All Iberian men were wiped out by Yamna men 4,500 years ago

[Pip]

References above are to Genetiker's K=16 analysis, which he has since replaced with a more extensive database of K=14 analysis (the basis for my post) - the categories are quite different. It indicates that ATP3-like features in Atapuerca samples tail off into the third millennium BC, suggesting that his kin either moved out or were reproductively unsuccessful. At least, it doesn't look like they wiped out and replaced all the Iberian men.

I don't think it is a coincidence that the nearest sample to ATP3 autosomally is another European M269 (Croatian Z2103), and that its root looks to be the same as for R1b Bell Beaker (Eastern Balkan). But, if anyone, it seems to have been French Bell Beaker (an EHG/EEF mixed population) that led to the decline of indigenous Iberian men, rather than the kin of ATP3 or Yamnayan hordes direct from Russia.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

References above are to Genetiker's K=16 analysis, which he has since replaced with a more extensive database of K=14 analysis (the basis for my post) - the categories are quite different. It indicates that ATP3-like features in Atapuerca samples tail off into the third millennium BC, suggesting that his kin either moved out or were reproductively unsuccessful. At least, it doesn't look like they wiped out and replaced all the Iberian men.

I don't think it is a coincidence that the nearest sample to ATP3 autosomally is another European M269 (Croatian Z2103), and that its root looks to be the same as for R1b Bell Beaker (Eastern Balkan). But, if anyone, it seems to have been French Bell Beaker (an EHG/EEF mixed population) that led to the decline of indigenous Iberian men, rather than the kin of ATP3 or Yamnayan hordes direct from Russia.

Why could it not have been Central Euro Beakers spurred on by the arrival of the Corded Ware folk, and who were originally derived from someone like ATP3? One of the main main reasons cultures expand and are invigorated is because other cultures turn up at their doorstep. Is it really a coincidence that basically a century after the Corded Ware culture reached the Rhine, we start to see L51 folk expanding across Western Europe? I'd say no, and well before the rise of aDNA most academics did too from what I've gathered.

 

[halfalp]

The Neolithic-Chalcolithic transition in Spain is pretty complexe, we could see a lot of autosomal west asians individuals with a lot of local HG haplogroups like I2a1 resurgence. Obviously G2a and minor lineage with an Anatolian_Farmer like autosomal dna, bring neolithic to Spain, then from there in the chalcolithic I2a1 resurge with a mostly Anatolian_Farmer audna while it was originally Magdalenian? I cannot imagine any R1b resurgence from Iberia. We can deduce that R1b was probably a minor lineage in the early neolithic of Balkans and Anatolia, but that's all. The R1b-V88 from Spain is a perfect exemple that in the mesolithic-neolithic transition in Anatolia, HG's related with those of Iron_Gates were already in Anatolia somewhere. This would be before the expansion of G2a from somewhere near Iran i bet.

 

[Pip]

It could indeed have been, although probably someone like ATP3, rather than his direct descendants. I agree that R1a Corded Ware was probably the catalyst, and brought conflict with the hybrid EHG/EEF that evolved into Bell Beaker.

 

[Aaron1981]

ATP3 has positive calls at every tested developmental stage of M269 - A00, A0, A1b, BT, CT, F, GHIJK, K, R, R1, R-P297 and R-M269. It also has an autosomal mix that resembles West Balkan R-Z2103 more than anything else, yet precedes Balkan Z2103. Certainly, from the data available, I can think of no identity more likely for it than basal Z2103, basal L23 or a dead end branch of basal L51.

Autosomally, it is starkly different to its Iberian contemporaries, and appears to be an entirely new arrival. Within a few hundred years, its EHG component had become largely absent from other samples at the same location. It looks most like a brief foray from East Europeans into Northern Spain - a branch of L23 that either died out or subsequently retreated elsewhere. It also provides a possible explanation for where R1b could have picked up some Bell Beaker traits.

