The Population Genomics Of Archaeological Transition In West Iberia

Berun, they're saying there was no CHG in Bronze Age Iberia, although there is now, not even in those Bronze Age R1b1 samples. Using their own definition of "steppe" ancestry, which apparently doesn't include CHG like ancestry, theysay there is a bit of steppe in Bronze Age Iberia, but not much.

The conclusion is unsurprising. Look how little Yamnaya-steppe, defined as EHG and CHG, there is in modern Spaniards. Only the Greeks, Albanians and Sardinians on that chart have less. I'm just not convinced there's no CHG in Martiniano's steppe component.

Spanish North is basically Spanish Basque...
Haak-et-al-2015-Figure-3-Admixture-Proportions-in-Modern-DNA-With-Linguistic-and-Historical-Origins-Added.png

The chart displays a 20% of steppe ancestry in actual Spanish people, so I would expect a possible 10% of CHG in such Portuguese samples at least. But ok, steppe warriors manage to arrive into Portugal without needing their CHG component and the Bell Beaker package arrived to Central Europe without any Iberian gene, just by TV broadcasting. It's irony not about you but about what I'm perceiving how Yamnayists are taking the different scenarios...

By the way the last mtDNA paper dealing with BA Iberia found no steppe ancestry. It's a pity that some genetists are't worshipers of the holy cows.
 
I suppose CHG in present day Iberians could have arrived with Urnfield and La Tène-Hallstatt movements, the latter of which were indubitably Indo-European.

300px-Hallstatt_LaTene.png
 
I assume CHG in present day Iberians could have arrived with Urnfield and La Tène-Hallstatt movements, the latter of which were indubitably Indo-European.

300px-Hallstatt_LaTene.png

Celts are suspected to have arrived in Iberia 600 BC.
Some of their genes should still be present in todays Iberians.
 
Celts are suspected to have arrived in Iberia 600 BC.
Some of their genes should still be present in todays Iberians.

I think this should be the most reasonable date for the Celtic arrival in Iberia. Has DNA from La Tene sites been published to date? I suppose they would be heavy in CW aDNA like those Central European Bell Beakers?
 
Population genomics of archaeological transition in west Iberia

Published: July 27, 2017

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006852

We analyse new genomic data (0.05–2.95x) from 14 ancient individuals from Portugal distributed from the Middle Neolithic (4200–3500 BC) to the Middle Bronze Age (1740–1430 BC) and impute genomewide diploid genotypes in these together with published ancient Eurasians. While discontinuity is evident in the transition to agriculture across the region, sensitive haplotype-based analyses suggest a significant degree of local hunter-gatherer contribution to later Iberian Neolithic populations. A more subtle genetic influx is also apparent in the Bronze Age, detectable from analyses including haplotype sharing with both ancient and modern genomes, D-statistics and Y-chromosome lineages. However, the limited nature of this introgression contrasts with the major Steppe migration turnovers within third Millennium northern Europe and echoes the survival of non-Indo-European language in Iberia. Changes in genomic estimates of individual height across Europe are also associated with these major cultural transitions, and ancestral components continue to correlate with modern differences in stature.
 
I think they based their analyses on existing samples, and confirmed what we already knew or suspected.
 
With the actual publication here there is the data full supplement which might untangle some of this. There's a lot of new data.
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006852#sec024

Before diving into the supplement, it does seem to me that those first movements from the east, as LeBroc pointed out, might be from groups around Baden and before that from southwestern Yamnaya which didn't have much if any Iran like CHG. The percentage of CHG was much higher in Corded Ware. It would only be with Urnfield like, much later movements, that we get the typical EHG/CHG like populations which would have brought Indo-European like languages.

So, the people who first brought downstream R1b to Iberia seem to have been mainly EHG plus MN from Central Europe, were mostly male, and presumably didn't come in very large numbers, and thus made not that great an impact on the total genetics of Bronze Age Iberia? They also, being such a small group, didn't perhaps change the language?
 
If I remeber well, the preprint said that BA_Portugueses had some EHG introgression, in the published paper I don't find this weird statement.

Even so they stick on the big steppe bullshit, they don't care much if Yamnayans were R1b-Z2105 with CHG, or that their supposed CW relatives were R1a with also a good chunk of CHG. Such CHG share is not present in BA_Portugal, but even so for the authors such guys came somehow from East Europe... but precisely the CHG watermark clearly points from where they were not coming. They were not IE.

So, the people who first brought downstream R1b to Iberia seem to have been mainly EHG plus MN from Central Europe, were mostly male, and presumably didn't come in very large numbers, and thus made not that great an impact on the total genetics of Bronze Age Iberia? They also, being such a small group, didn't perhaps change the language?

But 3 in 3 BA_Portuguese were R1b, nowadays half of the Portuguese are R1b, so if I say that the male R1b migration was quite big surely I will be more certain. And if the migration was big, why the autosomal would lack the characteristic Yamnaya-CW CHG EHG R1a Z2105 watermarks?
 
