The Spread of Haplogroups in Europe, Especially R1b

As usual a great post Angela. I'm in agreement, except:


Ancient horses were smaller and well suited to traverse great distances with their fast trot.
SANY0017.JPG

Mike Loades presented it in one historical documentary.

Actually, nature itself made a huge statement about helpful role of LP in parts of Europe, up to 90%. By nature standards it is as strong statement as it gets.

Let's mention that these were climate changes for the cooler and usually the dryer type, which creates the food shortages and drastic population decline. Warming up climate was always associated with higher food production and population expansion.
If it comes to climate change we should be more concerned about climate cooling and new ice age, than climate warming up, making our planet greener.

Have to run. More later.



I'm going to look him and his research up. I've never seen it. Would they still have been much good in all the heavily forested areas? I have to take a look at some of the maps I have of European topography at that time.

I don't doubt, by the way, that the ability to digest fresh milk can come in handy when crops fail, or that it wasn't selected for, because that obviously happened. I'm just saying there's no indication yet that it was present in steppe people or originated with them. It's also absolutely possible to grow huge populations without it, although I don't know off hand if the heavily populated areas of China extend far enough into the north for the failure of wheat crops to be a problem.

Wasn't it mostly european R1b type? It makes me really think that Y R1b chromosome gives offsprings couple of percentage point survival advantage over other types.

Indeed it was, which totally makes sense in terms of Central and South America, since the settlers were Iberians, but strangely enough, even in tribes like the Ojibway it's mostly R1b. You would think there'd be some "I" or a bit of "R1a" when we're talking about the English and the Scots, if not the Irish.

However the farther south one goes the lesser genetic input "steppe IEs" shows. And this is after additional invasions of Celts, Germans and Slavs of historical times.

That's one of the big questions for me. Was it just the fact that southern Europe was more densely populated because of fewer population crashes? Or was it a case of different kinds of Indo-Europeans going to Greece and Italy, much more CHG heavy "Indo-Europeans". Or was it both?
 
No offense to the other posters. Pretty safe bet that LeBrok & MOESAN are true descendants of R1b paternal lineage, therefore by extension related to me indirectly.
My question for them; do any threads exist, that are exclusive to R1b male viewers/posters only, where the subject of R1b dispersal can be freely discussed ?
 
No offense to the other posters. Pretty safe bet that LeBrok & MOESAN are true descendants of R1b paternal lineage, therefore by extension related to me indirectly.
My question for them; do any threads exist, that are exclusive to R1b male viewers/posters only, where the subject of R1b dispersal can be freely discussed ?

Are you kidding? Do you think you're in an American university where you can now demand a "safe place" where you won't be discomfited by the opinions of those who disagree with you? You want your own echo chamber? Will people need a special password to enter?

You're not going to find one here. You can "freely discuss" R1b and its clades anywhere that it is the subject of a thread, but don't expect it to be a "safe zone" where you won't be bothered by contrary opinions or have to defend your own.

Oh, and I am offended...just on general principles, since I don't have a yDna and I don't even know what my father carried.
 
Didn't lots of Neolithic Europeans drink milk and eat cheese? How is this possible if they lacked mutations which made them lactose tolerant.I've read one study on the two lactose mutations, and there was perfect correlation. But my Dad lacks both and he isn't lactose intolerant at all. And on openSNP there are plenty of people who have both mutations but are get discomfort from drinking milk(prob. Lactose intolerant). So, I'm skeptical these two mutations are THE source of Lactose tolerance.
 
It would be nice if another valued R1b member like Maciamo, could weigh in on what he currently thinks about lactose gene and spread of R1b. Please, no offense to non R1b members, or those who do not know their ancestry. Just a humble dialogue/exchange in the West German dialect known as English, between members/genetic brothers/bond, with the same paternal ancestry [R1b]. The current thinking on directional spread ?
 
Didn't lots of Neolithic Europeans drink milk and eat cheese? How is this possible if they lacked mutations which made them lactose tolerant.I've read one study on the two lactose mutations, and there was perfect correlation. But my Dad lacks both and he isn't lactose intolerant at all. And on openSNP there are plenty of people who have both mutations but are get discomfort from drinking milk(prob. Lactose intolerant). So, I'm skeptical these two mutations are THE source of Lactose tolerance.

We have milk residue on what seems like the kinds of sieves that are used to make cheese. So, they most likely ate cheese; whether they drank milk is unknown but I think rather unlikely.