However, this was 3,400 BC, not 2,500 BC, and at this stage it looks more like it was the Yamna men that were wiped out by Iberian men, rather than the other way round. And from what I have seen, the Yamna-like DNA only seemed to return in any quantity several hundred years after 2,500 BC, during the Bronze Age.

Mind backing that up with a source? Why was it not reported in the paper?

 

[Aaron1981]

It could indeed have been, although probably someone like ATP3, rather than his direct descendants. I agree that R1a Corded Ware was probably the catalyst, and brought conflict with the hybrid EHG/EEF that evolved into Bell Beaker.

Corded Ware R1a is at very low frequency today, you can see that from modern YDNA, well, outside of Battle Axe/Scandinavia. That is fact, not sure about the other stuff you are spewing. If Corded Ware (R1a) was a catalyst, it didn't last long since it was pushed to the northern frontiers of Europe.

 

[Aaron1981]

Yes, the Spanish Chalcolithic samples are indeed generally autosomally similar to Southern Swedish Neolithic, apart from ATP3 (most likely M269) which is rather different. Of course, Southern Sweden is pretty close to Poland, which looks a likely origin point for formative L23. This perhaps leads to a third possibility - that ATP3 was brought to Northern Spain from the South Eastern Baltic by maritime Megalithic folk that were connected to both areas - although, if so, it appears unlikely to be a L51 Bell Beaker ancestor.

I2 is a strong candidate for megalithic folk in far northern Europe. It has popped up in all the right places at the right time. This would be in line with it spreading up the Atlantic from Spain and to the north east, if there is a genetic connection at all. The only TRB male I am aware of is C-V20 unfortunately.

 

[Pip]

I2 is a strong candidate for megalithic folk in far northern Europe. It has popped up in all the right places at the right time. This would be in line with it spreading up the Atlantic from Spain and to the north east, if there is a genetic connection at all. The only TRB male I am aware of is C-V20 unfortunately.

That's the point. If I2 was travelling up and down the coastline between Northern Spain and the Baltic, it is not beyond possibility that it could have co-opted an ATP3 that it might have encountered in the Eastern Baltic.

 

[markod]

References above are to Genetiker's K=16 analysis, which he has since replaced with a more extensive database of K=14 analysis (the basis for my post) - the categories are quite different. It indicates that ATP3-like features in Atapuerca samples tail off into the third millennium BC, suggesting that his kin either moved out or were reproductively unsuccessful. At least, it doesn't look like they wiped out and replaced all the Iberian men.

I don't think it is a coincidence that the nearest sample to ATP3 autosomally is another European M269 (Croatian Z2103), and that its root looks to be the same as for R1b Bell Beaker (Eastern Balkan). But, if anyone, it seems to have been French Bell Beaker (an EHG/EEF mixed population) that led to the decline of indigenous Iberian men, rather than the kin of ATP3 or Yamnayan hordes direct from Russia.

The aforementioned percentages are likely not feasible - we're talking about supervised admixture runs. These have to be combined with other lines of evidence.

https://genetiker.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/k-14-admixture-analysis-of-neolithic-european-genomes/

The same methodology yields 60% EHG + 30% EEF + 10% WHG for modern Lithuanians. While the pattern is interesting, this is quite obviously incorrect under the current models. Perhaps EHG/EEF mixture creates pseudo-CHG affinities, but this alternative model would require some solid evidence.

 

[Pip]

Mind backing that up with a source? Why was it not reported in the paper?

As mentioned previously, the source is Genetiker. Not having written the paper, I don't know why it was not reported in it. Perhaps it was not analysed for the paper?

 

[Pip]

Corded Ware R1a is at very low frequency today, you can see that from modern YDNA, well, outside of Battle Axe/Scandinavia. That is fact, not sure about the other stuff you are spewing. If Corded Ware (R1a) was a catalyst, it didn't last long since it was pushed to the northern frontiers of Europe.

