Why R1b couldn't have been spread around Western Europe by the Bell Beaker people

Athiudisc, thanks for discussing this.

Of course. That's what forums are for. :p

I've managed to get hold of the Haak et al full paper 2014-5, and I must say it does provide some support for what had previously been considered a crank neo-Nazi theory, viz an Aryan bronze age source for R1b.

In all fairness, though, it was only "a crank neo-Nazi theory" after the very strong reaction against such traditional history after WWII. In all seriousness, the only reason anyone ever believed "pots, not people!" was in reaction to Nazis. That's not a very strong basis for science. It would be like rejecting rockets because of von Braun...it might be emotionally appealing, but we'd not have reached the moon with such sentiments.

The problem is that ALL major subclades of R1b (U106, P312, V88, Z2103) have about the same 130-180 generation coalescent time based on STR variance, representing a massive bronze age expansion in every region [though why the Bronze Age should cause a massive worldwide population increase, or any population increase for that matter, remains a mystery].

I think V88 split off and expanded into Africa far before the Bronze Age, but that aside, I don't understand what you mean by "though why the Bronze Age should cause a massive worldwide population increase, or any population increase for that matter, remains a mystery." I think it's relatively obvious why metal-working, horse-riding, dairy-consuming expansionists might supplant earlier populations...they had huge advantages, especially when encountering people who didn't have metal, or cavalry, or dairy, and especially when those earlier populations have a low population density, as was likely the case in northwestern Europe (less so in Mediterranean regions).

Therefore you cant say that any subclade might be 'ancestral' to any other or that one direction is preferred.

We must be talking about different things. We can literally tell which subclades are ancestral to others through SNPs. As a rough example, I'm positive for L45, and carry the mutations for (skipping back) U106, and M269, and L23, etc.

If paleolithic (or even neolithic) R1b from Europe continues to prove elusive in the remains, we may have to give up on hunter-gatherer R1b theories. Time will tell. Though it does seem unbelievable that the vast bulk of the population of Western Europe could have such a recent origin.

We do have Neolithic R1b in Europe, but it was V88, IIRC (which is part of why I believe it expanded back into Africa before the Bronze Age). I don't find it unbelievable at all that the vast bulk of the population in western Europe is of recent origin...we've seen similar dynamics far more recently in North America, Australia, etc.

I'll come back on a few of your other points later.

Great. I only check this forum so often, so sorry for the long pauses in response. I could have sworn you hadn't responded as of five days ago, but the posting dates say I'm crazy. :p
 
I don't see any reason to assume R1b was widespread in western Europe 10,000 years ago. With R1b dominating Yamnaya and now being found in Corded Ware/Battle Axe remains (predating Bell Beaker), an east to west spread seems most likely. The only R1b we have that's older in Europe IIRC is the irrelevant El Trocs...I say irrelevant because it has no relation to modern, western European R1b, whereas the other examples obviously do (a CW/BA sample being U106, apparently, the oldest such find, and probably the oldest we're likely to get if current age estimates are remotely accurate).

The R1b dominance of BB could easily be explained by BB being the organic result of IE/megalith culture contact, considering founder effect and the desirable skills of (for example) an R1b metallurgic and/or herding class...in German BB graves, something like 25% of those interred apparently came from the northeast. What if what we think of as Bell Beaker culture was simply the mixing of the megalith folk from the southwest with IEs from the northeast?

Additionally, I'm relatively sure there are non-R1b BB remains, we just haven't tested them. If nothing else, assuming the above musings were accurate, it's not at all impossible that when you arrive in a new area and start taking wives, one or more of them will have a brother or something that you end up keeping around, whether simply for peace in the home or because he makes valuable pottery. :p

the question is, for I think, the BBs at first in SW Iberia, had a spotty geographic distribution, and seemed - always at first - a foreign introgression of mighty but not numerous people into an already chalcolithic region - everywhere , in France, Switzerland, even in more Central Europe, they seem a foreign elite at first; apparently well accepted by former elites, either for their metallurgists or prospectors skills or because they were very good and well equiped warriors; everywhere it seems they finished being integrated in other more numerous elites of surely I-Ean origin (Germany) or perhaps Megalithers origin (Atalntic). I suppose they were a step and an element in the genesis of Celtic culture, but not the first demic element, so, if I 'm right, we are not obliged to link theom to Y-R1b.
 
