Mapping ancient R1b

[berun]

As this hg is "problematic" it's ever good to expose data in a geographic pattern as to get results or ideas.

The map is taken from Eupedia R1b (realy awesome maps from Maciamo, I recognize... as I recognize that I would like to know which program runs for isofrequencies).

R1b-MAP.jpg

From the map it can be suspected that if L51 and L11 major frequency areas are old enough, it would match the Atlantic dispersal of the Neolithic / Megalithism, independent of the Cardial Culture Mediterranean dispersal.

Errors, opinions and additions welcomed.

[Greying Wanderer]

From the map it can be suspected that if L51 and L11 major frequency areas are old enough, it would match the Atlantic dispersal of the Neolithic / Megalithism, independent of the Cardial Culture Mediterranean dispersal.

Appearances may be deceptive but the distribution maps always looked to me like west european R1b expanded from a number of epicenters mostly along the Atlantic coast: Pyrenees/Cantabria, Ireland/SW Britain, Rhine mouth, Alps (so mostly in regions previously associated with the Atlantic megalith culture).

However the Alpine clade and as you mention the lack of symmetry east and west of the Portuguese center of Atlantic megalith speaks against that maybe?

If those appearances are correct then either pre-existing R1b or R1b from elsewhere arrived in those spots and for some reason expanded dramatically.

One potential common thread is acid soils: both the Atlantic coast and mountain regions (like the Alps) have acid soils as a result of runoff caused by heavy rainfall and acid soils are bad for certain crops like wheat - so maybe milk is the common thread?

[berun]

Maybe it's not a coincidence what you say about the poorness of the soil in the SW quarter of the Iberian Peninsula; the soil is so poor that it only can give a crop each five years and it's profited mainly for herding pigs, sheeps or cows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehesa

Also it can't be a coincidence that the Cardial Culture after expanding thousands of kilometers in the Mediterranean stopped there: why?

Another factor is that Mesolithic people from there were quite "rich": they had a rich Atlantic coast providing big amounts of seafood and a rich countryside full of Mediterranean forest with pine trees giving tones of nutritive pine nuts. Density would be quite high for a hunter-gatherer population.

It would be good to check how all it went, maybe they copied husbandry from their Cardial neighbours or maybe only a thiny part of the Cardials were able to colonize the region, so that the Mesolithic fraction of DNA would be more high in such area than in the previous colonized regions.

Also in South/Centre Portugal it was developed Megalithism and from there it went up northwards with Neolithic practices to the rest of the Atlantic facade. So once they knew how to get the maximum profit from the land they succeded to colonize new regions.

A pity to don't have any Y-DNA sample from the Atlantic facade (Paleolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic).

[MOESAN]

I had this hypothesis of megalithic Y-R1b in my pocket; the question would be how put this in relation with Western R1b P312 baby boom(s) dates? It's true the dates given by calculations could be a bit wrong even if not too wrong?
Some of the Megalithers, like Long Barrows and affiliated cultures, seem showing types from the East Mediterranea regions, but not the mean types; surely too they mixed with previous maritime populations where Cardial elements were very light and Mesolithic people a bit heavier. Cardial clans in France seem come from the Med Sea and landed in Languedoc and some of them later- and already slightly mixed - took the Garonne river to pass into Poitou and Central Western France; they don't seem having deeply colonized the very Western shores where Mesolithic people seem dense enough at those time.
I fear it will open fierce discussions about I-Ean and R1b: some occidental (since when?) Y-R1b speaking a proto-basque at a L51/L11, already P312 level and colonizing NW Europe by Sea and Germany Alps by land (through Loire and East France, as seem the megaliths having moved?); so some P312 gave birth to U152 in Alps???
I avow this hypothesis is not my first choice but it could resolve the basque mystery?... the U152 (firest) and L21 (second) would have been indo-europeanized in Germany-Central Europe before a come back westwards? the more southwestern DF27 were not I-Eanized immediately (Aquitans?) before go southwards???
I'm rather puzzled but prefer a principal advance of L51/L11 then P312 across Danube Europe what doe not exclude some rarer descendants of L23/L51/L11 passed through Mediterranea. Then rather I-Ean speakers. To date, I don't put a penny in the game.

[Greying Wanderer]

Maybe it's not a coincidence what you say about the poorness of the soil in the SW quarter of the Iberian Peninsula; the soil is so poor that it only can give a crop each five years and it's profited mainly for herding pigs, sheeps or cows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehesa

Also it can't be a coincidence that the Cardial Culture after expanding thousands of kilometers in the Mediterranean stopped there: why?

Another factor is that Mesolithic people from there were quite "rich": they had a rich Atlantic coast providing big amounts of seafood and a rich countryside full of Mediterranean forest with pine trees giving tones of nutritive pine nuts. Density would be quite high for a hunter-gatherer population.

It would be good to check how all it went, maybe they copied husbandry from their Cardial neighbours or maybe only a thiny part of the Cardials were able to colonize the region, so that the Mesolithic fraction of DNA would be more high in such area than in the previous colonized regions.

Also in South/Centre Portugal it was developed Megalithism and from there it went up northwards with Neolithic practices to the rest of the Atlantic facade. So once they knew how to get the maximum profit from the land they succeded to colonize new regions.

A pity to don't have any Y-DNA sample from the Atlantic facade (Paleolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic).

Yes exactly, see where the border between the Mediterranean and Atlantic coast bio-regions are on this: SW Iberia.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._(english).png

So maybe people/crops adapted to the Mediterranean bio-region spread west rapidly until they reached that border zone between the two bio-regions where a new package had to be developed for the Atlantic zone with that new package being developed by a mixture of the ENF from the East Med. on one side of the border zone and local WHG on the other side and the new package spread north along the coast as Atlantic Megalith.

The question then is was the R1b lurking in remote valleys as part of the local WHG and got picked up by Atlantic Megalith culture or were they later arrivals who spread along the Atlantic Megalith trade routes and had some advantage (LP?) which led them to eventually outbreed the Atlantic Megalith people?

(Currently I'd say the latter is more likely but maybe more old R1b finds in Iberia will change that.)

#

edit:

that Dehesa link - very interesting; i wonder how far back that goes?

(I recall Maju making a big point of how important acorns were in Iberia - I think he said right back to the neolithic?)

(wiki might break down somewhat when you get into the real details of a subject or when the subject is contentious but for information like this it's fantastic)

[berun]

@MOESAN, much or less is what I have in my head also... What seems sure is that H mtDNA was doing it.

@Greying Wanderer, in fact by memory i did a mistake thinking that there were no Cardials in Portugal but there were... but the case is that for some centuries there was a sharp frontier between Cardial maritime colonies and the Mesolithic stablishments in the countryside. I have read again it:

The Spread of Agro-Pastoral Economies across Mediterranean Europe: A View from the Far West

which also refers a mtDNA study of 2005 looking at differences between Cardials and Mesolithics:

Using ancient DNA to examine genetic continuity at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Portugal

The Cardials were stoped there as the souther countryside was poor for crops and the north is not suitable by excessive rain.

kEJhdOK.jpg
So yes, if there was a region where the Cardial culture / G2a / Neolithic would have an stop is there.

The big problem is as said is that there was also where Megalithism develops, as two millennia after that the Bell Beaker Culture also emerged. Maybe it's not a coincidence, as South Portugal must depend on a pastorile economy, if there were long periods of drought that would have diminished the agricole populations, such area would serve as a refigium from where it would be possible to repopulate Western Europe.