Angela
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So, the idea would be that another semi-population replacement afterwards would bring back the WHG part into current day European genome, originating from the east? But I fail to see that if HG's population growth lost so badly from the farmers here, it somehow did not in those parts from which those population movements originated. Shouldn't these areas have experienced a far larger survival rate in order to enhance the WHG rate in Western Europa to present day levels?
I'm sorry if I'm being dense, but I'm not following you here. The Neolithic seems very clearly to have originated in the northern Middle East. From the last papers I've read on the issue, it probably started in the foothills near the Zagros mountains and spread from there. At some point, people carried that technology and their genes, which may, or may not, in my opinion, have been very different from those which existed in the Aegean and the southern Balkans, into Europe, sometimes over land and sometimes by sea. In the Balkans and Italy, for example, and if the EEF levels mean anything, in Spain, the hunter-gatherers were rather quickly absorbed. Since they were not very numerous, their impact on the genome was relatively minimal.
In Central Europe things were somewhat different. From what I recall, there was a pause while the "Neolithic package" was slightly altered for the new conditions. However, as time passed, more and more of the land was cultivated, and, as I said, the population numbers for the farmers soared. While some scattered HG settlements survived, I don't see how their numbers could have been very large. It just takes way too much land to sustain life by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and it seems they were basically reduced to fishing and gathering. There things lay for a while.
Then, at some point, there was a population collapse of unknown extent, caused by climate change and/or environmental degradation. It's at this juncture that the Indo-Europeans enter the picture, a group, according to the most popular theory, from the Pontic Caspian steppe, but whose EEF, WHG, and ANE proportions are unknown. I would be surprised, however, to learn that they were highly EEF. At any rate, as they moved into northern and eastern Europe, they could very well have picked up more WHG and SHG even if they did start out with more substantial levels of EEF. This group did, it seems pretty clear, as they entered these areas during the Bronze Age, affect the genetics of France, Spain, Italy and the Balkans.
Then, during the Classical Age, climate change which dried up their grasslands, and the panic caused by the arrival of the Huns pushed many peoples of a whole area from northern Europe to the steppes west into central Europe and eventually northwestern Europe. These would be, broadly speaking, the Baltic and Germanic and Slavic speaking peoples. They greatly impacted the genetics of central and Northwest Europe, and the Slavs impacted the Balkans, but from the evidence so far the genetic impact on Italy and Spain, and on France other than in the northeast and perhaps around the Alps with the Burgundians, was relatively minor.
I know that's all very broad stroke stuff, and I'm ready to adjust my view of it as soon as new evidence becomes available, but as things stand now, that seems pretty coherent to me, and in accordance with both the archaeology and the genetics.
If you think I'm getting things wrong, please point it out. I'm just trying to make sense of it all, just like everybody else.