplogroup.
 
The oldest branches of R1a are from West Asia as you can see here: http://kurdishdna.blogspot.be/2013/05/r1a-tree.html#comment-form

If Tocharians were partly R1a folks it is possible that Tocharian R1a was just native to West Asian.

As you can see here (light blue line) oldest clades of R1a (m420) entered Europe via the Balkans. m420 is estimated to be 8000 years old!
1O-R1a.jpg

If Tocharians were R1a and R1a is originated in south, Balkans have extreme diversity of R1a, but until today is considered as sink phenomena.
yet the spead of Vinca/Varna seems to enter minor Asia, and from there spread to North of Caucasos
 
I personally think that R1b people didn't invent agriculture, pottery, writing, city-states, and many other important early inventions or developments. Actually I've always claimed that R1b people didn't invent agriculture and that they didn't spread the Neolithic to Europe, going completely against the current of the vast majority of "professional" population geneticists, as well as from bloggers like Dienekes or Davidski.

R1b surely acquired agriculture from its Middle Eastern neighbours to the south (Levant). The only place where R1b might have spread the Neolithic is to the Pontic-Caspian steppes. But even there agriculture played only a minor role due to the harsh climate, and cattle and goat/sheep herding was the main means of subsistence. Hence my assumption that R1b might have domesticated these animals, as R1b was in the right region (eastern Anatolia) at the time and someone had to bring these domesticates to the steppes, so who better than R1b ?

I also never say that they invented burial customs ! The new data I mentioned in the OP seems to point that the kurgan (tumulus) type of burial, i.e. the one undeniably associated with the steppe cultures and later Indo-European migrations, might well have originated in the Middle East (not necessarily with the R1b people who exported the practice to the steppes). In any case, there are plenty of types of burial practices, and the most impressive were those of the Megalithic people (mostly G2a and I2) of Western Europe and of the ancient Egyptians (mostly E1b1b, G and T).

But as far as bronze working is concerned, I do see a link with R1b. Indo-European languages are not an invention, and they are undeniably spoken mostly by R1a- and R1b-dominated societies nowadays.

As for the horse domestication, as I said, R1a played as much a role as R1b, and there were probably some G2a3b1 among them as well.



Frankly, I don't care. It's not a battle, and I am not on anybody' side, R1b or other.



The first civilizations arose in the late Bronze Age. I agree that they were composite of many haplogroups. However Göbekli Tepe was not a civilisation, perhaps not even a culture, merely a settlement. At that time (Mesolithic to early Neolithic), most human populations were still living in tribes of closely related individuals. Hunter-gatherers may have settled down at Göbekli Tepe, but they were still a large extended family, primarily belonging to one haplogroup.

But Göbekli Tepe was not the only such settlement, and it is likely that all haplogroups present in the Fertile Crescent played their role in the Neolithic development. Agriculture arose in the Levant, domestication in the Taurus and Zagros mountains, and pottery appears to have first be made in Northeast Asia, then was diffused westward through Siberia. All were originally developed by different haplogroups. Actually even domestication could be attributed to different haplogroups depending on the animal.

On the other hand, there was probably precious little hg I in the region at the time. The present-day I2 found in Kurdistan almost certainly came with R1a from Eastern Europe (perhaps via Central Asia) during the Bronze Age or later. On the other hand, R1b has always been part of the Middle Eastern landscape at a reasonably high frequency (+10%).




You don't seem to understand that the R1b people who lived in the Middle East 7,000 or 10,000 years ago share very little autosomal DNA with the R1b people of modern Europe. I have explained at length before (e.g. here) that R1b men constantly blended with local population (read women) on their long journey from the Middle East to Western Europe via the North Caucasus, Pontic Steppes, Balkans and Central Europe. I actually think that the original Mesolithic/Neolithic R1b carried autosomal genes that would fit better in the West Asian or Gedrosian admixtures in Dienekes' Dodecad Project.

Besides, you are not representative of the Y-haplogroup you carry. Whatever their haplogroup, people whose ancestors all come from the same region are more autosomally similar with one another than they are with geographically distant people who share the same haplogroup.


I see by connecting Gedrosian component and R1b spread you admit that there was a second agricultural boom, mainly by nomadic sheep breaders, something I express as the spread of IE after Neolithic agricultural boom in a possible Anatolian origin outside Renfrew's thesis.

that is interesting, cause it combines with Indo-Hettit theory for IE language.
an expansion like the Abraam's patriarchy,?
 
I see by connecting Gedrosian component and R1b spread you admit that there was a second agricultural boom, mainly by nomadic sheep breaders, something I express as the spread of IE after Neolithic agricultural boom in a possible Anatolian origin outside Renfrew's thesis.

that is interesting, cause it combines with Indo-Hettit theory for IE language.
an expansion like the Abraam's patriarchy,?

Animal herding and stock breeding is not agriculture.
 
Maciamo, thank you for clarifying your positions. I do have a couple questions though:

1. You've mentioned the placement of R1b in Eastern Anatolia... have ancient remains there been I.D.'ed as R1b members? If so, what time frame are we looking at?

2. You say it's not a battle, and I would like to agree with you. Unfortunately we all have a bias (part of the human condition really) and I'm upfront in admitting mine. I'm guessing from your posts that you are a R1b member (or at least somewhere in the hg R lineage)... have you publicly declared your y-haplogroup?

And I do understand the importance of autosomal over y-dna in most applications. However y-DNA does have a role to play in tracing historical movements. What's also interesting about y-DNA (and mtdna for that matter) is that it trumps nationality, religion, and even race. These two outside positions of the genetic funnel cannot be altered and will be with us through all of time... or until the next major mutation anyway.
 