A recent study on Plos Genetics (sorry, but I am not able to publish links) seems to confirm Maciamo hypothesis on the origin of basque language and brings new evidence to something that has already been noted: ancient Iberia got much less steppe DNA than Central & Northern Europe.


This findings are consistent with the study published two years ago by PNAS, that pointed that basque people would come more from neolithic settlers than from mesolithic hunter gatherers, as it had been previously thought.


The new study reinforces Maciamo theory that R1b arrived to the Basque Country via small groups of indo-european warriors, that, thanks to their more advanced weapons, could took a ruling status over a much wider neolithic population, whose male lineages went slowly fading from Y-Chromosomes thanks to a bigger reproductive capability (they got more wives and a healthier offspring...); which doesn't correlates with a similar shift on the general genetic structure of the populations as a whole. Thus, R1b hg echoes the higher status of those ruling elites, and its also their more significant legacy.


To me, this situation explains very well the lingustic structure of eastern Iberia and southern France from the Bronce Age to the Iron Age, as non-IE languages were spoken there (Iberian, Basque / Aquitanian). But I still wonder why IE languages did root on central and western Iberia (Celtiberians, Lusitanians, Gallaics, Asturians, Cantabrians...)... interestingly, the remnants examined on the study linked above, proceed from Portugal, where IE speakers are known to have lived.


Moreover, to me it is still a mystery the genesis of celtic dialects in central Iberia. Lusitanian language phylogeny is disputed, and rather considered non-celtic (para-italic, para-germanic or a different branch of IE on its own), a little bit as venetic in ancient Italy. Others say it is celtic in their oldest stages, and some follow Cunliffe in his statement that Iberia is the very cradle of celtic languages (that would have follow an evolution illustrated with Tartessian > Lusitanian > Celtiberian > Old Irish... which seems consistent in time and space with the spread of Bell Beakers). Besides, celtiberian affinity to old Irish (both of them Q-celtic) and the Irish oral tradition point to a possible arrival of Q-Celt to Ireland from Iberia, which doesn't seem coherent, on the other hand, with the genetic differences between the Peninsula and the Isles.


So, to me the questions now to solve the ancient Iberia puzzle would be:


Why did a IE-speaking Iberia ever existed, with such a small steppe peoples introgression?
Which is the filiation of Lusitanian tribes within the IE peoples, and when did they arrived?
Where did Q-Celtic dialects first appeared, and why are they present in Iberia and Ireland?


I advance the following hypothesis:


IE peoples entered Iberia in two waves. The first of them went all their way west and occupied mainly the western part of the peninsula, more adapted to their pastoralist life-style, and less crowded than the Mediterranean and Southern Coasts. They Indo-europeanized the previous neolithic iberians. They spoke a proto-italo-celto-germanic dialect, which developed from Tartessian (with many influxes from Iberian and Phoenicians, which would explain the misterious semitic influence on celtic languages) to Lusitanian, Celtiberian, Gallaic, Asturian, Cantabrian and other IE dialects from western Iberian, some of which fit into the celtic deffinition (Celtiberian and Gallaic and Cantabrian to some extent) and some that don't (Lusitanian, Asturian, Waccaean, Vettonian, Carpetian...). From the Tagus river mouth, the BB culture spread northwards (using commercial networks previously used by "Iberians" (pre-IE neolithic) peoples to spread the Megalithic culture) reaching Britany and Ireland, and carrying old celtic (Q-celtic) languages with them, and some R1b-DF27 along the Atlantic façade of Europe. Interestingly, there is a R1b-DF27 hotspot on the Benelux, next to the Rhine river mouth. This river was the axis of expansion of Bell Beakering into Central Europe, and it was on its very springs, on the Alps, where this Q-celtic peoples / languages met the Hallstatt peoples the first identified as properly celtic. This model would explain the lack of Hallstatt findings on western Iberia and Ireland, the Q-celtic spread and the allegedly semitic background of celtic languages. On central Europe, Q-celtic language joined a larger community of genetically Indoeuropean peoples; and make their way backwards (as R1b-L21; R1b-S28) to the Isles, Gaul, Italy and eastern Iberia; carrying La Tène elements and P-celtic dialects that never reached western Iberia, and only scarcely arrived to Ireland...


What do you think about it?
I know I can have made many mistakes... but celtic languages origin and expansion, specially on Iberia, is still subject of debate... which is your guess about it?

We already have a thread for this. I will merge them.
 
Genetiker has produced two admixture tables (K = 12 and K = 14); I find his tables quite reliable... but now he got an slap about the complicated path to follow admixture analysis without computing all pops. K = 12 merges WHG and EHG, which provides to BA_Portugal a 5% CHG and around 5% of ANI and Natufian... (what a trek!)
;)

The K = 14 provides a 20% EHG (without CHG!)... but the MN and LN/CA grandfathers receive a 5% also, even El Portalón CA people get 20% EHG.

The steppemania is quite funny, Yamnayans can be R1b-Z2013, R1b-M269, R1a, lack the CHG half if necessary, and if they were well disposed, learn Basque forgetting their IE, or getting the BB package forgetting their Yamnayan package.

Maybe there would come a time where steppists will realize how ridiculous is all it.
 

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