Central and South Asian DNA Paper

[Ygorcs]

You know why I care? [I have chosen not to learn my haplogroup, btw because I consider it largely irrelevant.] But, apart from the Polish blogger and his highly patriarchal warrior pastoralists there were people who were saying things like:

"The survival of the indigenous language would have been the most likely scenario if the IE/R1b invaders were predominantly men. An army of adventurous Celtic men riding horses and equipped with bronze weapons could have butchered a substantial part of the Neolithic Iberian male population and taken their women. As good conquerors they would have taken many wives or concubines each (polygamy), having a great many children each, which helped the spread of R1b Y-DNA lineages (see How did R1b become dominant in Western Europe)"

That person never thought that his haplogroup wasn't originally Celtic or PIE-related and that the Basques could have retained more or less their original language.

Ossetians on the other hand, for example, had to have been 'iranized'.

And the truth is a Neolithic -or earlier- origin for Western European R1b (maybe apart from U-106) is still possible. Certainly they weren't Megalithic builders but how many Cardium Neolithic samples exist? Maybe it moved in Europe with E-V13 and related lineages or was here before the Neolithic. [If you sample Megalithic builders you will find Megalithic builders]

So this scenario would imply that Indo-Europeanization (not just in language, but in many other aspects of culture) would've happened with virtually no genetic impact all in Neolithic-type populations which most likely had a low population density, where even a few thousands of warriors could make a huge long-term impact (so comparisons with Turkish in Turkey are unwarranted, especially because even there, a hugely populated medieval country, we can detect a genetic impact of at least 20% to 30% if you consider the Turks didn't come directly from Northeast Asia, but from Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan).

I can't find that more plausible and realistic than the opposite, more mainstream hypothesis, especially since we have until now found quite a lot of very ancient R1b-M269 far away from Western Europe (and those we found almost all date from the Middle Bronze Age onwards, when coincidentally or not steppe admixture starts to appear in a lot of Western European places), and no R1b-M269 has been found in Western Europe dating to before the Copper Age (other clades of R1b don't really count here).

We'd have to just imagine the possibility of many R1b-M269 being found eventually, while we totally ignore those that already exist and the fact they exist right where the patterns of spread of steppe-related admixture and star-like expansion of IE languages seem to have happened... I don't know...

I don't say the R1b-L51 came necessarily right from the steppes, but it certainly had something to do with that profound cultural change in the Bronze Age and the subsequent attestation of so many IE languages everywhere in Central/West Europe, even if it were just an Eastern European, maybe Balkanic branch of males that were fully Indo-Europeanized early on.

 

[Lenab]

The ONLY problem with your theory is that virtually ALL ancient DNA from Mesolithic to Iron Age times retrieved from the Levant region DO NOT agree with your hypothesis. Also, you're probably being too "Hellenocentric", in fact it is the Greeks that have a lot of Anatolian-like and a bit of Levantine-like ancestry, the Neolithic spread of farming and mass migrations was from there (Near East) to Southern Europe, not the opposite.

Besides, there is NO way Greeks are the most similar population in comparison with ANY ancient Levantine sample. The Levant may have been Hellenized, may have received some Greek colonists, but it NEVER experienced widespread depopulation during Hellenistic times and was NEVER Greek-majority, not even in language (which is much more flexible and easily shifted than genetics), not even in the height of the Greek-speaking empires of Alexander and the Seleucids.

Instead, we have inscriptions in Semitic languages THOUSANDS OF YEARS (as early as 2,800 BC) before any Greek inscription appears in the historic record, and of course we have huge documentation from Sumerian and Egyptian sources attesting that that region was inhabited by Semitic peoples at least from the Bronze Age on. You're deluding yourself. You won't find any proof that people of the Levant were mostly Greek, nor even Anatolian, not in the Neolithic, not in the Bronze Age, not in the Iron Age, not now.

There is of course some degree of genetic similarity because, to be frank, it is not that those peoples are Greek, but it is that Greeks are historically at least in relevant proportions just a group of the Eastern Mediterranean populations like Anatolians and Levantines. But still there are clear distinctions between those peoples, even though they share a lot of common ancestral admixtures. And I'm pretty sure that not all Levantines are like your mum or yourself. That casuistic example alone is not how you analyze the genetic makeup of an entire and very diverse region.

No Greek people are not Levantine or more Near Eastern than any other Southern European nation. There is no such thing as a Levantine a Anatolian a Turk a Armenian etc but I can try to simplify it.

That's the problem with using the word Levantine.

The following people came from the Levant physically Armenians and Canaanites.

The Greeks Hellenized the Levant during the Hellenistic period some of their remnants are today and I speak to them and know them. I don't think that reflects the majority of the population though, I know the reason why but I will bite my tongue over that one.

My samples were during K36 admixture Italian and Anatolian Greek and Anatolian Greek and Anatolian/Armenian French etc I have a physical Balkan and Caucasus mix. The fact that they come from the Levant does not make a difference that is my personal mix. I know people from the Levant who don't have that mix and people from the Levant who are more mixed. In fact I have seen it all there.