I don't know if there's anything more recent, but I have this in my files for residue on sieves in Neolithic northern Europe. It also mentions findings in the Near East as well, including Neolithic Northwestern Anatolia, so it wasn't strictly a response to the stresses of farming in northern Europe.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/full/nature11698.html

"The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing, although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1. Notably, the discovery of potsherds pierced with small holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted typologically as ‘cheese-strainers’10, although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been demonstrated. Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe, north Africa, Denmark and the British Isles, based on the δ13C andΔ13C values of the major fatty acids in milk1, 2, 3, 4. Here we apply the same approach to investigate the function of sieves/strainer vessels, providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing. The presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels, comparable in form to modern cheese strainers11, provides compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing whey. "

Depending on how long the cheese is aged, or what bacteria or yeast are added to it, the actual lactose in cheese can be greatly minimized. There was a discovery a while ago that a cheese made by Bronze Age people around 1600 BC had almost no lactose in it.
http://www.ryot.org/archaeologists-discover-cheese-thats-older-jesus/585725
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ed-chests-3-500-year-old-Chinese-MUMMIES.html

As for the rest, I share your skepticism. I also know people who are negative for the derived "European" alleles for lactase persistence and yet they have no problem consuming dairy products, including fresh milk. I, on the other hand have two derived versions and yet after years of eating tons of cheese and butter and ice cream, if not actually drinking fresh milk, I started experiencing difficulties. I have no idea why. They may just have run out of "juice" at a certain point. At the age at which it happened, a Neolithic farm woman would have been dead from child birth or disease or starvation so it wouldn't have mattered I suppose. Their average life span was about 30 wasn't it? Or maybe it's down to epigenetic causes or other additives in the milk or the containers, or to other health conditions.

It's a very complicated subject.
 
Thank you for the extensive reply Angela, and for sharing your opinions in a structured, well-thought manner.

However, here is an extensive rebuttal to those thoughts, written by Paul Heggarty of the Max Planck institute in Leipzig.

http://dlc.hypotheses.org/807

The basic gist is that:

1. Such theories are (and I hate to use this term, because I know YOU are not): Nordic-centrist, because they focus on and only "explain" the frequencies of R1b in northwest Europe.

2. To wit, they completely FAIL to explain the lack of R1b in some of the most (and earliest) Indo-Europeanized countries:

--Greece

--Italy

--The Balkans

3. Thus, there is no way to apply the theories you outline without having to come up with carve-outs and work arounds, the "yeah, but..." explanations that are too convenient to be scientific.

4. The correlation between Steppe DNA is just as high with Uralic languages than IE, and when comparing many countries, even higher.


Finally, I started this post talking about math, and so I will bring this reply back to math for a moment. People give WAY too much credence to the combo of Y Hg and mtDNA. By prehistory, almost all groups in Europe were extremely heterogenous, from a mtDNA perspective. It is way too simplistic to pretend there was, for example, a "tribe of Haplogroup XYZ women." I am unaware of any population that was homogenous from a mtDNA perspective, except for the earliest of the early populations, which were U2 and U5. Within even 500 years after that point, you have mtDNA almost as varied as it is today. All modern combinations can be explained with chance and drift -- not some hypothetical mating of the R1b tribe to the XYZ tribe of women!

Thanks for your response, Moore. Yes, we've discussed Heggarty's article, and it's certainly interesting, but I think you may be overstating things a little bit. I actually don’t think there is any conflict between some of what I wrote and some of the points he makes. As for the rest, some of his criticisms of Haak and Allentoft are rather off the mark, and some of his conclusions are highly speculative and perhaps incapable of proof.

To begin with, he doesn’t dispute the findings of Haak and Allentoft that there was a steppe role in the peopling of North-Eastern Europe and the spread of the Balto-Slavic languages and perhaps Tocharian.


Indeed, he says that “Yes, the new genetic data do point to a Steppe role in north-eastern Europe, and perhaps Tocharian”.


He also says: “A Yamnaya > Corded Ware population movement is in fact entirely compatible with the farming hypothesis, as a later, secondary movement within the overall spread and intensification of food-production. “


Now, as to what happened on the steppe, Heggarty is saying much of what I said, or, vice versa. :)

“Several millennia after the first spread of farming, this new and predominantly pastoralist ‘package’ on the Steppe made for an intensification of food production, most viable and ‘competitive’ in environments where farming was not yet especially productive, including temperate north-eastern Europe. It seems no surprise that pastoralists spread successfully there in the early Bronze Age, then.”

My reading of his article is that he has two or perhaps three major issues with the Haak and Allentoft papers. One is that he doesn't accept that there was “massive” genetic change in Europe. Two is that he doesn’t believe that Haak et al and Allentoft et al provide the evidence for Yamnaya being responsible for the movement of all the Indo-European languages. The third is that he sees the Pontic Caspian steppe as the “secondary” homeland, not the primary one.