Yes, Coded Ware R1a flourished, extensively colonised and was then virtually decimated, apart from in its northern frontiers and being pushed out wide of its eastern frontiers. (Perhaps some similarities with Yamnayan Z2103 here?) Yet R1a Corded Ware nevertheless seemed to catalyse R1b L51, which emerged from the doldrums to replace it (in a hybrid population along with the remnants of Western Cucuteni). Perhaps seeing off the threat from R1a Corded Ware communities then emboldened L51 people to dominate the Bell Beaker movement and be more expansive in places like Iberia?

 

[Pip]

The Yamna men that are said to have wiped out a whole nation of Iberian men lived 4,000 km away from Iberia, and are said to have done so one hundred years after Wikipedia tells us their culture had already ended. Perhaps calling them Yamna is a misleading identification, rather like calling the British colonisation of Australia a Saxonic invasion? Perhaps to use the term wipe-out is also a misleading exaggeration? Perhaps to say this happened 4,500 years ago is also a misleadingly pinpointed timeframe?

Modern distributions suggest the surviving y-DNA of these Iberian conquerors would have been pretty much limited to R-DF27. According to yfull, their common ancestor separated from Yamnayan R-Z2103 1,900 years previously - that’s 70 or so generations away. So the Yamna men that did all this wiping out in Iberia would have represented just the tiniest section of a population that co-descended from a paternal ancestor of Z2103 Yamnayans. 99.999% of the people in this population would seem to have had no connection with Iberia whatsoever. The link is a tenuous one. How can we put two people in the same category just because they happened to share a single male ancestor 70 or so generations ago?

The data I have seen suggests that the common ancestor of all these Iberian conquerors most likely descended from a man whose own 70 generations of male ancestors moved approximately from North Western Ukraine/Southern Poland via Moldova/the Dniester, the Balkans/the Danube, Southern Germany, Northern France and down into North Central Spain. These 70 generations of men would have adopted a variety of cultures and bred with women from all of the various parts of Europe through which they lived and moved. By the time the common ancestor came out of the other end 4,000 km to the West and 70 generations later, I am doubting he would have been very similar to the Yamnayans of the Caspian Steppe that developed in a different direction or seen his culture as any more similar to theirs than it was to the culture of the Iberians; and to fuse the two together as if they were in the same category would seem to be a misrepresentation.

I do not see evidence of a wipe-out of Neolithic Iberian y-DNA groups - many of these still have a significant presence there. It would seem more accurate to call it a reduction in the proportion of these groups. We don’t know if people bearing these groups were wiped out or whether they were merely less reproductive. Their reduction in proportion does not seem particularly out of kilter with that in many other parts of Europe.

When did this reduction in proportion occur? My own estimates based on a combination of STR and SNP readings match the conclusion that DF27 had already moved from France into North Central Iberia by about 2,500 BC, but the evidence I have seen is that EHG proportions did not really start picking up significantly until some time between 2,000 BC and the Bronze Age in 1,500 BC, and indeed continued increasing after that point. So I would see this process less as a wipe-out, and more as a gradual transformation over a period of a millennium (35 generations) or more.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

The Yamna men that are said to have wiped out a whole nation of Iberian men lived 4,000 km away from Iberia, and are said to have done so one hundred years after Wikipedia tells us their culture had already ended. Perhaps calling them Yamna is a misleading identification, rather like calling the British colonisation of Australia a Saxonic invasion? Perhaps to use the term wipe-out is also a misleading exaggeration? Perhaps to say this happened 4,500 years ago is also a misleadingly pinpointed timeframe?

Modern distributions suggest the surviving y-DNA of these Iberian conquerors would have been pretty much limited to R-DF27. According to yfull, their common ancestor separated from Yamnayan R-Z2103 1,900 years previously - that’s 70 or so generations away. So the Yamna men that did all this wiping out in Iberia would have represented just the tiniest section of a population that co-descended from a paternal ancestor of Z2103 Yamnayans. 99.999% of the people in this population would seem to have had no connection with Iberia whatsoever. The link is a tenuous one. How can we put two people in the same category just because they happened to share a single male ancestor 70 or so generations ago?