I see an example of this intergation in other groups in the BB-Corded evolution in Germany, the Netherland (and GB?): even among the Britain BBs we can devine a strong foreign element (surely from Balkans-Carpathians region but already settled along the Rhine) mixed with Cordedlike people and other elements supposed autochtones of North and Central Germany; it seems the subsequent Wessex Culture and Armorican Tumuli cultures were for a part descendants of this Channel-Netherlands-Rhine new mix. Original BBs transmitted some elements of their culture to other people; it is the mix where they were surely a minority that become Western Bronze Age cultures.
 
...so, if I 'm right, we are not obliged to link theom to Y-R1b.
I agree. I believe we'll (eventually) find that R1b met BB as the latter expanded eastward into central Europe.
 
...Third I don't think the presence of Bell Beaker culture implies anything much about population movement, Christianity spread without the presence of Hebrews....

Have you read the New Testament or any books on the early Christian church? Christianity initially spread via Jewish communities of the Middle East and Europe and slowly, but inexorably, gained many non-Jewish converts, enough to make them the majority. That didn't happen overnight. There were large Jewish communities in what is now Turkey, Greece, Italy, and probably France and Germany too.
 
...
I think we would if, after the initial European invasion of North America, someone else then invaded the east coast several times over the centuries, pushing the descendants of the initial invaders west. or simply extirpating most of them from eastern North America....

I believe this is precisely what we see in Europe when it comes to R1b. R1b likely entered Europe sometime in the very late Neolithic or early to mid Bronze age, killed and/or assimilated some I-bearing men, pushed the rest aside, and flourished for a while. R1a came later, storming out of Asia, killing significant numbers of R1b men, assimilating some, and pushing the rest of them west. We find a greater genetic diversity of R1b men in the east, indicating that they are a remnant of a once-diverse population, but larger numbers of R1b men in the west, showing us the descendants of the subset of R1b men that survived to make it to the west and established successful Italic, Celtic, and Germanic societies.
 
The 'later R1a' might have some merit if you presumed the east-west migration and replacement theory were true, but of course there is little evidence for it.
Except for all the historic and genetic evidence that exists. There is literally no evidence for the old "R1b spread throughout Europe from refugia after the last Ice Age" theory. It was based on nothing more than modern distribution, which is so obviously flawed that I'm amazed the idea still has adherents. Again, by the same logic, Europeans are native to North America and have been there for 30,000 years. It's just silly.
But what you then have to ask is - what were high levels of R1b and R1a doing in particular invading tribes?
Having sons that went on to be quite successful, it would appear.
Consider. It takes an average N generations for a particular allele to spread through an isolated population of N men. So if you have 1000 men (which one would need for conquest) it is going to take an average 30 000 years of isolation to get 100% concentration.
Where are you pulling your figures from? They don't seem to agree with any examples in the real world. We have population groups that are, for example, 95% R1b, and R1b hasn't existed for 30,000 years, so your calculations are essentially impossible, mathematically-speaking.
Something else has to be going on to get high concentrations relatively quickly (like 5000 years). There seems to be little or no study of this.
There's actually lots of attention being paid to the issue, you just seem to dislike the data and conclusions. :(
All sounds highly implausible to me.
What theory sounds plausible to you, then? According to all the evidence we possess, the R1b that would come to dominate western Europe came from central Asia with Indo-European cultures/languages in the last, say, six-thousand years.
 
I am sorry Athiudisc but your responses are full of unproven and incorrect statements and misunderstandings. I will go through them one by one shortly.

I'd like that.

Here i refer to your core statement " so obviously flawed that I'm amazed the idea still has adherents."

Now take a look at originhunters.blogspot.pt/2014/08/iberian-r1b-y-dna-first-movers-in-europe

"Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist."

R1b almost certainly originated in Asia but i do think it is quite possible that r1b1 originated in Western Europe and R-M273 almost certainly.

What makes you think R1b1 originated in western Europe?

I'm completely unfamiliar with M273.

The unusual subclades you see in Western Asia are probably due to very early back-migrations from Europe to Asia leading to isolated pockets such as R-Z2103 in the Caucasus (Yamnaya), still there till the present day.