As to the first point, I have some sympathy for his criticism. I said at the time that the use of the word “massive” might have been a mistake. All the evidence isn’t in yet, but if we go with the dna evidence we have so far I think it’s fair to say that “massive” would not be the word to use for the overall autosomal impact on southern Europe, and therefore not for all of Europe if one were to average things out. I would speculate that whoever chose the phrasing might have been a Northern European. They sometimes have a tendency to forget that southern Europe exists. :)

Indeed, I’m not sure that “massive” is even the right word for other parts of Europe. I’ve speculated before that the EHG ancestry that was present in northeastern Europe and perhaps in the forest steppe, and likewise a reservoir of WHG that might have been present in parts of Eastern Europe might be skewing the results to show higher levels of invading “Indo-Europeans” than were actually moving into these areas. Still, there was movement, and the arrival of a new culture, and I think new languages came with them.


With regard to point two, it seems a rather unfair accusation since Haak et al say upfront that they aren't going to address in their paper the spread of other branches of the Indo-European language family.

Heggarty virtually acknowledges that fact when he says the following:

“The title of Haak et al. (2015) writes of the steppe as “a source for Indo-European languages in Europe” [emphasis added], and the abstract claims “These results provide support for the theory of a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo‐European languages of Europe.”

I don't know if he carefully read the language discussion in the supplement to Haak. They certainly weren’t giving a full throated endorsement of the traditional Pontic Steppe theory in its entirety. As to his complaints that Haak and Allentoft didn’t include any ancient dna from Central Asia etc., well, these things take time. Plus, all the research fellows need a chance at a paper. They can’t spill absolutely everything in one master paper! :)


Now, it's true that Allentoft et al did state that the steppe people brought Indo-European languages to South Central Asia and India. However, even Renfrew in his last iteration of his Anatolian theory held the view that those languages might have been spread by steppe groups moving south at a much later time. I’m not even sure that he himself doesn’t see that as possible.

As to his third point, he has this to say:

“This is also why their results actually fit also with a secondary sub-expansion (out of the Steppe) of just those few parts of Indo-European. This Bronze Age movement would have been a second stage, long after the primary stage in the Neolithic which had already seen the much wider expansion of most of the family, with farming, out of an original homeland in the northern arc of the Fertile Crescent (i.e. central-eastern Anatolia, hence the ‘Anatolian’ or ‘farming’ hypothesis).”

Maybe, for the benefit of some readers, it might be helpful to review what the "Anatolian

Theory” means since even prominent bloggers seem confused about its different iterations and, in particular, Heggarty’s version of it. The best summary I know of it is from Mallory's article "Twenty-first Century Clouds Over the Indo-European Horizon”.

http://jolr.ru/files/(112)jlr2013-9(145-154).pdf http://jolr.ru/files/(112)jlr2013-9(145-154).pdf

“1. The Anatolian Neolithic model. This has been most popularized in the works of Colin Renfrew (1987). It sets Indo-European origins to the Anatolian Neolithic and argues that the spread of the Indo-European languages was part and parcel of the spread of agriculture…The revised model (Renfrew 1999) still argues for a movement of farming populations from Anatolia into the Aegean and Balkans extending through central Europe along the Danube drainage (the Linearbandkeramik) and also around the western part of the Black Sea where it carried agriculture and Indo-European languages to the steppelands…. The spread of Indo-European languages into Central and Southern Asia was explained originally by way of two alternative models: a PlanA that saw the Neolithic economy spread eastward from Anatolia towards India (thus the In-dus Civilization might be regarded as Indo-European) or Plan B that explained the Indo-Iranians in terms of a much later migration of Bronze Age peoples from the Asiatic steppe-lands southwards into the territory of southern Central Asia and the Indus. Renfrew eventually abandoned Plan A for Plan B, however, a recent and much publicized solution to the homeland problem by Bouckaert et al (2012), and partly supported by Paul Heggarty at this symposium, appears to argue for a variation of Renfrew’s original Plan A, i.e., a homeland set in Anatolia at the beginning of the Neolithic (7th millennium BCE) with essentially symmetrical expansions both west into Europe and east into Asia, although these are not necessarily tied to the initial expansion of farming.”

With all due respect to Professor Mallory, I don’t think that’s the “beginning of the Neolithic”. but more importantly it seems from this article that Heggarty has once again modified it, and now leaves open the possibility that the “homeland” of what we could call perhaps “pre-proto-Indo-European” might have been south of the Caucasus.


