New conference on Bronze Age mobility in Europe

Yes that was my point. The hypothetical Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage dates to the 3rd millennium BC and would be placed somewhere around Armenia. Placing the proto mycanean speakers in a place where they would have ampl Iran_neo/chg but possibly also EHG from contact with caucauses. But you are right the paper says that the Iran_neo
has reached Europe BY 1500BC.

But ill be honest i never quite understood the supposed northern route of greeks entry into southern europe.

I have been saying this for years even without genetic evidence that Greek arrived from near Armenian teritory through Anatolia,even thought all were denying this.
I am on same opinion even for Albanian now,the southern route Iran_Neo took to Italy maybe the sister language like Messapic.
 
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I honestly did not expect Nuragic Sardinians to have any Iran Neolithic like ancestry. I knew of the exchange between Sardinia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and that Sardinia and Cyprus shared similar metallurgic tools, but that was during the late bronze age, not the middle bronze age, strange.
 
Iran Neo could have reached Sicily and Sardinia and even other parts of Italy and the West Med in the Chalcolithic, in the middle bronze age there arent archaeological evidences for that indeed

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I would also bet that in the Balkans the confluence of Iran_Neo and EHG/WHG ancestries led to the formation of small ghost-Yamnaya components everywhere. I think it would be exceedingly difficult to tell those apart from direct steppe ancestry with f3, f4 & D-statistics.

yup...! more ghosts
 
yup...! more ghosts

Yes!!!! We have a 7000bc ehg in Romania. So I have been asking all over what happens when South Caucasus meets that EHG? would it not create a fake yamnaya? Even wrote a post about it... Asked around but got nowhere. Nobody seemed to be able or willing to answer.
 
Until we have the paper, instead of using amateur produced models of perhaps questionable accuracy I think we'd be better served to wait for the genetic analysis of the actual ancient dna, and in the meantime to review the Sicilian Bronze Age.

See:
https://www.ancient.eu/article/1190/bronze-age-sicily/

This is just a starting point. There are more recent papers, and, of course, the upcoming paper will hopefully address all of this.

"The three main phases of the period take their name from the most important centres at the time in question: Castelluccio (Early Bronze Age), Thapsos (Middle Bronze Age) and Pantalica (Late Bronze Age). There was a marked increase in cultural and commercial trade between regions near and far, particularly with Cornwall, across the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain, Sardinia, the Tyrrhenian coast to the Strait of Messina, and from here to the Aegean-Anatolian area."

"In Sicily the oldest phases of prehistory were overcome at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, when it received a new cultural wave, probably from the Middle East, today labelled with the name of the Castelluccio culture, from the homonymous prehistoric site near the city of Noto. This cultural facies (segmentation), rather unusual compared to those of the Copper Age, is verified in the south-east and south of the island, up to the provinces of Agrigento and Caltanissetta (in the west and in the middle of the island), and constitutes the “starting line” of the Sicilian bronze age. It is certainly dated to 2169±120 BCE (calibrated value) thanks to radiometric dating performed on 18 coal samples which proved to be the oldest of this culture and which were found at the archaeological site of "Muculufa", a few kilometres north-east of Licata town."

"At this early stage of the Bronze Age, Sicily was divided into four macro-regions, each one of them with their own culture: northern Sicily with the Rodì-Tindari-Vallelunga culture, the western one, with the Naro/Partanna culture, the south-east with the Castelluccio culture and the Capo Graziano culture of the Aeolian Islands. Of these, that of Castelluccio seems to be the most homogeneous culture in this period, perhaps because it spread over a larger area and, consequently, it is much better known today.
The prehistoric settlement of Castelluccio was built on a rather isolated but defensible rocky spur. The archaeologist Paolo Orsi, who identified it between the late-19th and early-20th century CE, found large quantities of ceramic fragments among the refuse and explored the artificial cave tombs. These tombs are oven-shaped and dug into the rocks. There are small oval-shaped rooms with a diameter of between 1.5-2.0 metres, sometimes preceded by an ante-cella and still containing grave goods. The Castelluccian villages, sometimes fortified, showed a rather interesting agricultural and pastoral reality. Their ceramics have been classified as "matt-painted ware" and have close ties with an Anatolian culture of the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, so-called "Cappadocia"."

"In some of these graves carved globule bones have been found that are reminiscent of examples elsewhere (southeastern Italy, Malta, southern Greece and Troy II and III). "

Interesting that...Were the Mycenaeans and Trojans cousins of a sort? Were they all cousins?

Anyway, it seems to me that it will be well nigh impossible to detail all the movements back and forth between all these regions. On the face of it there was migration from the Aegean/Anatolian to both Italy and Greece (as we can tell not only from the Mycenaean genomes but from the modern levels of "Caucasian" in Greeks). There was also migration from the area of Greece to Italy. Later on, there seems to be migration from Italy to Greece.

