Mezolithic-Neolithic vs. Chalcolithic-Early Iron Age Y-DNA landscape of Europe

What we don't see, however, is Neolithic farming communities full of people who are autosomally "hunter-gatherer" and yDna I2a. In other words, we don't have whole groups of hunter gatherers becoming farmers through cultural transmission. It always seems to have occurred through admixture genetically.

I think you have just fallen into the trap of chronology here.

Why do we assume that those people became farmers through genetic admixture, and not the other way around?

Maybe they first became members of farming communities, and then intermarried with farmers - acquiring the admixture in question. In order to definitely prove it, we would need to find samples of people who died immediately after transition from hunting to farming ("first and second-generation" farmers, whose great-grandparents were still hunters). It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but maybe it will happen one day. :)

For example, Dienekes has published on his blog, that recently a fourth-generation mixed-race Human-Neanderthal has been found. His great-grandpa or great-granny was a Neanderthal. This is the first such finding so far. The 45,000 years old Siberian found previously, was only 2,3% Neanderthal, and his Neanderthal admixture dated to 55,000 years ago - so some 10,000 years before his birth. And now we have a 1/8 Neanderthal.

What we need is a similar case of a farmer with very recent hunter ancestors.

BTW - farmers are more densely packed in space than hunters. A hunter needs ca. 10 km2 to feed his family, while a farmer needs - at the most - 0,5 km2. When farmers migrated, and they entered some area, they were immediately more numerous in that area than local hunters.

Hunters could only remain the majority in such areas which were unsuitable for farming, or where farmers didn't settle for other reasons.

Mesolithic genes must have survived in greater amounts in remote and isolated areas, while most fertile areas became heavily Neolithic-infested. The spread of farming to regions with most fertile soils was probably overwhelmingly through immigration from Asia Minor. But the spread of farming to remote areas, could be more through cultural transition (local hunters switching to farming), and less through population movement.
 
I'm used to Maciamo's colour scheme. Perhaps we can use some standardization in this field? Just suggestions.

Can you give a link to Maciamo's colour scheme ???
 
There was a time aboriginals thrived after the coming of the white man. It was when aboriginals were hired for cattle stations, to track lost herds and animals or as stockmen. They required no pay but simply that their group was well fed. So cattle station owners basically provided the livelihood of the group. These aboriginal rangers were considered highly in the groups, as they knew the lands well and that knowledge brought abundance. That status was actually almost similar to hunter status.

Back then numbers of aboriginals actually grew. It was forbidden by law to provide aboriginals alcohol, which was instrumental in this. After a while a law required wages to be paid, bit these were saved in trust funds, often used as welfare provision.

Back in the sixties these measures of restricted access to their own money and no provision of alcohol were considered outrageously racist and were repelled. The result was disastrous: strikes started and the upheaval ended with a lot of aboriginal stockmen losing their jobs. Alcoholism became a problem.

Despite the dislocation associated with this major change, and the often exploitatitive nature of their employment, many older Aboriginal people look back with pride on their work in the cattle industry and sadness at the loss of much of this sort of work.

http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/pastoral.php

I think this story makes very clear that HG's will feel well with cattle herding. From Saami and Yakuts that maintain and follow a semi-wild herd of reindeer to cattle herders may be not such a large step.
 
BTW - there was probably some kind of a "Black Death" plague in Neolithic Europe - check this article:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131001/ncomms3486/full/ncomms3486.html

Neolithic_demographics.png


That population collapse was few centuries before the spread of PIE cultures, so it wasn't caused by them.

It is possible that the percent of people with G2a in the total population declined during that plague.
 
We generally don't have any Neolithic farming communities with mostly I2. Data collected so far shows that they were mostly G2a and I2 were in minority. Unless you mean some sites with very small samples size, like e.g. 2 samples. I don't think we can draw conclusions from 2 samples.