So, I suppose we could visualize Heggarty’s proposal this way, although with an arrow going due north as well to account for the Balto-Slavic (and partly Germanic) languages and Tocharian? I may be wrong, but I think he is following Renfrew Plan A where the Indo-Iranian languages spread from south of the Caucasus, rather than Plan B where they do spread from the steppe.

http://www.danshort.com/ie/mapmaker.php?Map=sprea

It’s also, of course, not the the Gramkelidze Ivanov model of expansion from Anatolia:

http://www.roebuckclasses.com/maps/topicmap/mapdiffusionindoeuropean.jpg

Now, do I personally think it’s impossible that the people who brought the “CHG” component to Yamnaya also brought a very early version of Indo-European with them? No, I don’t think it’s impossible, but even if we find the precise people, from the precise culture, and the precise timing of their movement onto the steppe, can we ever really prove what language they spoke? I think the origin of this early stage may never be entirely quantifiable, although more ancient dna from around the Caucasus and south of it and in Central Asia and India will certainly clarify matters.


I will say that his model does have in its favor the fact that it places very early Indo-European in contact with both the Caucasian languages and Uralic, which is essential, in my opinion, and also provides an explanation for the “archaic” nature of the “Anatolian” branches, since they would presumably have been left behind before the trek north.


It also provides a mechanism for the dispersal of Armenian and Greek and maybe Albanian from an area where those language speakers would have been in contact with Indo-Iranian speakers, which is essential, and could also at least partly explain the high levels of CHG in southeastern Europe, higher than can easily be explained by a movement of Yamnaya steppe dwellers. Of course, we’re working blind here, and anything anyone proposes is total speculation at this point. Until we get autosomal dna as well as yDna data from the Neolithic through to the Bronze Age in southeastern, south-central, and south-western Europe we can’t know when the extra CHG arrived. If we discover that a lot of it came with newcomers bearing all the hallmarks of the Indo-European culture then that would be a point in favor of this hypothesis.


Italy is different in this regard. Italic is on a branch with Celtic, not Greek. Therefore, it must have spread from somewhere near the center of gravity for Celtic. So far as I can tell that means it spread from somewhere in Central Europe and was carried by P312 bearers. This is supported by the cline for R1b in Italy, where it can reach 60% in some areas of the north, versus 30% and less in parts of the south. I think it’s reasonable to speculate that the P312 branches entered Italy through or just barely around the Alps. One also has to consider the fact that the “type” of R1b present in Italy is also on a cline. The L51+ branch predominates in the north, declining to the south, and the L23+ branch predominates in the south. All that L23+ in the south also raises interesting questions (there’s a hot spot in Calabria, for example), as does the Z93 R1a found there. When and with whom did those markers arrive? Is it possible that these are the markers of the Yamnaya and subsequent Indo-European migrations into south eastern Europe, reaching Italy via Greece and the southern Balkans? That would mean that at some point R1b bifurcated, with some going due west toward the Alps and some going either due west on a southern route or going southwest from the steppe. We’re only going to know through ancient dna.


The spread of Indo-Iranian is a also a separate issue. I’m well aware that a lot of amateur analysis purports to show by means of formal statistics that Central Asians have a high amount of Sintashta steppe ancestry. However, that seems to conflict with recent analysis with Admixture programs that seems to show very little EHG and WHG in these populations or South Asians, certainly nothing like what we would expect from Admixture results for Sintashta type people. (This is the issue to which Patterson referred in one of his comments.) This is similar to the situation for southern Europeans. I haven’t seen a satisfactory explanation of the conflict. I think I’ll wait for the Reich Lab, which created some of these statistical methods and understands their vagaries and precisely how to use them to publish on the matter, or see what other academic groups who are coming up with yet different statistical tools can make of that


It has to be said, in Heggarty’s favor, that a movement of these languages from south of the Caspian would explain the high CHG but virtually no WHG and EHG. I think this might have been what Patterson was getting at as well, but maybe that was a very preliminary insight. Time will tell; I’m keeping an open mind.


( I do want to note that I give a lot of credit to Kurd on anthrogenica for the transparency he provides into his methodology and the care he takes not to let anything bias his results.)
 
I'm going to look him and his research up. I've never seen it. Would they still have been much good in all the heavily forested areas? I have to take a look at some of the maps I have of European topography at that time.
Heavily wooded area is the barrier even for movement of infantry, however wherever farmer population lived there were trails from village to village or larger ones for trading. The trails already existed in populated areas, and these populated areas were the purpose of invasions of others. Not a secluded wilderness without people.
Trails don't make a perfect scenario for large scale attack of warriors riding horses, but make villages accessible nevertheless. In this case, they could have used trails to get to vicinity of a village. Assemble army in the field, and attack villagers on horseback in wide formation through fields and meadows.
Since 3rd millennium, when carts and wagons became popular the trails got wider, becoming roads.