My family came to the Levant during Ottoman rule, more than anything else Turks as in people pronounced Turkish when they converted not racial Turks or Western Anatolians, can have Greek mixes Armenian mixes Slavic mixes like Serbian and Bulgarian etc.

Also I am Alpine Mediterranean that in it's self speaks about Neolithic migration from the Near East to Europe. If Near Easterners the ones that are ''European'' or European/Caucasus mixed which still technically makes them Caucasian which that's where the Alpine races comes from anyway.

I never used the words Levant being part Levantine or using such gibberish terminologies since the Levant in Pre historic times it's probably the most mixed populated area in Asia. It would be like trying to classify Brazil.

Anyway my mix is unusual but don't worry though in 100 years I will make sure it won't exist at all and only mix with Scandinavians how does that sound.

I don't think that Southern Europeans are from the Levant.

 

[Olympus Mons]

How was I wrong? I always pushed the idea of North/Northwest (just South of the Caspian) to Southeast Caucasus (West of the Caspian) and than more towards North.

And as we see from this Hajji Firoz sample, he is 5500 BCE and if anything he is more of an ancestor to Leyla Tepe. I always point out Leyla Tepe as the culture where the majority of the PIE package was formed (with Kurgans etc). But I always pointed out that this Leyla Tepe culture also has it's origin further South(east) and many studies actually pointed that out. A Study from few years ago even pointed out that the connection of Maykop to the Iranian Plateau seems stronger than to Mesopotamia.

Alan.
You are wrong (or right it might turnout, one never really knows) . but to me The reason is:

1. There is a line. A timeline. South Caucasus and broader region above the line (4900bc) and bellow the line.
2. Even places like Kultepe, Nakchivan etc, and naturally Urmia lake, even Hajji Firuz must obey to the same dividing line. It does not matter that later all of this is places are Dalma ware, or Leylatepe or Kura -araxes if its bellow the line has nothing to do with R1b and PIE. Above that line you would find PIE speakers R1B (Shulaveri where very mobile Pastorals).
3. That R1b Z2013, along with J2bs, is found in Hajji. So, Shulaveri in Georgia, up there near the Caucasus mountains , making wine by 5800bc and Hajji Firuz making wine by 5500bc. Places north of Urmia lake, like Dava Goz had already been identified as pastoral Transhumance from South Caucasus (Shulaveri).
4. Bellow that line, that 4900bc date is a completely new world. Ubaid, leylatepe, Uruk, Maikop . Yes the whole enchilada but nothing to do with above the line (above 4900bc) that is where you will find the R1bs PIE speakers that went to north Caucasus, North Anatolia near black sea, even Balkans.

 

[Lenab]

You know why I care? [I have chosen not to learn my haplogroup, btw because I consider it largely irrelevant.] But, apart from the Polish blogger and his highly patriarchal warrior pastoralists there were people who were saying things like:

"The survival of the indigenous language would have been the most likely scenario if the IE/R1b invaders were predominantly men. An army of adventurous Celtic men riding horses and equipped with bronze weapons could have butchered a substantial part of the Neolithic Iberian male population and taken their women. As good conquerors they would have taken many wives or concubines each (polygamy), having a great many children each, which helped the spread of R1b Y-DNA lineages (see How did R1b become dominant in Western Europe)"

That person never thought that his haplogroup wasn't originally Celtic or PIE-related and that the Basques could have retained more or less their original language.

Ossetians on the other hand, for example, had to have been 'iranized'.

And the truth is a Neolithic -or earlier- origin for Western European R1b (maybe apart from U-106) is still possible. Certainly they weren't Megalithic builders but how many Cardium Neolithic samples exist? Maybe it moved in Europe with E-V13 and related lineages or was here before the Neolithic. [If you sample Megalithic builders you will find Megalithic builders]

Ossetians on the other hand, for example, had to have been 'iranized'. ''Georgian Lazized''

 

[Ygorcs]

No Greek people are not Levantine or more Near Eastern than any other Southern European nation. There is no such thing as a Levantine a Anatolian a Turk a Armenian etc but I can try to simplify it.

That's the problem with using the word Levantine.

The following people came from the Levant physically Armenians and Canaanites.

The Greeks Hellenized the Levant during the Hellenistic period some of their remnants are today and I speak to them and know them. I don't think that reflects the majority of the population though, I know the reason why but I will bite my tongue over that one.

My samples were during K36 admixture Italian and Anatolian Greek and Anatolian Greek and Anatolian/Armenian French etc I have a physical Balkan and Caucasus mix. The fact that they come from the Levant does not make a difference that is my personal mix. I know people from the Levant who don't have that mix and people from the Levant who are more mixed. In fact I have seen it all there.