Tomenable, where did I say that there were any Neolithic farming communities with mostly I2? I said just the opposite. It was precisely my point that there are no all or mostly yDna I2a/ hunter gatherer autosomally farming communities, or at least none we've found so far. So, there was no whole sale adoption of farming by hunter-gatherer groups though cultural diffusion in the European Neolithic as used to be claimed. It seems that it only happened in more isolated situations where some individual men and women were incorporated into the community and their lines then thrived.

I think you have just fallen into the trap of chronology here.

Why do we assume that those people became farmers through genetic admixture, and not the other way around?

Maybe they first became absorbed into farming communities, and then intermarried with farmers - acquiring the admixture in question. In order to definitely prove it, we would need to find samples of people who died immediately after transition from hunting to farming ("first and second-generation" farmers, whose great-grandparents were still hunters). It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but maybe it will happen one day. :)

I don't think I'm assuming anything. The example I gave is of an I2a 100% hunter-gatherer autosomally who was found in a Neolithic context. Maybe he just wandered in because he liked the idea of staying in one place and learning farming and was accepted. Maybe he was a slave. Maybe he fell for a farmer girl and decided to give it a try.:) I don't know.

In some situations, in the Balkans, there is evidence that Neolithic women went to live in hunter-gatherer communities. A few generations later there were no more hunter-gatherer camps. Maybe the admixed people were absorbed by the farming communities when the bulk of the "pure" hunter-gatherers fled.

There were probably also some unwanted matings as well, but in those cases the absorption by the farmers would mostly have been of hunter-gatherer mtDna.

It had less to do with the San's rejection of new lifestyle, and more to do with aggressive attitude of the invading Bantu farmers.

The Bantu were not open to accept the San into their communities. The Bantu even believed that eating the San makes them stronger...

The San (and also the Pygmies) were considered to be "magical people", whose flesh - when cooked and eaten - heals diseases.

But if farmers are more peaceful, then instead of exterminating hunter populations, they might be willing to teach them how to farm.

Encounters between hunter-gatherers and farmers seem to follow a mostly predictable pattern. When the farmers first arrive and it seems there might be enough resources for everyone, things are relatively tranquil. When the numbers of the farmers grows exponentially because of more migrations and more so because of the numbers that farming can support, the encounters turn violent. The hunter/gatherers want to expel the farmers and use whatever weapons they have at their disposal. The farmers want to expel the remaining hunter gatherers and use whatever weapons they have at their disposal. Larger numbers and sometimes better technology means that the hunters lose. They either flee to ever more marginal land or they remain as hangers on dependent on handouts from the farmers. It's not a pretty picture, but it's reality.

What we don't see is a sort of "If we can't beat them, we'll join them" attitude. Part of the reason may be that it was just too unfamiliar a lifestyle. Part of it may be that the hunters resented their treatment by the farmers. Part of it, in later times when governments attempted to send these people to school to learn farming, or even gave them seeds, and tools and animals to try to convert them to farming, may be that people don't like to be forced. However, I don't know why you find it so hard to credit that some of it might be the fact that they don't possess certain adaptive traits that accumulated in people who had been farming for millennia. If nothing else, look at the problems that all "aboriginal" peoples seem to have with alcohol even after hundreds of years.

It doesn't make them "inferior", you know...just adapted to a different lifestyle. I think there's pretty good evidence that Australian aborigines have certain traits that indeed Europeans don't possess.
 
Farming was "invented" just in a few hotspots scattered throughout the world. It later spread not only through migrations of farmers, but also through cultural exchange. Just like gunpowder reached Europe not because Chinese people with gunpowder colonized Europe, but because the Mongols got it from the Chinese, the Muslims got it from the Mongols, and the Crusaders got it from the Muslims.

The example of farmer-hunter interaction patterns that you give, is from the 20th century - right ???

Human interactions are complex and different in each instance. They cannot be reduced to a simple repetitive pattern.

There were probably also some unwanted matings as well

And not just unwanted for sure.

Both exchanging females between 'tribes' and kidnapping females from other 'tribes' are practices dating back to prehistory.

Also 'expelling' excess males to other tribes is an ancient practice. Depending on mating patterns in local cultures, either 'excess' males or females leave a tribe and move to another tribe. The necessity of mixing 'blood' to avoid too much inbreeding was understood.