I don't doubt, by the way, that the ability to digest fresh milk can come in handy when crops fail, or that it wasn't selected for, because that obviously happened. I'm just saying there's no indication yet that it was present in steppe people or originated with them. It's also absolutely possible to grow huge populations without it, although I don't know off hand if the heavily populated areas of China extend far enough into the north for the failure of wheat crops to be a problem.
I agree. So far all the LP discoveries lead to conclusion that high level of lactose persistence, as seen in Northern Europe, is a product of natural selection ongoing since Neolithic till pretty much current times. LP level increased after every cooling period when crops failed big time up north. Such recent cooling periods are Dark Ages and Little Ice Age of 16-17 hundreds. I'm pretty sure that future research will confirm these periodic jumps in LP to higher and higher levels.

That's one of the big questions for me. Was it just the fact that southern Europe was more densely populated because of fewer population crashes?
Demographic is certainly the case, plus if they've carried any genetic predispositions, it was for harsher northern and steppe climate and food source, not the Mediterranean one.

Or was it a case of different kinds of Indo-Europeans going to Greece and Italy, much more CHG heavy "Indo-Europeans". Or was it both?
I'm still having picture in my mind that Celts and Italics came from south-west part of Yamnaya were European clades of R1b were situated. I mean IE ancestors of Celts and Italics. We'll see how my vision of that holds on...
 
We have milk residue on what seems like the kinds of sieves that are used to make cheese. So, they most likely ate cheese; whether they drank milk is unknown but I think rather unlikely.
That's right. More precisely farmers' kids were drinking milk with no problem. This was big help in raising kids for farmers, because most of population was made of kids back then. Feeding kids was most likely the reason behind farmers' dealing with quantities of it and inventing cheeses.


As for the rest, I share your skepticism. I also know people who are negative for the derived "European" alleles for lactase persistence and yet they have no problem consuming dairy products, including fresh milk. I, on the other hand have two derived versions and yet after years of eating tons of cheese and butter and ice cream, if not actually drinking fresh milk, I started experiencing difficulties. I have no idea why. They may just have run out of "juice" at a certain point. At the age at which it happened, a Neolithic farm woman would have been dead from child birth or disease or starvation so it wouldn't have mattered I suppose. Their average life span was about 30 wasn't it? Or maybe it's down to epigenetic causes or other additives in the milk or the containers, or to other health conditions.

It's a very complicated subject.
Mortality of kids till age 5 was huge, and this always lowered the average age of people a lot. If we only concentrate on people over age 5, or skipping kids all together and concentrating only on strongest survivors, then the average age might have been 40 for adults or a bit more in times of peace and plenty. Still not shabby I would add.
I have seen statistics once with such age adjustment, but can't provide a link or even be sure if I remembered numbers correctly. But it should make some sense.
 
On account of the huge genetic change: I thought of another thing. If the invaders in the North were pastoralists with a small agricultural add-on, and the middle neolithic farmers were basically living on wheat and rye with a livestock add-on, then the newcomers may have simply settled in grounds that were left unoccupied in the early and middle neolithic. WHG remnants - of which we know many existed - may have lived there as well, which would also explain the odd WHG resurge that both Allentoft and Haak mention.

The article by Mallory Angela points to mentions the small part agriculture took in the suggested proto-Indo-European cultures. The only issue I have with that is that these people failed to use the enormous potential they wandered on: The area is one of the most fertile areas in the world with regard to wheat culture. But then again, not enough excavations have been done in the area.
 
No offense to the other posters. Pretty safe bet that LeBrok & MOESAN are true descendants of R1b paternal lineage, therefore by extension related to me indirectly.
My question for them; do any threads exist, that are exclusive to R1b male viewers/posters only, where the subject of R1b dispersal can be freely discussed ?

And this folks, is the reason why some are laughing, and some are crying, and some post things like this:

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/31356-Northern-Centrism-Just-Stop-It!!
 
I don't think they had much of technological or numerical advantage, especially in early conquests of 4-1 millenia BC.


And this folks, is why folks are working so hard to inject science back into the debate. The use of the word "conquest" presupposes the outcome. It is no longer a hypothesis at that point, but a conclusion. And it is a conclusory statement, in and of itself.

This started out as a thread on mathematics and demographics. The material on horses and such is slightly off topic. :)

But when someone just says, "no, so there" like above without any evidence or citations, it is a bit frustrating.

Let's try again: imagine for a moment there wasn't a conquest. Imagine instead that there were people who fled for whatever reason. Maybe it was the onslaught of R1a people into where R1b people originated. Then entertain me by imagining that they picked up a genetic advantage on the way, which was the ability to digest milk (or simply a ready supply of meat when the megafauna that others relied on were in short supply). Or simply that they had greater initial numbers, and that their lifestyle allowed for more children to be born.