My family came to the Levant during Ottoman rule, more than anything else Turks as in people pronounced Turkish when they converted not racial Turks or Western Anatolians, can have Greek mixes Armenian mixes Slavic mixes like Serbian and Bulgarian etc.

Also I am Alpine Mediterranean that in it's self speaks about Neolithic migration from the Near East to Europe. If Near Easterners the ones that are ''European'' or European/Caucasus mixed which still technically makes them Caucasian which that's where the race comes from anyway.

I never used the words Levant being part Levantine or using such gibberish terminologies since the Levant in Pre historic times it's probably the most mixed populated area in Asia. It would be like trying to classify Brazil.

Anyway my mix is unusual but don't worry though in 100 years I will make sure it won't exist at all and only mix with Scandinavians how does that sound.

I don't think that Southern Europeans are from the Levant.

So your family came to the Levant during the MODERN ERA Ottoman Empire and you want to use your and your mum's results to define who is the native people of the Levantine area or not? Is that what you really said? Oh, come on! Also, I didn't say Southern Europeans came from the Levant. I said that, due to the Neolithic migrations into ALL of Europe, but better preserved in the Southern European genetic makeup, there is an obvious degree of genetic similarity of people like Greeks with many Anatolians and, a bit more distantly, with Levantine peoples, especially those of the north, that were less impacted by Red Sea migrations and more affected by Anatolian-related and Caucasus-related admixtures throughout the times.

Also, it baffles me that you think the Levant is the "most mixed populated area in Asia", yet you want us all to call the Levant, which is a neutral, objective term that refers just to a geographic location (there is NO "Levantine ethnicity" nor "Levantine language", unlike Greek), with a name that is obviously ethnocentric and not suggestive of a "most mixed area", i.e. GRAECO-Anatolian, even without any proof at all that either the ancient or modern Levantines were virtually identical to Greeks and even most Anatolians. That's not coherent at all. Again, you sound really confused, and it sometimes seems like you're analyzing the population genetics of such and such people trying to prove a point about you or your lineage, or even your "race". That's not really objective scientific interest.

 

[Lenab]

So your family came to the Levant during the MODERN ERA Ottoman Empire and you want to use your and your mum's results to define who is the native people of the Levantine area or not? Is that what you really said? Oh, come on! Also, I didn't say Southern Europeans came from the Levant. I said that, due to the Neolithic migrations into ALL of Europe, but better preserved in the Southern European genetic makeup, there is an obvious degree of genetic similarity of people like Greeks with many Anatolians and, a bit more distantly, with Levantine peoples, especially those of the north, that were less impacted by Red Sea migrations and more affected by Anatolian-related and Caucasus-related admixtures throughout the times.

Also, it baffles me that you think the Levant is the "most mixed populated area in Asia", yet you want us all to call the Levant, which is a neutral, objective term that refers just to a geographic location (there is NO "Levantine ethnicity" nor "Levantine language", unlike Greek), with a name that is obviously ethnocentric and not suggestive of a "most mixed area", i.e. GRAECO-Anatolian, even without any proof at all that either the ancient or modern Levantines were virtually identical to Greeks and even most Anatolians. That's not coherent at all. Again, you sound really confused, and it sometimes seems like you're analyzing the population genetics of such and such people trying to prove a point about you or your lineage, or even your "race". That's not really objective scientific interest.

No I don't want to compare my result to the average population others here tried to and when I argued how it's different and beyond the usual it was I got a strike on my account and banned for four months.

Greco Anatolians Are exactly that a Near Eastern Southern European mix Grecos are South Greeks. For the rest yes, Southern Europeans are slightly towards the Near East than other European nations again, because of Neolithic. That's what it means.

I don't trust GED match and that ''Red Sea admixture'' ''West Asian'' admixture it's all relative I use other calculators. I am damn more Near Eastern than your average South European yet according to the Southern Europeans I speak to I am Alpine Mediterranean let's just assume I had both parents with that mix and not just one parent would I still be Alpine Med how distant would I plot then.

Again Greeks controlled the Levant and Anatolia that does not mean that people from the Levant are Greek or Greeks are from the Levant Greek people might have controlled Anatolia but certain ethnic groups of Greeks and even then they plot distantly from the Near East and the Levant as a whole.

I just have a Greek and Caucasus mix that's my result that's her result. There is no such thing as the Levant. Philistines Greeks Persians Assyrians all controlled the area at some point.

 

[Ygorcs]

No I don't want to compare my result to the average population others here tried to and when I argued how it's different and beyond the usual it was I got a strike on my account and banned for four months.

Greco Anatolians Are exactly that a Near Eastern Southern European mix Grecos are South Greeks. For the rest yes, Southern Europeans are slightly towards the Near East than other European nations again, because of Neolithic. That's what it means.

I don't trust GED match and that ''Red Sea admixture'' ''West Asian'' admixture it's all relative I use other calculators. I am damn more Near Eastern than your average South European yet according to the Southern Europeans I speak to I am Alpine Mediterranean let's just assume I had both parents with that mix and not just one parent would I still be Alpine Med how distant would I plot then.