Why do you believe this?
 
I am sorry Athiudisc but your responses are full of unproven and incorrect statements and misunderstandings. I will go through them one by one shortly.

Still waiting. :)
 
What can I say, the proof is right in front of you.

There are R1bs in Europe today. Use Occam's Razor. The simplest assumption to account for this is that there have always been R1bs in Europe, or at least for a very long time. If someone has an alternative theory, the onus of proof is on them.

Scattered throughout Europe today are remnant R1b subclades that are not M269. I even have one in my CORNWALL project. I have been waiting for more of these to emerge in ancient European DNA, thank you very much for pointing out El Trocs. I cannot find out when the common ancestor of El Trocs and M269 must have been, but it appears to have been a very long time ago, paleolithic for certain. So we have had R1b in Europe for 8000 years - at least.

No reputable scholar supports a Copper or Bronze age entry for R1b to Europe, this is all supported by amateurs. The academic consensus following Balaresque et al is that R1b is early neolithic, from agriculturalists who entered Europe 6500 years ago, three millennia before the Megalisth Builders. But frankly I don't believe this either, the proof is weak. I think when the agriculturalists turned up in Europe they were surrounded by R1b hunters who copied their culture and eventually bred most of the invaders out.

In fact, R1b was in Spain in the Early Neolithic. However, it wasn't the kind of R1b of the majority of western Europeans: it was R1b-V88 (Els Trocs cave 3).

See the link: http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/europeanneolithicdna.shtml
 
Are you attempting to argue that Christianity spread to most of the world, or for that matter anywhere outside the Near East, through Jewish populations?

The point is that you don't need a particular genetic tribe in order to spread a culture. This is a common popular misconception and is actually racist.

Why do you make with this unprecise and too often heard - or red - word of "racist" or "racism"??? what signification here?
If you take "race" as "ligneage" it could be different; some cultural changes seem having occurred at the same time as ligneages changes; NOT ALWAYS, NOT NEVER; sometimes with slaughters, sometimes without any, sometimes only with some "pushings off"; the today transmission of aspects of culture is very fast, but we cannot make a rule based upon it for the far past. And genetics show us some radical changes (Neolithic) occurred with strong colonization and changies of ligneages. Just my point.
 
I'm longing for a ancient DNA surveys of Neolithic Atlantic shores populations... Patience!
 
I'm longing for a ancient DNA surveys of Neolithic Atlantic shores populations... Patience!

With the two samples from the megalith site of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne sampled by Lacan (2011) we are not so far from the french Atlantic coast: they are I2a, like the other megalith samples from Spain (see Haak 2015).

But I'm also waiting more samples from Atlantic shores.
 
First lets look at the issue of one population almost completely replacing another. Despite what proponents of invasion theories would like you to believe, this is an extremely rare event. The only proven cases are Europeans in North America/Argentina/Australia; and probably the Neanderthals in Europe.

We're not talking about complete replacement. Pre-Indo-European haplogroups still exist in Europe, they're just not dominant.

Please note we have very many examples of “failed replacement” – it is not an easy thing to do. The whites could not replace the indigenous populations in Africa, New Zealand, India, Indonesia or Mexico.

Funny that you mention Mexico...their Y-DNA is predominantly European, mostly varying types of R1b-M269. According to your theories, doesn't this mean they've been that way for thousands and thousands of years? It's impossible that people came from the east and R1b became so successful as to be the majority haplogroup, right?

Norman Conquest Etc etc. There is really very little genetic evidence of these conquests at any distance from source.

Considering the origin of the Normans, how would one differentiate them from the mixed Celtic/Germanic population of England?

More modern genocides – the Armenians and Turks, the Jews and Hitler, Rwanda, the various population replacements in Poland: not much genetic evidence.

I don't even know what to say to someone who thinks "there's not much genetic evidence for the Jewish Holocaust" is some kind of point. Sorry.

Personally I think Germanic speaking tribes were in England long before the Romans, who barely knew the difference between Celts and Germans. Plenty of Celtic DNA there anyway, the replacement is mostly cultural rather than genetic. Not proven.

U106 is rather obviously Germanic. Just look at a map of it. Seriously.