This model is far, far more consistent than the notion that after wandering for centuries, the tribe was pure enough to "conquer" Ireland (by boat!, these steppe nomads!) in such numbers that Ireland is 80+% R1b.

No way. Drift and demography explain what conquering and conquest cannot.

A far better model is the one originally proposed in this post. It relies on math and logic.

I suggest a re-read and I welcome comments on point.
 
Well, I for one would welcome a little more civility on your part, and a little less aggressiveness and dismissiveness toward a valued member of this site like Le Brok, or toward the forum owner, Maciamo, from both of whom, by the way, you could learn a great deal about genetics and the Indo-Europeans and the movement of R1b in Europe, whether on foot or on horseback.

I also have some suggestions of my own to make. How about you do some close reading of the articles to which you link so that time doesn't have to be wasted showing you as indirectly and politely as possible that you don't understand them, and, while we're at it, it would greatly help matters were you to actually pay attention when people are politely hinting that your knowledge of this material has some obvious gaps, as is clear from the fact that you quoted that ridiculous statement about Charlemagne when anyone who knows anything about the field knows that pedigree collapse and the regional population structure of Europe make nonsense of that statement, or the fact that you continue to harp on the advantage the steppe peoples had in being able to digest dairy products when it has been pointed out to you repeatedly that they didn't have the derived alleles.

We all know the papers that prove these things because we've discussed them over and over again. We've all seen the spreadsheets drawn from all these ancient dna papers that have been put together by numerous posters including Fire-Haired. The fact that no one disagrees with certain assertions is proof of that. That you don't know these things is your problem, not that of the members of this Board. If you want the names and links to the papers ask politely and if people have time they'll give them to you. Otherwise, do the work yourself by using the search engine.

If I were to see some progress being made in these matters then maybe I might consider posting again on this thread. Or maybe not...How much can be said about your little math exercise? We read it, we get it, in fact we got it a long time ago. It's been pointed out to you nicely that it's only one possible piece of a much bigger puzzle. If you've got nothing else there's nothing more to be said about it.

Oh, and stop with the straw man arguments. No one regularly posting here is proposing some Superman R1b scenario.
 
And this folks, is why folks are working so hard to inject science back into the debate. The use of the word "conquest" presupposes the outcome. It is no longer a hypothesis at that point, but a conclusion. And it is a conclusory statement, in and of itself.
I suspect that farmers didn't want to share their land with steppe invaders. Fighting had to be inevitable.

This started out as a thread on mathematics and demographics. The material on horses and such is slightly off topic. :)
It's been proven by many historical battles that warrior on a horse has advantage over warrior on foot. Don't you agree?
Even if first IE didn't fight on a horse yet and used horse only for locomotion, by riding horses they could outmaneuver infantry of locals, and they could gather warrior from afar or bring supplies much quicker in case of a battle.

Let's try again: imagine for a moment there wasn't a conquest. Imagine instead that there were people who fled for whatever reason. Maybe it was the onslaught of R1a people into where R1b people originated. Then entertain me by imagining that they picked up a genetic advantage on the way, which was the ability to digest milk (or simply a ready supply of meat when the megafauna that others relied on were in short supply). Or simply that they had greater initial numbers, and that their lifestyle allowed for more children to be born.
Should I go with this conclusory statement or you want to bring some citation for support?
As Angela mentioned many times, there is no evidence of widespread of LP among early IEs. All your other statements are open for a game. Keep in mind that displaced people don't mean necessarily peaceful immigrants. Actually if anything, history is teaching us otherwise. Check recent history of displaced Germanic and Slavic tribes after the fall of Roman Empire. Eventually they conquered and took over Roman Empire and most of Byzantium. Why should it be different with IE invasion? After all we know that they were highly structured warrior societies.
Am I sure of it? No. I'm just thinking, based on all we know about them, that this is most likely scenario of IE invasion and conquest.

This model is far, far more consistent than the notion that after wandering for centuries, the tribe was pure enough to "conquer" Ireland (by boat!, these steppe nomads!) in such numbers that Ireland is 80+% R1b.

No way. Drift and demography explain what conquering and conquest cannot.

A far better model is the one originally proposed in this post. It relies on math and logic.
Yes, we know about the numbers and they were at work at some degree, but why are you blantly ignoring a process of natural selection, possible advantageous mutation on Y chromosome or other positive adaptation which could have help build up IEs in numbers faster? We know how you like to invoke natural selection in LP case for IEs, though misplaced in this case. How about other, still unknown, mutations giving R1b folks a helpful hand? Impossible?
In nature it is not just a number game.