Again Greeks controlled the Levant and Anatolia that does not mean that people from the Levant are Greek or Greeks are from the Levant Greek people might have controlled Anatolia but certain ethnic groups of Greeks and even then they plot distantly from the Near East and the Levant as a whole.

I just have a Greek and Caucasus mix that's my result that's her result. There is no such thing as the Levant. Philistines Greeks Persians Assyrians all controlled the area at some point.

Levant is a geographic region, it implies no ethnicity, no culture, no language, no genetic makeup at all, just a certain territory. Of course it exists. What certainly is not warranted is to call that diverse area "Graeco-Anatolian" especially when you yourself say this: "Greek people might have controlled Anatolia but certain ethnic groups of Greeks and even then they plot distantly from the Near East and the Levant as a whole.", and, additionally, "that does not mean that people from the Levant are Greek or Greeks are from the Levant". So how on earth would "Graeco-Anatolia", a term that refers inevitably to culture and even genetics, be preferable to a neutral geographic term like Levant if you yourself say that "Greeks plot distantly from the Near East and the Levant as a whole"? Nonsense, your claims don't even lead logically to your conclusions. If the whole actual problem is, deep down, that you don't want to have some of your roots identified as "Levantine" because they can mistaken for "those Arabs" or something like that, rest assured that that's not what geneticists and historians mean when they talk about Levant or Levantine peoples.

 

[Lenab]

Because it's mapped out during Byzantine rule as Greco Anatolia.

Because the Levant had many different ethnic backgrounds of people and yes Southern Europeans are distant from the Levant. Not as distant from Western Anatolia but yes a Western Anatolian Turk/Armenian/Georgian with a most likely Greco Anatolian mix will have some similarities or partial similarities to South Europeans

The Levant does not belong to Arabs it belongs to many different groups respectively. Arabs exist there physically like Armenians Greeks Assyrians various Caucasus ethnic groups Circassians Persians etc.

I am Alpine Mediterranean you can relate it to whatever you want, it is what it is.

 

[Olympus Mons]

@Ygorcs

Can't follow you on linguistics.
But I suppose Glottochronological isnt an exact science is it?
I had to have thrown at my face how ridiculous I was because L23 had a TMRCA of 4200BC so could not be 6th milenia shulaveri... And now we have a Z2103 in 6th milenia.

However do please understand what i am saying. Makes sense to me. Might be wrong and linguistics proves it wrong? I dont know.

a. Group of IE speakers (PIE) went to north caucasus and steppe (4900 BC).
b. A group of PIE speakers (same people) crossed north anatolia and moved ( in my opinion back to) to the Balkans (4700Bc) of which the KUM6 girl is an example. Back means most people there might not speak a completely different language i guess.

(Note: nobody ever mentions the archaeological importance of south eastern europe (ie balkans and even a bit north) movements of people INTO steppe and their participation in the formation of archeological groups there. Even yamnaya!)

c. So, there should (or could) be IE speakers in balkans and even thrace that had continuous contacts with group a. all the way from say 4500bc to 3000 bc. Actually they would, if remnants of Shulaveri, be of the same "family". So they share.

d. Hittites, on the other hand, should be IE speakers that stayed behind from say armenia, or Erzurum area, isolated from the others IE speakers we talk about above...

e. On top of this, people seem to have a problem conceiving that in space and time people moved around a lot in period of a milenia at those times when innovation was arising (wheel, bronze, etc). And those names travel far and fast as the craft itself. Its people.

(note: I think that the fact i sometimes wrongly use PIE instead of IE gets you confused, right?)

 

[Ygorcs]

Because it's mapped out during Byzantine rule as Greco Anatolia.

Because the Levant had many different ethnic backgrounds of people and yes Southern Europeans are distant from the Levant. Not as distant from Western Anatolia but yes a Western Anatolian Turk/Armenian/Georgian with a most likely Greco Anatolian mix will have some similarities or partial similarities to South Europeans

The Levant does not belong to Arabs it belongs to many different groups respectively. Arabs exist there physically like Armenians Greeks Assyrians various Caucasus ethnic groups Circassians Persians etc.

I am Alpine Mediterranean you can relate it to whatever you want, it is what it is.

Where are you reading the word ARAB in the simple geographic term LEVANT? From your posts my impression is that you have some deep-seated racial/ethnic aversion to Arabs, but not even that makes sense because Levant is a term that refers to a certain territory irrespective of who lives there. Ancient Jews, Phoenicians, Philistines are all rightly designated "Levantine peoples" of the past because, well, that's what they were, too.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

I can't find that more plausible and realistic than the opposite, more mainstream hypothesis, especially since we have until now found quite a lot of very ancient R1b-M269 far away from Western Europe (and those we found almost all date from the Middle Bronze Age onwards, when coincidentally or not steppe admixture starts to appear in a lot of Western European places), and no R1b-M269 has been found in Western Europe dating to before the Copper Age (other clades of R1b don't really count here). We'd have to just imagine the possibility of many R1b-M269 being found eventually, while we totally ignore those that already exist and the fact they exist right where the patterns of spread of steppe-related admixture and star-like expansion of IE languages seem to have happened... I don't know...