Given the absence of any sort of plausible comparable proven examples, anyone who wants to run any kind of invasion population replacement scenario has their work cut out for them. Anyone who wants show that a few savages from Scythia with a little bit of new technology and no diseases managed to replace the entire population of Western Europe fairly recently is seriously pushing the bounds of the credible.

Again, we're not talking about "complete replacement" in the sense of "Indo-Europeans literally killed everyone who wasn't Indo-European." No one is talking about that but you. If that's your best evidence against the scientific consensus and available data, it's not the rest of the world pushing the bounds of the credible.

While if the invasion hypothesis seems completely unbelievable – we have a new gradualist replacement theory stressing some sort of “natural process” in which a particular line is “extremely successful” either randomly or for social reasons. No-one would seriously have put this argument forward - – that a single man could have huge numbers of male-line descendants to the exclusion of others - until testing companies started plugging the “Genghis Khan” and “Nhiall” theories for commercial reasons.
The trouble is that while it appears to be an observable fact, it doesn’t match in with either any directly observed historical process or any simulation modelling we have done.

I think you forgot that you just mentioned Mexico. In five-hundred years, European Y haplogroups have become dominant. Yet you believe that the same would be impossible over thousands of years in western Europe. Bit illogical, isn't it? Contradictory?

Documented real cases expose the fallacy. For example, AbdulAziz Saud or others with large harems can have large numbers of sons (75) and grandsons, but that is about where it stops because cadet branches soon become ordinary members of society with few privileges. I have seen it estimated that there are 10 000 ibn Sauds dating from the founders in the 1700s, which is an awful lot but still only a tiny and now barely increasing fraction of the population.

Documented genetics expose the fallacious nature of your fallacy; by definition, all R men are descended from a single individual, yet they dominate Europe and large swaths of the rest of the world.

Very many lines die out almost immediately, but with steady population growth once you reach about 20 male line descendants, your line will not die out but will increase in proportion with the general population. Europe’s population appears to have been growing steadily since the Bronze Age – the TMRCA to all the major branches of R1b date to there. We do not know why that is or why it was not growing before, given that agriculture is a lot older.

Simply put, it was not growing in Europe before because it wasn't in Europe long before. R1b wasn't common in western Europe during the Stone Age, and it didn't come from the middle east with agriculture. Your own modeling demonstrates the truth of this, but your insistence that it cannot be true keeps you from seeing the logical conclusion, IMO.

What the simulation results imply is that the haplotype structure of any large population group in Europe should be pretty much the same now as it was in the Bronze Age – with some small contribution from immigrants. If France is 58% R1b, 15% I, 7.5% E, 6% J2, 5.5% G; well that is close to what it was in the Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age, which saw the expansion of R1b into western Europe.

I know you have more coming, so I hope I'm not stepping on your toes when I boil our disagreements down to this:

You think that because R1b is so common in western Europe, it must have been there for tens of thousands of years.

I think that because we've no evidence of the R1b that dominates western Europe actually being in western Europe prior to a few thousand years ago, and the oldest R1b of that sort we do have was found in an Indo-European culture in what's now Russia, and that we find successively younger clades of that R1b as we go further west, that it's entirely logical and evident that said R1b spread from Proto-Indo-European central Asia, westward into Europe. This would also explain the steppe ancestry common in western Europe, which I disagree is due to eastward migration from Europe. With dozens and dozens of Neolithic European remains having been tested, only one was R1b, and that R1b wasn't ancestral to any of the R1b that's so common in Europe today. Contrarily, almost all of the Yamnaya samples tested were M269.

I will, of course, revise my opinion if any evidence supportive of your theory ever actually turns up.
 
...Considering the origin of the Normans, how would one differentiate them from the mixed Celtic/Germanic population of England?...

Largely through genealogy and other documentary evidence. England already had a significant Norse/Viking population through the Danelaw. The Normans also probably picked up a few Celtic and/or German/Dutch lineages along the way, and those lineages are likely to match those of their Celtic and/or Anglo-Saxon cousins who were already in England.
 
Largely through genealogy and other documentary evidence. England already had a significant Norse/Viking population through the Danelaw. The Normans also probably picked up a few Celtic and/or German/Dutch lineages along the way, and those lineages are likely to match those of their Celtic and/or Anglo-Saxon cousins who were already in England.