I suggest a re-read and I welcome comments on point.
Do you mean we can't discuss other points relevant to "Spread of Y haplogroups in Europe" beside points you made?
 
Well, I for one would welcome a little more civility on your part, and a little less aggressiveness and dismissiveness toward a valued member of this site like Le Brok, or toward the forum owner, Maciamo, from both of whom, by the way, you could learn a great deal about genetics and the Indo-Europeans and the movement of R1b in Europe, whether on foot or on horseback.

I also have some suggestions of my own to make. How about you do some close reading of the articles to which you link so that time doesn't have to be wasted showing you as indirectly and politely as possible that you don't understand them, and, while we're at it, it would greatly help matters were you to actually pay attention when people are politely hinting that your knowledge of this material has some obvious gaps, as is clear from the fact that you quoted that ridiculous statement about Charlemagne when anyone who knows anything about the field knows that pedigree collapse and the regional population structure of Europe make nonsense of that statement, or the fact that you continue to harp on the advantage the steppe peoples had in being able to digest dairy products when it has been pointed out to you repeatedly that they didn't have the derived alleles.

We all know the papers that prove these things because we've discussed them over and over again. We've all seen the spreadsheets drawn from all these ancient dna papers that have been put together by numerous posters including Fire-Haired. The fact that no one disagrees with certain assertions is proof of that. That you don't know these things is your problem, not that of the members of this Board. If you want the names and links to the papers ask politely and if people have time they'll give them to you. Otherwise, do the work yourself by using the search engine.

If I were to see some progress being made in these matters then maybe I might consider posting again on this thread. Or maybe not...How much can be said about your little math exercise? We read it, we get it, in fact we got it a long time ago. It's been pointed out to you nicely that it's only one possible piece of a much bigger puzzle. If you've got nothing else there's nothing more to be said about it.

Oh, and stop with the straw man arguments. No one regularly posting here is proposing some Superman R1b scenario.

OK, let's bring it down to dry facts.

1. Lots of people have accused you of being "uncivil" Angela, on this board. I'm disappointed that you resort to that accusation about me. I haven't engaged in any of the ad hominem common on these boards. I haven't called anyone "stupid" or poked at them. I've kept to the facts. Accusing someone of being "uncivil" is often the last resort of someone who has nothing to say. I've seen you post the same thing on other threads!

2. Maciamo appreciates dialogue. He wouldn't have started a board if he didn't. He knows that debates bring readers, which increase hits. And he's not so egotistical that he needs an echo chamber of his ideas.

3. The Charlemagne statement is your Straw Man. The point, which any serious mathematician or demographer agrees on is this: the number of ancestors we all have greatly exceeds the number of people on the planet, for most points in prehistory. I know you understand this. There is no need for the Straw Man.

4. I've read plenty of R1b supermen statements on this thread and others, and so have you. Need I remind you of the request for a "special forum for those bearing R1b only" that you just roundly criticized?
 
I suspect that farmers didn't want to share their land with steppe invaders. Fighting had to be inevitable.

It's been proven by many historical battles that warrior on a horse has advantage over warrior on foot. Don't you agree?
Even if first IE didn't fight on a horse yet and used horse only for locomotion, by riding horses they could outmaneuver infantry of locals, and they could gather warrior from afar or bring supplies much quicker in case of a battle.

As Angela mentioned many times, there is no evidence of widespread of LP among early IEs.

Let me see if I understand you correctly: I have seen posted here that the R1b "conquest" took 2000 years.

Do you posit that during those 2000 years, only R1b people had the horse? That no one else used a horse, during 2000 years? Did the horses do a Y-STR test on their handlers to make sure they were R1b?

I don't mean that to be flippant -- truly. I am trying to understand your POV.

Because that would be rather extraordinary. I am unaware of ANY technology, from farming to iPhones, that was not adopted pretty fast by people who initially didn't have it.

And actually, for large epochs in human history, cavalry was eschewed in favor of heavy infantry. I lecture on the Macedonian and early Roman armies. If you want to get into that, let me know.
 
@Angela: I never said the original bearers of the R1b upstream clades were lactose tolerant. I said bearers of R1b could have mutated at some point.

This fits in the orthodox time frame.

Most believe LP evolved in and spread from Western Europe. This is certainly where it is most prevalent today.

Most believe that many of the current R1b sub clades expanded from Western Europe.

If we disagree on these two points, we truly are ships passing in the night to put it mildly.

It would follow, to me at least, that some or indeed most bearers of the LP alleles, a tremendous advantage, also bore R1b.
 