Most IE languages are attested late.I don't understand what you are saying. We don't know where Proto-Germanic was spoken and concerning Celtic most scholars were associating it with Hallstatt (circa 800 BC — circa 500 BC) until recently while there are also some who have tried to associate it with Atlantic Mediterranean Neolithic. Those are two very different views. I have flirted with the idea that Atlantic Mediterranean Neolithic Europeans could have spoken an Early IE language, at least close to Celtic and the atypical features Insular Celtic languages have are associated with a non-IE layer.But assuming that this is wrong (we can discuss it some other time), farming was important in Hallstatt culture. They weren't nomads or 'warrior pastoralists'. Their culture wasn't steppic. Which is, as I have said, mostly true about ancient Greeks and Romans too.I wanted samples from Lepontians (from Lugano, Lake Como, Lake Maggiore) who were definitely speaking Celtic or a sister language (We have incscriptions). Some type of R1b existed in Europe 14000 years ago but also there aren't many Cardium Neolithic samples. I take into account what we have found but I also take into account what is likely to be found. That certainly doesn't mean I am correct.

 

[Ygorcs]

@Ygorcs

Can't follow you on linguistics.
But I suppose Glottochronological isnt an exact science is it?
I had to have thrown at my face how ridiculous I was because L23 had a TMRCA of 4200BC so could not be 6th milenia shulaveri... And now we have a Z2103 in 6th milenia.

However do please understand what i am saying. Makes sense to me. Might be wrong and linguistics proves it wrong? I dont know.

a. Group of IE speakers (PIE) went to north caucasus and steppe (4900 BC).
b. A group of PIE speakers (same people) crossed north anatolia and moved ( in my opinion back to) to the Balkans (4700Bc) of which the KUM6 girl is an example. Back means most people there might not speak a completely different language i guess.

(Note: nobody ever mentions the archaeological importance of south eastern europe (ie balkans and even a bit north) movements of people INTO steppe and their participation in the formation of archeological groups there. Even yamnaya!)

c. So, there should (or could) be IE speakers in balkans and even thrace that had continuous contacts with group a. all the way from say 4500bc to 3000 bc. Actually they would, if remnants of Shulaveri, be of the same "family". So they share.

d. Hittites, on the other hand, should be IE speakers that stayed behind from say armenia, or Erzurum area, isolated from the others IE speakers we talk about above...

e. On top of this, people seem to have a problem conceiving that in space and time people moved around a lot in period of a milenia at those times when innovation was arising (wheel, bronze, etc). And those names travel far and fast as the craft itself. Its people.

(note: I think that the fact i sometimes wrongly use PIE instead of IE gets you confused, right?)

It's not just about glottochronological measures, but about linguistic observations, for example that Greek and Indo-Iranian (which was most probably a northern, steppe branch originally) share WAY TOO MUCH to have been from the start unrelated languages that had a common ancestor just in 4,900 BC West Asia. I mean, for example, that if Mycenaean Greek and Vedic Sanskrit had diverged from each other in 4,900 BC (roughly 3,400 years before their first attestations), and not, say, in 3,000 BC (1,500 years before), we'd naturally expect them to be much more distantly related to each other in everything, unless both languages were extremely conservative (3,400 years is roughly the time separating French from Proto-Italic, imagine that!).

I don't disagree with you that IE-speaking tribes or at least "Para-Indo-European" speakers may have existed in the Balkans even before the Bronze Age steppe migrations. They could even have been speakers of the Anatolian branch, why not? We just don't have enough evidences to know what Hittites and Luwians were like and where they came from. However, what I disagree strongly with you is that any of the later, Bronze Age/Iron Age branches found in the Balkans, like Greek and Thracian, had been there since Neolithic times and had not, at least, shifted to a steppe IE language during the Bronze Age. Those languages were not that distinct from Steppe IE branches to have split from them so early on, unless the 2 branches were both EXTREMELY conservative, but this hypothesis doesn't hold water when you consider that Anatolian IE is very distinctive, so either Anatolian IE was extremely innovative, or all those branches, Anatolian and non-Anatolian, kept evolving significantly after their last common ground.

So, I don't think it is impossible that everything you say is right... I just DO NOT think that those Balkanic IE languages would've survived to be known to us much later as Greek, Thracian,Armenian or Albanian. Those later Balkanic/Anatolian branches were clearly descended, and not only very distantly related, from the same source that gave us Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages. Greek, for instance, is in most respects closer to steppe branches like Iranian than Celtic, Italic or Germanic. Languages don't converge that much by random chance, so either Proto-Greeks came from the steppe and mixed extensively with the locals imposing their language (regardless of what language the natives already spoke, maybe even an unknown and very divergent IE branch, like Anatolian), or then the local populations willfully shifted to the incoming steppe languages for some reason.