And I see no reason why farmers would exchange 'blood' only with other farmers and not with neighbouring hunters.

There are also many opportunities for cooperation between hunters and farmers - we could see that in the Americas.

HGs would trade animal-derived and 'gathered' products to farmers, in exchange for pottery, other items and food.
 
An example of good relations between nomads/hunters and farmers is that between the Comanche and the Wichita in the 1700s.

The Wichitas were sedentary farmers, while the Comanches were nomadic hunters. They were allies and traded extensively.

The Comanches provided the Wichitas with horses, buffalo hides, meat and slaves (enslaved Apaches and Pawnees).

In exchange, the Wichitas provided the Comanches with firearms, metal products, cloth, corn and vegetables.

That symbiosis lasted over 140 years and ended only when the Comanches were defeated by the U.S. Army in the 1840s.

In some situations, in the Balkans, there is evidence that Neolithic women went to live in hunter-gatherer communities.

Maybe hunters 'hunted' for those women (see what I wrote about kidnapping women). Or they peacefully exchanged brides.

The problem (for hunters) is that hunters will always be - in a particular area, for example a valley - less numerous than farmers.

So if 2000 farmers meet 200 hunters and they exchange 10 brides each, a stronger genetic footprint will be on hunters.
 
I do not claim that farming did not have any effect on genetic mutations. I claim that one can learn to farm like one can learn to drive a car.
Yes you can teach and with enough effort they will learn. Then they work for few months and they will quit. They will go back to the stuff that makes them happy, like roaming around and hunting. Going against one's nature is hard.
Otherwise you have to get slaves and force them to work hard. Well, with enough "encouragement" you can make a gay to marry a woman. When people are given a free will and free choice they will go with their nature. HGs they would rather go roaming and hunting than sowing and milking. I'm not saying that sowing and milking are fun activities, (probably not enough time for evolution to get there), but I don't mind doing this if I know it will bring me good living and future for my many kids. Plus I have strong sense of duty. Probably also heightened by farming past of my ancestors.

And it is just as ridiculous to claim that we have evolved to drive cars as it is to claim that some people evolved to farm while some didn't.
Evolve in 100 years to drive a car? Give it 10,000 years of evolution of humans in cars and you will see that they will become much better drivers. Poor or reckless drivers will die young without offspring. Good drivers will survive, giving their "good driving" genes to new generation.
Heck, read this to learn about problems Natives have to adapt to Western civilization. Learning to drive a car is not easy for them either.
http://www.ictinc.ca/7-basic-solutions-barriers-to-aboriginal-employment
I'm not saying I'm a better man than HGs. I fit better farming culture and Western Civilization which was build by farmer communities.
 
I don't think it's about learning to farm I think it's about having the genetic traits necessary to farm: patience, hard work, looking ahead etc, whereas the HG lifestyle (at least for the men) mostly involves doing fun stuff for a few hours then sleeping.

#

The farming = human domestication argument actually supports your case: farmers are domesticated humans, HGs are wild humans, herders are in between.

So in a single fight HG > farmer (except usually it's not a single fight and the farmers usually have an advantage in numbers and technology).
Good angle.
 
Western Civilization which was build by farmer communities.

I think you missed the whole "Urbanization and Industrial Revolution" thingy...

And early Proto-Indo-Europeans were mostly nomadic herders.

Yes you can teach and with enough effort they will learn. Then they work for few months and they will quit. They will go back to the stuff that makes them happy, like roaming around and hunting. Going against one's nature is hard.

Compare modern urbanization rates in Europe with urbanization rates in year 1400, 1600, 1700 or even 1800.

If going against one's nature is hard then why did all those farmers move to cities during the last few centuries?

I'm starting to think that you must be a farmer who loves his job and is pursuing his farmer agenda. :LOL: ;)
 
Give it 10,000 years of evolution of humans in cars and you will see that they will become much better drivers.