Moore,

Believe me, I get it. I've had my fill of some of the macho superman fantasizing and posturing that can be found in posts by amateurs on the internet, but the fact remains that while we have occasional posters here who fall into that category, the thoughtful, erudite people who regularly and intelligently post here do not fall into that category, and certainly LeBroc does not. The tone of your response to him was totally out of line, as was your sarcasm toward Maciamo on another thread. He is indeed very open to argument, and posters regularly disagree with him; I do it myself frequently, but some respect is due him in my opinion for providing us with this forum.

If you want to find that kind of fake macho, we white (and blonde and blue-eyed, let's not forget) European R1 men conquered the world and impregnated all the women type of garbage you'll find it at Eurogenes, not here. I could show you screen shots from that "source" that would curl your hair if it isn't curly already. :) I warn you, though, arguing against him can even result in personal threats.

As for my own post, I didn't call you names. My points were factual, if brusquely stated. I do take off the kid gloves when I feel someone is hitting below the belt (I'm not much of a turn the other cheek kind of person) either me, or valued members, or the site in general. I would do the same for you if it came to that in the future. It goes without saying that out and out racists, of whatever national background, of whom we have more than a few with a long and sordid history, get short shrift from me, as do people who deliberately misrepresent scientific data. They deserve the treatment they get.

Anyway, I certainly don't want to leave the impression that your presence here is unwelcome; just don't lead with the sarcasm and the attacks. That certainly can't go over well in the faculty lounge. At least I have the excuse that I was paid to be a pit bull. Sometimes it's hard to turn it off. :)

Ed. As to LP, you are again stating as fact things for which we currently have no proof. We have LP in Iberian samples who were certainly not R1b. On the other hand, we have steppe R1b samples who didn't have LP. It's true there is controversy about the testing of the Iberian samples so we'll have to wait for more rigorous re-testing to be sure. Maybe the LP alleles first occurred and started to spread from certain mtDna people. Who knows at this point? Did an R1b Bell Beaker carry LP alleles? Yes. Did Bell Beakers subsequently spread it? Probably. That's all very different from what you posted. Precision matters. I don't know what you mean as to the rest. Are you saying you are one of those people who still believe that L51+ moved from western Europe to eastern Europe?
 
Let me see if I understand you correctly: I have seen posted here that the R1b "conquest" took 2000 years.

Do you posit that during those 2000 years, only R1b people had the horse? That no one else used a horse, during 2000 years? Did the horses do a Y-STR test on their handlers to make sure they were R1b?
The point was that they have overwhelmed locals at the initial conquest, and the horse was essential in this. The locals couldn't get rid of them. They were there to stay. The rest of the story is living together and mixing for a thousand or 2 thousand years till society became IE and genetically mixed. It was a long process, as you know people are very tribal, nationalistic and racist in their nature and don't mix to eagerly with strangers. It takes a long time to end up with new uniform population of one culture when starting with 2 totally different cultures. In this case, one being local farmer the other steppe nomad/farmer, both speaking different languages and having different religion.
This process took even longer in South Europe. Take Italy for example, around year 500-200 BC IE Romans are yet to "convert" many non-IE tribes of Italy, notably Etruscans and Sardinians. Same story in Spain.

Because that would be rather extraordinary. I am unaware of ANY technology, from farming to iPhones, that was not adopted pretty fast by people who initially didn't have it.
And how North American or Australian natives took to farming?
In case of farmers adopting horses I'm sure it was much faster process. However these were rather small horses, only good for traveling fast between point A and B, they were not suitable to do pulling work as modern horses did. So I'm guessing that villagers (before mixing with IEs) had just few of them for fast traveling only, but not enough to furnish a cavalry.

And actually, for large epochs in human history, cavalry was eschewed in favor of heavy infantry. I lecture on the Macedonian and early Roman armies. If you want to get into that, let me know.
I'm not questioning validity of specific military units in specific strategic arrangement, just in general all round sense.
How did European heavy infantry fared against exclusive horsemen armies like Mongols? Which is very specific to how steppe warriors performed against variety of armies.
And more importantly, consider time period of IE invasion. Did neolithic farmers have heavy infantry?
I also noticed, in my last post, that possibly the first IE invaders (around 3,000 BC) didn't fight on the horse at all and only used them for transportation, but fought on foot. At least they had mobility and transportation advantage, and by military standards it is a huge advantage. For example, one band of warriors on horses can move around vast territory and control many villages. In similar fashion Mongols ruled over half the world few thousand years later. They wouldn't have done that without horses either.
 
I note again that R1b = Indo European has emphatically not been established. Languages are not genes and vice-versa. I realize you were just expressing your own personal beliefs and theories, but using IE as shorthand for R1b is not quite accurate.
 

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