The data I have seen suggests that the common ancestor of all these Iberian conquerors most likely descended from a man whose own 70 generations of male ancestors moved approximately from North Western Ukraine/Southern Poland via Moldova/the Dniester, the Balkans/the Danube, Southern Germany, Northern France and down into North Central Spain. These 70 generations of men would have adopted a variety of cultures and bred with women from all of the various parts of Europe through which they lived and moved. By the time the common ancestor came out of the other end 4,000 km to the West and 70 generations later, I am doubting he would have been very similar to the Yamnayans of the Caspian Steppe that developed in a different direction or seen his culture as any more similar to theirs than it was to the culture of the Iberians; and to fuse the two together as if they were in the same category would seem to be a misrepresentation.

I do not see evidence of a wipe-out of Neolithic Iberian y-DNA groups - many of these still have a significant presence there. It would seem more accurate to call it a reduction in the proportion of these groups. We don’t know if people bearing these groups were wiped out or whether they were merely less reproductive. Their reduction in proportion does not seem particularly out of kilter with that in many other parts of Europe.

When did this reduction in proportion occur? My own estimates based on a combination of STR and SNP readings match the conclusion that DF27 had already moved from France into North Central Iberia by about 2,500 BC, but the evidence I have seen is that EHG proportions did not really start picking up significantly until some time between 2,000 BC and the Bronze Age in 1,500 BC, and indeed continued increasing after that point. So I would see this process less as a wipe-out, and more as a gradual transformation over a period of a millennium (35 generations) or more.

Okay, but your migration path of L51 needs to be identified with a culture. It isn?t Yamnaya or Corded Ware, so what?s left? That (and the West Med distribution of early L51 and likely West Asian origin of L23) is what leads me to favour the Asia-to-Iberia hypothesis

 

[Ygorcs]

When they say "Yamnaya" they basically and more technically mean "autosomally derived in large part from EBA Steppe people". I find it extremely unlikely that, had these L51-bearing men developed separately from the ancestors of the Yamnaya people for millennia before their migration and expansion to Western Europe, they would've ended up spreading a kind of ancestry very similar to that of the EBA Steppe populations associated with Yamnaya and other earlier cultures like Repin or Khvalynsk. These men may not have come from the core of the Yamnaya horizon, but I think it's hard to believe they came from a completely different region and sociocultural environment, yet they'd have a similar genetic structure and helped all the same in the spread of BA Steppe-like admixture in post-BA Europe. L51 and Z2103 may have diverged from each other much before (though in my opinion it's possible that they came from the same older linguistic and cultural branch, and later were homogeneized again due to the success of the Yamnaya horizon overriding different cultures, including related ones like Sredny-Stog). But that does not mean that the expansion processes of these two brother clades well after their birth were not connected to each other and were instead associated with totally different cultures and languages. The cultural and linguistic hints we have point exactly to the contrary, that they must've been part of the same general process of gradual Indo-Europeanization of most of Europe (either as "original Indo-Europeans" or, in the case of L51, also possibly as "thoroughly Indo-Europeanized" people).

 

[hrvclv]

The Yamna men that are said to have wiped out a whole nation of Iberian men lived 4,000 km away from Iberia, and are said to have done so one hundred years after Wikipedia tells us their culture had already ended. Perhaps calling them Yamna is a misleading identification, rather like calling the British colonisation of Australia a Saxonic invasion? Perhaps to use the term wipe-out is also a misleading exaggeration? Perhaps to say this happened 4,500 years ago is also a misleadingly pinpointed timeframe?