Animal herding and stock breeding is not agriculture.

Maybe the meaning in translation is not correct

Αγροτικος Agriculture contains plant and animal production

Κτηνοτροφος breader is the one who produces animals
Γεωργος (landfarmer) is the one who produces seeds and plants right?

I think with term agriculture we mean both animal and plant production
 
Maybe the meaning in translation is not correct

Αγροτικος Agriculture contains plant and animal production

Κτηνοτροφος breader is the one who produces animals
Γεωργος (landfarmer) is the one who produces seeds and plants right?

I think with term agriculture we mean both animal and plant production

Agriculture can sometimes have a wider meaning of both plant and animal production, but I've always use agriculture to refer only to farming (of plants). If I mean animals I say herding or stock-breeding.
 
A new paper (in German) by Mariya Ivanova argues that the Maykop culture did not originate in Anatolia or Syria (as I had suggested), but rather in Iran or Central Asia. That's an interesting alternative theory because I had ultimately placed the origin of R1b (+ R1a + R2) in Central Asia in the Upper Palaeolithic. That would mean that if Maykop indeed had an R1b connection, R1b could have come straight from southern Central Asia (most likely in modern Iran) to the North Caucasus.

The only issue with this theory is the very old presence of R1b-V88 in the Levant and Egypt, and its dispersal throughout Africa. Nothing prevents, however, that one branch of R1b migrated first from central Asia to the Levant in the Mesolithic or early Neolithic (perhaps c. 10,000 BCE), then another one migrated much later (4,000 BCE) from Central Asia to the North Caucasus.

One argument in favour of an origin of R1b in modern Iran is the link between the Gedrosian admixture and modern R1b populations.

Abstract

"Graves and settlements of the 5th millennium BC in North Caucasus attest to a material culture that was related to contemporaneous archaeological complexes in the northern and western Black Sea region. Yet it was replaced, suddenly as it seems, around the middle of the 4th millennium BC by a “high culture” whose origin is still quite unclear. This archaeological culture named after the great Maikop kurgan showed innovations in all areas which have no local archetypes and which cannot be assigned to the tradition of the Balkan-Anatolian Copper Age. The favoured theory of Russian researchers is a migration from the south originating in the Syro-Anatolian area, which is often mentioned in connection with the socalled “Uruk expansion”. However, serious doubts have arisen about a connection between Maikop and the Syro-Anatolian region. The foreign objects in the North Caucasus reveal no connection to the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris or to the floodplains of Mesopotamia, but rather seem to have ties to the Iranian plateau and to South Central Asia. Recent excavations in the Southwest Caspian Sea region are enabling a new perspective about the interactions between the “Orient” and Continental Europe. On the one hand, it is becoming gradually apparent that a gigantic area of interaction evolved already in the early 4th millennium BC which extended far beyond Mesopotamia; on the other hand, these findings relativise the traditional importance given to Mesopotamia, because innovations originating in Iran and Central Asia obviously spread throughout the Syro-Anatolian region independently thereof."
 
A new paper (in German) by Mariya Ivanova argues that the Maykop culture did not originate in Anatolia or Syria (as I had suggested), but rather in Iran or Central Asia. That's an interesting alternative theory because I had ultimately placed the origin of R1b (+ R1a + R2) in Central Asia in the Upper Palaeolithic. That would mean that if Maykop indeed had an R1b connection, R1b could have come straight from southern Central Asia (most likely in modern Iran) to the North Caucasus.

The only issue with this theory is the very old presence of R1b-V88 in the Levant and Egypt, and its dispersal throughout Africa. Nothing prevents, however, that one branch of R1b migrated first from central Asia to the Levant in the Mesolithic or early Neolithic (perhaps c. 10,000 BCE), then another one migrated much later (4,000 BCE) from Central Asia to the North Caucasus.

One argument in favour of an origin of R1b in modern Iran is the link between the Gedrosian admixture and modern R1b populations.

Abstract

"Graves and settlements of the 5th millennium BC in North Caucasus attest to a material culture that was related to contemporaneous archaeological complexes in the northern and western Black Sea region. Yet it was replaced, suddenly as it seems, around the middle of the 4th millennium BC by a “high culture” whose origin is still quite unclear. This archaeological culture named after the great Maikop kurgan showed innovations in all areas which have no local archetypes and which cannot be assigned to the tradition of the Balkan-Anatolian Copper Age. The favoured theory of Russian researchers is a migration from the south originating in the Syro-Anatolian area, which is often mentioned in connection with the socalled “Uruk expansion”. However, serious doubts have arisen about a connection between Maikop and the Syro-Anatolian region. The foreign objects in the North Caucasus reveal no connection to the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris or to the floodplains of Mesopotamia, but rather seem to have ties to the Iranian plateau and to South Central Asia. Recent excavations in the Southwest Caspian Sea region are enabling a new perspective about the interactions between the “Orient” and Continental Europe. On the one hand, it is becoming gradually apparent that a gigantic area of interaction evolved already in the early 4th millennium BC which extended far beyond Mesopotamia; on the other hand, these findings relativise the traditional importance given to Mesopotamia, because innovations originating in Iran and Central Asia obviously spread throughout the Syro-Anatolian region independently thereof."

Quite an interesting article, is there a name for the Culture in 4,000 Bc Iran Plateau. :shocked::unsure:
 

This thread has been viewed 130392 times.

Back
Top