But those are events that certainly happened by the early to mid Bronze Age. What happened before, say in 4,500 BC, are much more obscure, but I don't think they had a lot to do with the genesis of the Greek, Daco-Thracian or Albanian IE branches.

 

[Ygorcs]

Most IE languages are attested late.I don't understand what you are saying. We don't know where Proto-Germanic was spoken and concerning Celtic most scholars were associating it with Hallstatt (circa 800 BC — circa 500 BC) until recently while there are also some who have tried to associate it with Atlantic Mediterranean Neolithic. Those are two very different views. I have flirted with the idea that Atlantic Mediterranean Neolithic Europeans could have spoken an Early IE language, at least close to Celtic and the atypical features Insular Celtic languages have are associated with a non-IE layer.But assuming that this is wrong (we can discuss it some other time), farming was important in Hallstatt culture. They weren't nomads or 'warrior pastoralists'. Their culture wasn't steppic. Which is, as I have said, mostly true about ancient Greeks and Romans too.I wanted samples from Lepontians (from Lugano, Lake Como, Lake Maggiore) who were definitely speaking Celtic or a sister language (We have incscriptions). Some type of R1b existed in Europe 14000 years ago but also there aren't many Cardium Neolithic samples. I take into account what we have found but I also take into account what is likely to be found. That certainly doesn't mean I am correct.

I'm talking about Bronze Age movements, Hallstatt, Celtic expansion and all of that were much later and involved heavily mixed Iron Age European populations (in genetics and culture), not unadmixed steppe peoples. Those were different times, different peoples. By that time any "steppic culture" would've been changed through internal evolution and mixing with other cultures, and that's exactly what we see, but even Celts and Germanic tribes undoubtedly had some cultural traits quite similar to those found in the Bronze Age steppes milennia before their ethnogenesis.

Indo-European is technically just a language family, people may have shifted their language without shifting their entire economy and way of life, it's certainly much easier to adopt another language than another entirely different lifestyle, especially when there was no massive population replacement at all in most of Western Europe, just a new layer in the genetic structure. What is certainly striking is that R1b-M269 clades doesn't exist in Western Europe and steppe-related admixture doesn't, too, until the Bronze Age, right when we know that profound changes, cultural expansions and retreats happened.

It is also extremely unlikely that Celtic (at least Celtic alone) would've been a common Atantic Neolithic language, that would imply that it had diverged even earlier than that from other IE branches, and you can make sure that Celtic would've been MUCH MUCH more divergent from other Indo-European families if it had already been a separate language unconnected with the "eastern" Indo-Europeans as early as the Neolithic era.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

I'm talking about Bronze Age movements, Hallstatt, Celtic expansion and all of that were much later and involved heavily mixed Iron Age European populations (in genetics and culture), not unadmixed steppe peoples. Those were different times, different peoples. By that time any "steppic culture" would've been changed through internal evolution and mixing with other cultures, and that's exactly what we see, but even Celts and Germanic tribes undoubtedly had some cultural traits quite similar to those found in the Bronze Age steppes milennia before their ethnogenesis.Indo-European is technically just a language family, people may have shifted their language without shifting their entire economy and way of life, it's certainly much easier to adopt another language than another entirely different lifestyle, especially when there was no massive population replacement at all in most of Western Europe, just a new layer in the genetic structure. What is certainly striking is that R1b-M269 clades doesn't exist in Western Europe and steppe-related admixture doesn't, too, until the Bronze Age, right when we know that profound changes, cultural expansions and retreats happened.

You talk about the changes, yet you don't describe them.Either way, I didn't say that your scenario is unlikely but I can say that most IE languages are attested late and that those who caused the changes you talk about weren't necessarily IE-speaking.Concerning the splits, what study you accept as valid? What was the method they had used?

 

[Alpenjager]

I'm talking about Bronze Age movements, Hallstatt, Celtic expansion and all of that were much later and involved heavily mixed Iron Age European populations (in genetics and culture), not unadmixed steppe peoples. Those were different times, different peoples. By that time any "steppic culture" would've been changed through internal evolution and mixing with other cultures, and that's exactly what we see, but even Celts and Germanic tribes undoubtedly had some cultural traits quite similar to those found in the Bronze Age steppes milennia before their ethnogenesis.

Indo-European is technically just a language family, people may have shifted their language without shifting their entire economy and way of life, it's certainly much easier to adopt another language than another entirely different lifestyle, especially when there was no massive population replacement at all in most of Western Europe, just a new layer in the genetic structure. What is certainly striking is that R1b-M269 clades doesn't exist in Western Europe and steppe-related admixture doesn't, too, until the Bronze Age, right when we know that profound changes, cultural expansions and retreats happened.

