Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe

Johane Derite

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New paper out again, busy days: http://rdcu.be/HxtJ


From
around 2750 to 2500 , Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 . The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.
 
It's not precisely new, Johane. It's the Olalde et al paper we've been discussing in pre-print.

I'll see if there are any major differences.

I do understand that a lot more samples have been released which will be important in terms of uniparental markers and autosomal analysis as well.
 
My bad. The Genomic History of Southeast europe also just came out but I had seen the preprint for it unlike this one.
 
There is a Sicilian Bell Beaker sample

Yes. I think they are three, from Partanna (Trapani). The archaeological site is called "Pergole 2".

Also the Beaker sample from Parma are three. The archaeological site is called "via Guidorossi".


La tomba a grotticella artificiale di "Pergole 2", Partanna (TP), Contrada Pergola

https://www.academia.edu/3650687/La...ale_di_Pergole_2_Partanna_TP_Contrada_Pergola

xGVCMeS.png
 
For Iberia they have found 3 R1b more, being L51+, unfortunately they are attached to Ciempozuelos regional style pots so they are not members of the first BB wave. They even have steppe admixture, but as Portguese BA R1b and Catalan R1b BB don't have such admixture it will be necessary to check up if it came by "importation" of CWC females or just by a pan-European exchange network.
 
Eight individuals with stapario component of 25% to 50% in the center of the Iberian Peninsula associated with campaniform, it seems to me that it changes a bit the panorama with which has been said until now.
 
For Iberia they have found 3 R1b more, being L51+, unfortunately they are attached to Ciempozuelos regional style pots so they are not members of the first BB wave. They even have steppe admixture, but as Portguese BA R1b and Catalan R1b BB don't have such admixture it will be necessary to check up if it came by "importation" of CWC females or just by a pan-European exchange network.


@Berun,
a.Those Portuguese BA R1b -P312 do not have steppe. How would they have diluted Steppe ancestry so fast? - Arriving “steppe” R1bs to Portugal then it would have been (especially south Portugal) by very late last quarter 3rd millennia. – How come 1800bc Portuguese BA R1b-P312 has no Steppe admix?

b. Today Portugal (special the region of original BB) has the highest R1b percentage that are M269 (xP312) in all Iberia. To find something similar one needs to go to Britany or northern France. What migration of R1b from steppe would arrive to the further western part of Europe (Portugal) with M269 (xp312) when all beakers supposedly “bringing it” are P312?

c. In a Region (Iberia) noticeable for being dominated by DF27 (TRMC 2400bc) it’s also odd that the son of DF27, Z195 (basically same TRMC as DF27 – so DF27 new is “Son”) is almost non existant in Portugal. – Just to be clear : Spanish people (all) are Z195 (“the son”) but Portuguese R1b are not Z195. At all.

Something is fishy.
 
Thank you for sharing another special moment. Curiosity rewarded by discovery sounds like a great place to be. I personally appreciate the opportunity to be apart of this journey. I've just returned from a dayand am working hard to stay aware. Yet it's obvious that it's going to be another great day to learn and listen.
 
The sicilian beaker is a bit shifted toward Levant (if i'm not wrong) so can we conclude that he is partly native (ex. chalcolithic sicilian mother) ? Do we know his haplogroups?
 
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seen from far it seems that archeologically first BBs (Portugal) passed their knowledge or their package has been adopted by foreign elites of Central Europe origin (at a point at least); so it could confirm some archeologists hypthesis; BTW the "mixed" BB's are in central-northern Spain and southeastern France: hazard? - the more "North-East" position of british BBs is not so strange because we know the first beakers of South-West Britain showed physically an input of the northern element in CWC + an input of a kind of HG's ('borrebylike'), apparently picked in northern Germany (see JC Coon and H. Hubert).
The question of Y-R1b seems to me confirming a two ways penetration of R1b in Europe westwards, a Mediterranean one and a Danube or/and South Baltic one. But can we be sure we can attach these southern Y-R1b to first BB's pottery???
 
