How is it possible for I1 to exist?

Yes, and it just adds to the mystery isn't it? hg I seems to be very expansive throughout europe from east to west and north, but my theory is because Hunter Gathering requires more land than farming so thats why I1 had bigger geography yet less numbers. ancient dna seems to popup in urban sites, so maybe N.Europe had more I1 yet less urban areas.

I think you hit the nail on the head there, they were nomadic and masters of the harsh climate alongside R1.
lets not forget the extreme changes in climate and sea level from 10000bc, well untill now, the seas is still rising today.
 
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Many Mesolithic and Neolithic lineages disappeared (or significantly reduced) after the arrival of PIE speakers, C1a2-V20 and H2 almost don't exist in Europe anymore, the majority of G2a branches that were not assimilated by Indo-Europeans are confined to mountainous regions and Mediterranean Islands in low numbers, the two most numerous I2 subclades (I2a1b-CTS10228 and I2a2a-L801) are young and are associated with the Slavic and Germanic expansions in the Migration Period of the early middle ages, if you remove these two subclades the frequency of I2 in mainland Europe would significantly drop.

Haplogroup A1a* (M31) has been found in Finland, Norway and eastern England. This subclade is normally found along the west coast of Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mali, Morocco) and could have come to Europe during the Paleolithic. Indeed a few percent of sub-Saharan admixture was found among ancient DNA samples from Mesolithic Scandinavia tested by Skoglund et al. (2012). If this lineage survived in low numbers since the Paleolithic, then why couldn't a branch of Haplogroup I that would give rise to I1 later ?

I1 expanded during the Bronze age, my personal opinion is that I1 was assimilated early by the Corded Ware IE advance, but that alone isn't enough to give it this frequency, most I1 men today probably descend from a a lucky man that rose to prominence in the early Bronze Age and that allowed him and his progeny to increase their numbers and become a founding lineage in proto-Germanic society. a romantic story of survival and rise to power.

R.I.P Old Europe ... their only sin was fighting against a horde of horse riding screamers with bronze weapons .. a deadly mistake.

Something I noticed, the ancient Iberians (who were not Indo-European) worshipped a Horse taming god (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberians#Art_and_religion), they must have realised that taming horses was the only way to resist Celtic incursions, maybe that was the reason they survived while others didn't.

Nah, the one man theory, it sounds silly whenever I read it.

I also distance myself from this
R.I.P Old Europe ... their only sin was fighting against a horde of horse riding screamers with bronze weapons .. a deadly mistake.
I am agnostic on how this all happened, it could have been a plague, or nomadic invasions, or both.

I don't think I1 was a man that was "elevated" in some Bronze Age social hierarchy, the story of I1 I believe can be deduced from two basic facts: first it was found in Neolithic farmers from Hungary, and second its strong association with Germanic speakers, the Germanic language family are descended from a single Proto-Germanic language, the first community of Germanic speakers included a blend of both R1 and I1, descended from the Steppe and Neolithic central Europe respectively, this group then expanded to Scandinavia, I1 migrated from central Europe not as a single man, but a tribe with high levels of I1.

Then what happened to the pre-Germanic inhabitants of northern Europe ? again it could have been a plague, nomadic invasions, or a combination of both.
 
IronSide, your theory is very logical and likely the case of the I1 story.
Very nice initial question by I1a3 Young.
As for Iberians, taming horses may have helped them, but sadly, it was not enough for American (North and South) Indians.
 
I1 and I2 branched about 27,500 years ago.

From 27,500 ybp to 4600 ybp, the population containing I1 males was isolated or "bottle necked." This is known because all I1 have about 300 of the same mutation which is radically different than the other ydna hgs that I've read about.

Okay, what about the first option that has not been discussed so far: "Isolation"?

It is imaginable that a small, homogenous population was isolated during the ice age and started a late expansion from its refugium. But does this go well with the I1-haplotree? Even if you assume an isolated population with few males, mutations will happen over thousands of years and the y-chromosome will start differentiation. Or how would we have to think this model?
 
The biggest problem on this idea is in my opinion that there was no place where this population could have been living in isolation in Europe for a long time. The HGs needed wide trading and marriage networks to survive, and there had been many environmental and cultural changes since the Ice Age, most important ENF migration and integration of HG woman in farmer societies and HG tribes which changed to farming economy like Ertebölle, who had been integrated into Funnel Beaker culture.

If they will not be found in Mesolithic Northern Europe, Funnel Beaker or Steppe, its unlikely that they had any bigger meaning before the Corded Ware expansion. That would mean, that this one person was likely an cuckoo child of an Indoeuropean Chiefs wife, fathered by an „insignificant“ HG-guy or Farmer-guy.

As far as I know there was no M253 or Pre-I1 in Bell-Beaker, so it is unlikely that this lineage is from Southern or Western Europe.

Another option is that it was much earlier assimilated by Indoeuropean Tribes, somewhere near the Carpathians, this would match with the Balaton LBK sample from Hungary. Iron Side already suggested this.

More DNA is needed.

The theory about heroic resistance fighters, I don't believe it, so why would they then accept the foreign religion of the invaders and their burial customs, language and so on if they had won the fight against them?
 

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