Modern distributions suggest the surviving y-DNA of these Iberian conquerors would have been pretty much limited to R-DF27. According to yfull, their common ancestor separated from Yamnayan R-Z2103 1,900 years previously - that’s 70 or so generations away. So the Yamna men that did all this wiping out in Iberia would have represented just the tiniest section of a population that co-descended from a paternal ancestor of Z2103 Yamnayans. 99.999% of the people in this population would seem to have had no connection with Iberia whatsoever. The link is a tenuous one. How can we put two people in the same category just because they happened to share a single male ancestor 70 or so generations ago?

The data I have seen suggests that the common ancestor of all these Iberian conquerors most likely descended from a man whose own 70 generations of male ancestors moved approximately from North Western Ukraine/Southern Poland via Moldova/the Dniester, the Balkans/the Danube, Southern Germany, Northern France and down into North Central Spain. These 70 generations of men would have adopted a variety of cultures and bred with women from all of the various parts of Europe through which they lived and moved. By the time the common ancestor came out of the other end 4,000 km to the West and 70 generations later, I am doubting he would have been very similar to the Yamnayans of the Caspian Steppe that developed in a different direction or seen his culture as any more similar to theirs than it was to the culture of the Iberians; and to fuse the two together as if they were in the same category would seem to be a misrepresentation.

I do not see evidence of a wipe-out of Neolithic Iberian y-DNA groups - many of these still have a significant presence there. It would seem more accurate to call it a reduction in the proportion of these groups. We don’t know if people bearing these groups were wiped out or whether they were merely less reproductive. Their reduction in proportion does not seem particularly out of kilter with that in many other parts of Europe.

When did this reduction in proportion occur? My own estimates based on a combination of STR and SNP readings match the conclusion that DF27 had already moved from France into North Central Iberia by about 2,500 BC, but the evidence I have seen is that EHG proportions did not really start picking up significantly until some time between 2,000 BC and the Bronze Age in 1,500 BC, and indeed continued increasing after that point. So I would see this process less as a wipe-out, and more as a gradual transformation over a period of a millennium (35 generations) or more.

An insightful post, in my opinion.

One objection, though : the "wiping out" does seem to have occurred - at least in the geographic pockets where the Reich study under discussion here was conducted. Otherwise I don't think a reputable lab would go so far as to mention it.

This said, I agree that :

- what is referred to as "Yamna" should probably be more cautiously labelled "broadly steppe " (to use 23andMe terminology).

- the influx of R1b into Iberia occurred in distinct stages. Lusitanian was a Kw- language (Iccona [ikwona], the horse goddess, later Epona in Gaulish ; also Equeunubo - dual number -, the horse-riding twin gods). Celtiberian was an "in-between" language, with Gw > b, an early proto-Celtic shift, (boustom, from *gwousth2o, cow shed), but Kw = Kw (ekualaku [ekwalakwe], horses +'element unknown' + kwe)

I would agree the later waves were densely admixed when they finally got to Iberia, but depending on the study, the first migrants were pretty much steppe-like. It probably didn't take 70 generations for them to come from the steppe, even accounting for a stop in central Europe. Or if it did, they must have retained a high degree of endogamy. R1b penetration into Bell Beaker territory seems to have been quick-paced. They were probably few in numbers, though, hence the tenuous autosomal impact. I am not sure the earliest settlers were even DF27 yet. Time will tell.

 

[hrvclv]

When they say "Yamnaya" they basically and more technically mean "autosomally derived in large part from EBA Steppe people". I find it extremely unlikely that, had these L51-bearing men developed separately from the ancestors of the Yamnaya people for millennia before their migration and expansion to Western Europe, they would've ended up spreading a kind of ancestry very similar to that of the EBA Steppe populations associated with Yamnaya and other earlier cultures like Repin or Khvalynsk. These men may not have come from the core of the Yamnaya horizon, but I think it's hard to believe they came from a completely different region and sociocultural environment, yet they'd have a similar genetic structure and helped all the same in the spread of BA Steppe-like admixture in post-BA Europe. L51 and Z2103 may have diverged from each other much before (though in my opinion it's possible that they came from the same older linguistic and cultural branch, and later were homogeneized again due to the success of the Yamnaya horizon overriding different cultures, including related ones like Sredny-Stog). But that does not mean that the expansion processes of these two brother clades well after their birth were not connected to each other and were instead associated with totally different cultures and languages. The cultural and linguistic hints we have point exactly to the contrary, that they must've been part of the same general process of gradual Indo-Europeanization of most of Europe (either as "original Indo-Europeans" or, in the case of L51, also possibly as "thoroughly Indo-Europeanized" people).