No Olympus, without more evidence I can't side M269 as steppic, there is so much hocus pocus in the paper as to deal with it: 2 in 4 Barcelona beakers are R1b which is a coincidence with the genetic BB trend... the low coverage limits the precission but they have mutations linked to M269, coincidence again... for Portugal, the craddle of BB they only sampled 2 males, incredible after comparing how they have sampled some 6000 British BB, they shut up about the PortugueseBA R1b without steppe, also they shut up about Iberian BA samples for mtDNA without steppe tracks, the R1b in Madrid with steppe got it coming directly from Germany or by importing it like their buttons made of African elephant tusk? moreover, they say M269 is linked to steppe but they don't answer where this combo came out, Germany? Poland? Ukraine? an Iberian culture was taken there by a group R1b till then minoritary to spread such culture and their genomes widely in Europe? my logics are too burnt with it.
 
luckly there is a Portuguese team getting Portuguese BB DNA that will settle up the case
 
The sicilian beaker is a bit shifted toward Levant (if i'm not wrong) so can we conclude that he is partly native (ex. chalcolithic sicilian mother) ? Do we know his haplogroups?

Cato (it's not me who gave you a 'thumb down') it seems to me this Sicilian BB is shifted towards something Late 'anatolians' (old EF + kind of Iran) rather than towards pure 'levant'; and before those times I think the new (Chalco) mix of Eastern Mediterranean had not reached Sicily in big masses; Could this make a link with Cyprus or rather with South-East Europe of the time?
 
i just wanted to say that maybe is a bit more CHG than the other BB samples.
 
Cato (it's not me who gave you a 'thumb down') it seems to me this Sicilian BB is shifted towards something Late 'anatolians' (old EF + kind of Iran) rather than towards pure 'levant'; and before those times I think the new (Chalco) mix of Eastern Mediterranean had not reached Sicily in big masses; Could this make a link with Cyprus or rather with South-East Europe of the time?
I have this theory that the new Chalco mix of Eastern Mediterranean started to spread from Anatolia with viticulture from the Caucasus to the west in the eastern Med in the late neolithic/chalcolithic. The oldest wine production in Sicily is 6000 years old. I have a hunch that before the search for copper and tin that may have driven Kura Araxes culture to spread was slightly after the actual new Anatolian mix that started to colonise the Aegean before. I think we will find this mixture more in areas that are conducive to wine making and maybe olive production. Then these groups could have taken control of the Med trade routes. Or maybe not. Just a theory.
 
I have this theory that the new Chalco mix of Eastern Mediterranean started to spread from Anatolia with viticulture from the Caucasus to the west in the eastern Med in the late neolithic/chalcolithic. The oldest wine production in Sicily is 6000 years old. I have a hunch that before the search for copper and tin that may have driven Kura Araxes culture to spread was slightly after the actual new Anatolian mix that started to colonise the Aegean before. I think we will find this mixture more in areas that are conducive to wine making and maybe olive production. Then these groups could have taken control of the Med trade routes. Or maybe not. Just a theory.

I don't think it was necessarily tied only to wine making and olive oil. I think a big part of it is also tied to the search for metals.

Definitely, though, I agree with you that this was probably Chalcolithic or Late Neolithic as some call it. I've been saying for years that a lot of this "additional" "Near Eastern" ancestry started entering the European gene pool around that time. The Lazaridis et al Mycenaean paper confirmed it. It also confirmed the components: ANF like, more Iran Neo/Iran Chl. like, and about 5% more "Levantine" like.


Could they have gone first to the Balkans and/or Cyprus, then on across the Mediterranean sea routes? As the migration of these people spread, their autosomal make-up, depending on the route and the people they encountered, might have changed drastically.

Does anyone know if we have or if at least the samples from places like Los Millares in Spain are in the works? Those structures are very East Mediterranean in appearance, and the copper metallurgy was really new there. I've often speculated that perhaps the tie was genetic as well as cultural.

As the migration of these people spread, their autosomal make-up, depending on the route and the people they encountered, might have changed drastically.
 
I agree that metals search could have been the most important factor, and in West Mediterranean it doesn't seem older than say 3000 BC, so 5000 years ago rather than 6000. The wineyards culture could have begun independantly among traditionnal EF med's. I was wondering if some first BB did not pass down Central-Eastern Europe to Southeastern and so Eastern Mediterranea before joining West Mediterranea and South Atlantic...
 
Thank you for helping me putt notions in a process of order at a time when it's core was forged with metals and yet it was still brittle and fragile enough to perish.
Civilization is more than a collection of isolated factors. Wine and olive live on but establishing a patchwork quilt that define the structures for everyday life.
Exploration of all that surrounded them.
 

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