But you have argued that people cannot even become "average" drivers without interbreeding with drivers first! So to get a driving licence, women must have sex with their driving instructors first! This even makes more sense than I initially thought... :LOL: :rolleyes:
 
"Patience, hard work, looking ahead" are not the stereotypical traits typically ascribed to, say, Medieval peasants.
You can add a daily grind. Chinese farmers are even better in this.



You place too much stress on genetics and not enough on cultural factors - such as social disruption and moral depression, as described here:

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4381154;view=1up;seq=104

By the way - "forceful indoctrination in Western lifestyle" is the main problem here. People always resist forceful indoctrination of any kind.
Sure. But we don't see the tribes who embraced farming by their own will. Come here for a trip and meet natives. You will understand what I'm talking about when I talk about strong genetic predispositions.

Living in part of Europe where there was not so long ago forceful indoctrination in Communist lifestyle and ideology, I know that people resisted that indoctrination.
Communism didn't work for any country yet, at least as good as capitalism. If we had one country that thrived in communism you would have a good case that it was just cultural and defensive behavior in countries that didn't work. Whatever it was in Poland it didn't agree with my nature, and I left. Sense of "taste".
 
Well, with enough "encouragement" you can make a gay to marry a woman.

Why haven't gays get extinct already ??? After all, they do not pass their gay genes to next generations.
 
I don't mind doing this if I know it will bring me good living and future for my many kids. Plus I have strong sense of duty.

So you are a farmer! I guessed it right. A farming-agenda spreading farmer. ;)

You will be surprised one day when your child will tell you: "Dad, I have evolved urban genes - I'm moving to a city."
 
Sure. But we don't see the tribes who embraced farming by their own will.

Probably if you dig in written records enough, you will find some.

And then you have long centuries for which no written records exist.

Or are you writing about Native tribes in Canada now ???
 
Ok, with time they can become farmers. After all those were hunters and gatherers who started farming, right?
Like herding is next step of hunting, farming is next step of gathering.
Exactly. It took thousands of years and many generation to become a farmer and herder. On example of Yamnaya R1b we know that they didn't become herders of farmers through cultural assimilation. They became genetically farmers first (Armenian like) and only then they embraced herding and farming, build up in numbers and started expression. This and many other examples point to role of genetic predispositions in becoming a farmer. Thousands of years of evolution.
 
Australian aborigines have certain traits that indeed Europeans don't possess.

It is argued that Australian Aborigines did not adopt farming, because there were no plants suitable to domesticate in Australia. This seems valid, given that Europeans have not domesticated any Australian plants so far, but brought their own plants to Australia.
 
Why haven't gays get extinct already ??? After all, they do not pass their gay genes to next generations.
Arranged marriages, peer/family/religious pressure. Enough to make you do whatever community wants, or you will die.
 
So you are a farmer! I guessed it right. A farming-agenda spreading farmer. ;)
I really felt your HG agenda in you. From building log houses to farming. ;)

You will be surprised one day when your child will tell you: "Dad, I have evolved urban genes - I'm moving to a city."
Again, modern cities exist only for 100 years. Before that 90% of people lived in villages. Give them time to develop genetic "city" predispositions. Ask me again in 10,000 years.
 
But those peasants DID move to cities and became urban folks. So hunters COULD move to fields and become farmers. I did not claim that they were perfect farmers, like I do not claim that all urban folks can jump from skyscraper to skyscraper like Spiderman. :)

Exactly. It took thousands of years and many generation to become a farmer and herder. On example of Yamnaya R1b we know that they didn't become herders of farmers through cultural assimilation. They became genetically farmers first (Armenian like) and only then they embraced herding and farming, build up in numbers and started expression. This and many other examples point to role of genetic predispositions in becoming a farmer. Thousands of years of evolution.

But Near Eastern admixture in Yamnaya samples was only about 20-25%. And also we don't really know the chronological order.

They could at first learn herding-farming from herders-farmers, and only then mix with them liberally, getting to those 20%.

I really felt your HG agenda in you.

Indeed I sometimes feel a strange pressure to go out and roam over some wide area... :)
 

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