I completely agree. I don't think joe considers that to be evidence, though, at least of the genetic sort.
 
The Younger Dryas theory is interesting, but I fail to see any reason to believe it affected R1b instead of, say, I1. It just seems like you're holding on to the "R1b is common in western Europe, therefore that's where it comes from" idea with both hands.

Still waiting on my "unproven, incorrect statements and misunderstandings" to be pointed out, much less addressed.
 
We can reasonably assume the expansion happened in a major period of peace, fixed settlement and trade.

Why?

From the timing and location it is obvious the Atlantic R1b expansion was associated with megalith building activity and the Bell Beaker successors.

Why?

As to our warlike Indo-European friends, yes a thousand years later they probably romped with their horses and chariots through a Europe now opened by agriculture and introduced their languages. But like all conquerors they left little in the way of DNA, it takes settlement and peace for that.

I am very unclear as to what process you envision that leads to the situation of older clades being Indo-European in eastern Europe/central Asia, with younger clades expanding over western Europe in situ, lacking Indo-European languages, then being Indo-Europeanized. It seems to defy your yearning for simple explanations.

Similarly, I'm at a loss when trying to imagine what convoluted scenario could explain genetic affinities between modern northern/western Europeans and Yamnaya Indo-Europeans. Using the recent work by Haak et al. as a reference for sake of discussion, modern northern/western Europeans show three main lines of origin: European hunter-gatherers, immigrant farmers and Indo-Europeans from Yamnaya.

If you identify the European hunter-gatherers with R1b and deny genetic input from Yamnaya, how do you explain the obvious evidence of that input, and why was Yamnaya all, thus far, M269?

If (to choose an example) U106 (along with its brothers) spread in a non-Indo-European context from the west, why are our oldest U106 remains (dating rather closely to the birth of the clade itself) from an Indo-European culture in Sweden (Battle Axe/Corded Ware, showing a marked genetic affinity with Yamnaya...more than modern Europeans, in fact)?
 
I have no idea why it takes so long for your posts to show up. As of a few days ago, I was the last poster in the thread, but the dates say it's been weeks since you replied.

This is the first error you make. What do you mean by 'older clades?'

It's not an error. L23 is, by definition, older than L51. You cannot possess the mutation for L51 without also having the older L23.

Why do you think the clades in eastern Europe/Central Asia are older than the ones on the Atlantic?

See above. L23 is older than L51, as L51 cannot exist prior to L23. L51 is older than L11, L11 is older than P312, etc.

I think what you probably mean is, "why are there old clades of R1b in the Caucasus, Turkey, Britain, Spain, North Italy, North Africa and the Cameroons."

I know what I meant. :) Why don't you understand how SNPs work?

The megalith builders are much older than the Yamnaya, not younger.

There's nothing tying R1b to megalith builders in western Europe. No evidence of any kind.

Only because there were R-P312 in Western Europe and Britain a millennium before any Indo-European languages existed. Your theory cannot explain why this was so.

We have no evidence it was so. If any evidence ever shows up, I'll consider trying to explain it. (y)

U106 is tricky, I will admit, there has always been something odd about it. It doesnt really look like part of the megalithic thing I am boldly claiming for P312, unless it spread out of England - something that so far no-one would consider. I will come back to you on U106 once I have done some research.

Thank you. I look forward to your theories on U106 in particular. They're interesting, if lacking in evidence thus far.
 
But still wrong about the Yamnaya, the DNA evidence is all against it.

I disagree. Given that, in addition to the Z2103, there was L23 (L23 being the parent of both Z2103 and L51, L51 being the ancestor of European R1b), and given that the successive clades seem to flow westward, and given that Yamnaya seems to have provided much of Corded Ware's ancestry/culture, and given Corded Ware's importance to the spread of Indo-Europeans westward into Europe, and given that we've our oldest U106 in a Corded Ware subculture...

Frankly, it takes a lot of chutzpah to put forward the country with the lowest incidence of R1b in Europe (Ukraine) as the source of R1b.

I don't see why. As you say yourself:

It seems they were wiped out by advancing R1a.

Indeed. So the fact that there is relatively little R1b there now means absolutely nothing.

I'll let you know when I have the paper up.

Thank you. :)
 

This thread has been viewed 147430 times.

Back
Top