Feels good to read a sensible, back-to-basics post.

 

[gidai]

I think any haplogroup may rise and decrease overtime quikly from biological reason without to affect autosomal inheritance.

 

[Pip]

Okay, but your migration path of L51 needs to be identified with a culture. It isn�t Yamnaya or Corded Ware, so what�s left? That (and the West Med distribution of early L51 and likely West Asian origin of L23) is what leads me to favour the Asia-to-Iberia hypothesis

Very broadly, I suspect formative surviving L51 was culturally (i) western end Khvalynsk, (ii) Suvorovo, (iii) co-opted into Cucuteni (in the EHG people who collaborated with it, rather than the ones who destroyed it); and that, on Cucuteni's collapse, it moved westwards and settled fully formed in Southern Germany and Northern France (RRBP zone) in perhaps a 50:50 mixed population with Eastern EEF people (principally G-PF3345). I suspect L51 only rose to paternal prominence within this population when one of its families (from within a branch of L151) took control of it and its neighbours at a time of conflict.

I agree that other lines of L51 and close relations to it would probably have spread into Yamnayan Ukraine, Bulgaria, West Asia and perhaps further afield, but my estimation is that the branch that thrives today most likely developed as above.

 

[Pip]

An insightful post, in my opinion.

One objection, though : the "wiping out" does seem to have occurred - at least in the geographic pockets where the Reich study under discussion here was conducted. Otherwise I don't think a reputable lab would go so far as to mention it.

This said, I agree that :

- what is referred to as "Yamna" should probably be more cautiously labelled "broadly steppe " (to use 23andMe terminology).

- the influx of R1b into Iberia occurred in distinct stages. Lusitanian was a Kw- language (Iccona [ikwona], the horse goddess, later Epona in Gaulish ; also Equeunubo - dual number -, the horse-riding twin gods). Celtiberian was an "in-between" language, with Gw > b, an early proto-Celtic shift, (boustom, from *gwousth2o, cow shed), but Kw = Kw (ekualaku [ekwalakwe], horses +'element unknown' + kwe)

I would agree the later waves were densely admixed when they finally got to Iberia, but depending on the study, the first migrants were pretty much steppe-like. It probably didn't take 70 generations for them to come from the steppe, even accounting for a stop in central Europe. Or if it did, they must have retained a high degree of endogamy. R1b penetration into Bell Beaker territory seems to have been quick-paced. They were probably few in numbers, though, hence the tenuous autosomal impact. I am not sure the earliest settlers were even DF27 yet. Time will tell.

I wonder where Reich's wipe-out pockets were; such pockets would be quite believable. Atapuerca seems not to have been such a pocket, despite being within the right zone for early DF27.

My estimate for the 70 generations would be that about the first half lived around the western Steppe fringe, and the second half lived in a roughly 50:50 mixed EHG/eastern EEF (small, mostly endogamous) population based in the West (Southern Germany/Northern France).

 

[markod]

I wonder where Reich's wipe-out pockets were; such pockets would be quite believable. Atapuerca seems not to have been such a pocket, despite being within the right zone for early DF27.

My estimate for the 70 generations would be that about the first half lived around the western Steppe fringe, and the second half lived in a roughly 50:50 mixed EHG/eastern EEF (small, mostly endogamous) population based in the West (Southern Germany/Northern France).

Try to understand the admixture run you're basing your speculations on. ATP3 likely has no EHG. Not even the authors and the usual amateurs who manage to tease out EHG components almost every time managed to find an EHG signal.