It is also extremely unlikely that Celtic (at least Celtic alone) would've been a common Atantic Neolithic language, that would imply that it had diverged even earlier than that from other IE branches, and you can make sure that Celtic would've been MUCH MUCH more divergent from other Indo-European families if it had already been a separate language unconnected with the "eastern" Indo-Europeans as early as the Neolithic era.

There is a 2700 yBP Elite proto-Celtic individual from the Hallstatt Culture tested and he belongs to G2a2

 

[Alan]

How exactly do you know Iranian Hajji Firoz R1b-Z2103 sample(is not just a huge nothing burger?) was not a dead end branch, with no descendants? Alans/Iron/Aryan of Ossetia belong to R1b>Z2110>CTS9219>R5587>F5586. The branch of R1b>Z2110 is not found at all around the Southern Caucasus. Most Kurds for example derive from R1b> L584+

Alan - R1a-L62>YP5664 - Dêrsim, Zaza FTDNA: 461580
Alan - R1a-L62>M417 - Dêrsim, Kurmanji FTDNA: ?
Alan - R1b-M343>M269>P311 - Dêrsim, Zaza FTDNA: E22089
Alxan - R1b-M343>M269>L23>L584>PH2731 - Dêrsim, Zaza FTDNA: 510248
Areyan - J1-M267>PF7263>ZS4440 - Dêrsim, Zaza FTDNA: 454546
Areyan - R1b-M343>M269>L23>L584>PH2731 - Dêrsim, Zaza FTDNA: N102077
Areyan - R1b-M343>M269>L23>L584>PH2731 - Dêrsim, Zaza FTDNA: 366762
Azîzî - G2a2b1a1a-P287>L31>L30>M406>L14 - Agirî, Kurmanjî

There is one Z-2106>>CTS8966 but that is connected to China. Z-2106*(the node above the Dêrsim, Kurmanji sample) is connected to Ireland R-Z2106 * Z2106formed 5700 ybp, TMRCA 5700 ybp
Xiran - R1b-M343>M269>L23>Z2106>CTS8966 - Dêrsim, Kurmanji FTDNA: E22086http://corduene.blogspot.ca/2016/03/kurdish-tribes-y-dna-haplogroups.html
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-Z2106/

Well actually it is, NW Iran is a hotspot of R1b, especially m269, l23 and some m343 thrown in it.

 

[Silesian]

Well actually it is, NW Iran is a hotspot of R1b, especially m269, l23 and some m343 thrown in it.

Another point. ANE{Ancestral North Eurasian (ANE): Upper-Paleolithic genomes from the Lake Baikal region of Siberia, identified as Malta--ydna R* variant, Afontogora 2, and Afontogora 3, dated to 17 to 24 kya, when Mammoths roamed the area, form the ANE cluster.} is higher in certain areas especially those with high concentration of R1b[The Tabasarans are an ethnic group who live mostly in Dagestan,}.

 

[Ygorcs]

You talk about the changes, yet you don't describe them.Either way, I didn't say that your scenario is unlikely but I can say that most IE languages are attested late and that those who caused the changes you talk about weren't necessarily IE-speaking.Concerning the splits, what study you accept as valid? What was the method they had used?

Should I really lecture you on the economic, technological, cultural changes of the Bronze Age in Central & Western Europe, regardless of who made or brought them? I don't think so. It's one of those things that are just too easily available and too well known for me to have a duty to described them, honestly. As for your final questions, well, you can pick and choose, the vast majority of linguists, using whatever method and whatever point of view, don't confirm the very fringe hypothesis of an extremely early divergence of Celtic from the other IE branches, certainly not in the Neolithic era, and most agree that reconstructed Proto-Celtic is ultimately too similar to Proto-Italic and on a second level to most other IE branches, unlike Anatolian IE (THAT is what an IE branch that split very early from the rest of the family looks like, extremely distinctive grammar and lexicon changes). As you say, Celtic languages were attested very late. When they were attested in written form by 600 BC, according to your hypothesis, they would've been diverged from other IE language families for more than 4,000 or even 5,000 years.

Yet Celtic looks in most ways clearly "Indo-European-like", and it shared the same Bronze Age vocabulary (for typical features of Steppe Bronze Age society) found in the other branches, but following the typical Celtic sound rules (that rules out the possibility that they were merely loanwords from other IE branches, because loanwords don't follow older sound rules, they come with the sound rules of their foreign origin). Celtic certainly does not look like a rebel and awkward child of a much earlier form of PIE, from well before the existence of wagons, wheel, metallurgy, horse domestication, and so on. But hey, if you think it is more plausible that it simply remained closely related to other IE languages despite its origins deep in the early Neolithic migrations to Europe, that's fine.

It's certainly possible that somehow the peoples that transformed Europe in the Bronze Age and established cultures that then developed organically until later times were entirely non-IE, and somehow, out of the blue, fully developed and distinct branches of IE popped up in the Iron Age with written inscriptions that already point out to lanuages that had been diverging in that region for many many centuries... Unless they all came from elsewhere and swarmed Western & Central Europe, and thus the Iron Age population of Europe should be very (genetically and culturally) very unlike the former Bronze Age peoples. Hmm... Possible, but very improbable too.

I hope we learn much better and more numerous evidences to refine our hypotheses in the near future.

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

Should I really lecture you on the economic, technological, cultural changes of the Bronze Age in Central & Western Europe, regardless of who made or brought them? I don't think so. It's one of those things that are just too easily available and too well known for me to have a duty to described them, honestly. As for your final questions, well, you can pick and choose, the vast majority of linguists, using whatever method and whatever point of view, don't confirm the very fringe hypothesis of an extremely early divergence of Celtic from the other IE branches, certainly not in the Neolithic era, and most agree that reconstructed Proto-Celtic is ultimately too similar to Proto-Italic and on a second level to most other IE branches, unlike Anatolian IE (THAT is what an IE branch that split very early from the rest of the family looks like, extremely distinctive grammar and lexicon changes). As you say, Celtic languages were attested very late. When they were attested in written form by 600 BC, according to your hypothesis, they would've been diverged from other IE language families for more than 4,000 or even 5,000 years.
[...]
It's certainly possible that somehow the peoples that transformed Europe in the Bronze Age and established cultures that then developed organically until later times were entirely non-IE, and somehow, out of the blue, fully developed and distinct branches of IE popped up in the Iron Age with written inscriptions that already point out to lanuages that had been diverging in that region for many many centuries... Unless they all came from elsewhere and swarmed Western & Central Europe, and thus the Iron Age population of Europe should be very (genetically and culturally) very unlike the former Bronze Age peoples. Hmm... Possible, but very improbable too.

What you say doesn't make any sense. Just consider the possibility that Bell Beakers wasn't IE speaking.

I assumed that Hallstatt is proto-Celtic which is what the majority of scholars thought at least until recently. If you want to discuss what was the language of Atlantic Mediterranean Neolithic open a thread.

I asked you to say what study you consider accurate. I will use it a reference in our discussions. That means I will consider it correct even if I believe it isn't.

Either way, most of our posts are off topic. If you want answer the last thing only and I will probably continue in a more relevant thread tomorrow.

 

[Ygorcs]

What you say doesn't make any sense. Just consider the possibility that Bell Beakers wasn't IE speaking.

I assumed that Hallstatt is proto-Celtic which is what the majority of scholars thought at least until recently. If you want to discuss what was the language of Atlantic Mediterranean Neolithic open a thread.

I asked you to say what study you consider accurate. I will use it a reference in our discussions. That means I will consider it correct even if I believe it isn't.

Either way, most of our posts are off topic. If you want answer the last thing only and I will probably continue in a more relevant thread tomorrow.

A study on what? Linguistics, genetics, archaeology? I'm afraid I won't be able to cite just one study for you, because I don't base my opinions on the subject on just one study - especially since it is a multidisciplinary effort to write the history of non-literate societies, and in most cases the experts on each field won't make overarching conclusions about other fields that aren't theirs. I don't form my impressions and opinions based on genetics alone, much less on linguistics alone, so there is no "one" study I consider accurate more than any other. Sorry to disappoint you.

As for your impression that what I said "doesn't make any sense", I'm afraid you didn't understand what I was saying. I didn't dispute that Hallstatt was most probably Celtic, I'm discussing your former assumption that Atlantic Neolithic Europe could already speak a IE language that became Proto-Celtic (already forgot that point?), and that those Bronze Age movements probably had nothing to do with the spread of IE languages; that's what you yourself wrote, so, yes, we'll have to discuss that, not just Hallstatt, especially since everything you're saying refers to pre-Bronze Age events, not Iron Age Europe.

What I'm talking about is the lack of any substantial evidence of a profoundly non-organic, sudden cultural and genetic rupture between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Central & Western Europe, so it's a bit hard to simply assume that several totally distinct (and thus, aruably split since many centuries before) IE branches and languages everywhere in Europe (from Lusitanian to Venetic, Germanic to Messapic) just appeared "out of the blue" in Iron Age, post-Urnfield Europe with no genetic nor cultural link at all to the Bronze Age transformations that happened in those regions of Europe. Cultures like

Jastorf and Hallstatt, among several others, weren't "foreign" non-European cultures that spread into Western Europe. They were indigenous developments - and they unquestionably spoke IE languages. As far as I know, even if the Bell Beaker wasn't IE speaking, they weren't the only culture in Central & Western Europe, and evidences don't even point to their being a homogeneous ethnic group.

What matters is not just Bell Beaker, it is that, before the era of written inscriptions in many IE languages (roughly after 700 BC), the last profoundly transformative genetic and cultural changes that happened in Central/Western Europe, rupturing with the previous traditions, and not organic evolutions, took place in the Bronze Age, not just a few centuries earlier.

But, in any case, we'll see it all better very soon, fortunately Europe has and probably will keep having more samples than anywhere else in the world.