"

MIDDLE BRONZE AGE

From the end of 1500 to c. 1200 BCE in Sicily, important coastal settlements developed and the island began to acquire strategic-commercial importance thanks to the intense exchanges with Mycenaean Greece. The find of a large number of Aegean vases in the Sicilian tombs of this period proves a phenomenon that caused the birth of real emporia in which the transmarine trades were practised, as had happened in the Aeolian islands. This was just the age that the Milazzese culture flourished in the Aeolian Islands. In Sicily, for its part, a culture closely related to the Aeolian arose, called Thapsos."

"

MIDDLE BRONZE AGE

From the end of 1500 to c. 1200 BCE in Sicily, important coastal settlements developed and the island began to acquire strategic-commercial importance thanks to the intense exchanges with Mycenaean Greece. The find of a large number of Aegean vases in the Sicilian tombs of this period proves a phenomenon that caused the birth of real emporia in which the transmarine trades were practised, as had happened in the Aeolian islands. This was just the age that the Milazzese culture flourished in the Aeolian Islands. In Sicily, for its part, a culture closely related to the Aeolian arose, called Thapsos."

"

LATE BRONZE AGE

In the 13th century BCE everything suddenly changed. This period would seem to have been ruled by fear: the ancient coastal settlements were moved to higher sites, difficult to access but easily defendable, such as Pantalica, Montagna di Caltagirone, Dessueri, Sabucina and, later, Cassibile (all areas between south-eastern and central Sicily). While in the Aeolian Islands the Ausoni flourished, a civilization which came from the Italian peninsula, in Sicily a civilization strongly influenced by the Mycenaean one still persisted."

As I said, there is a movement from Italy to Greece at that time. If some of the Sea Peoples were also from the Italian peninsula or even Sicily that would be another movement.

We'll see if the following is still correct:

"The historical sources (Hellanicus of Mytilene, Fylistus of Syracuse) assert this was the Sicels' time for Sicily, who also came from the Italian peninsula between the 13th and 12th century BCE. However, the archaeological layers following the Thapsos age do not confirm the presence of an Italic civilization. On the contrary, dating to this period is a monumental building made up of several rectangular rooms, the so-called Anaktoron or prince' palace. Built with megalithic techniques using gigantic stone blocks, it is a smaller imitation of the Mycenaean palaces. It also lacks the cremation of the deceased, which, in contrast, was widespread in the Italian peninsula of that era. The ritual will remain unknown in Sicily for a few more centuries yet. The Sicels, therefore, landed a few centuries later in eastern Sicily and drove away the Sicanians to the western part of the island, the dominant population who had lived on most of the island since time immemorial."

You can read about the rest of the Bronze Age in the article, which was then followed by the Iron Age and more settlement from Greece.

I'll be very interested to see if the steppe arrived only with some Bell Beaker or in other movements.



good site Angela.

The Castelluccian villages, sometimes fortified, showed a rather interesting agricultural and pastoral reality. Their ceramics have been classified as "matt-painted ware" and have close ties with an Anatolian culture of the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, so-called "Cappadocia". The wares show a variety of pottery shapes and geometric designs, the latter consisting of brown or black bands crossed on a yellow or red background.

these colours remind me the Kura-Araxes ones? By the way the date of apparition of the Castelluccio Culture and El Argar are almost the same, quite interesting... if such cultural ties involved migratory movements it would explain the Iran_Neo found for such epoch. About the presence of the "steppe" autosomes it could be linked with the BB and the dolmens of the island, so that such BB carrying steppe would come like those of Balears from South France.

BUT, if they have not found steppe in BA Sardinia but have found there Iran_Neo... it's a big problem as such island must have received the same kind of BB migration that Balears and Sicily; I'm quite scared that it is by the almost lack of WHG admixture in the local EEF (such island had no important Mesolithic population and Cardial migrants didn't had the opportunity to mix with local foragers). Maybe there was a BB strand high in CHG that after mixing with local EEF provided a new ghost steppe signal (taking part of the WHG share in EEF as EHG-like).
 
Maybe the Sardinian samples are from the interior where there was little or zero BB settlements (?) no mines and no plains there only mountains

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Maybe the Sardinian samples are from the interior where there was little or zero BB settlements (?) no mines and no plains there only mountains

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You're right about the fact that the bell beaker material culture seems not to have reached the central-eastern part of the island, but not because it lacked metal deposits. In the interior there are a lot of silver deposits, the name Gennargentu, which designates the vast mountain area in the central-eastern of the island, means "gate of silver". There was an important metallurgical workshop and sanctuary in that region during the late bronze age: S'Arcu E Is Forros, along with some other ones around it such as Sa Sedda E Sos Carros and Sa Carcaredda.
 
Your hypothesis looks plausible, it has verosimilitude at least (which is already much better than some things I read here and elsewhere among amateur fans of population genetics, lol), but let me just point out two things: 1) if those pre-L51 people were really mostly Anatolian Chalcolithic then, well, they definitely should have brought some good chunks of Iranian and Levantine Neolithic ancestry, because Chalcolithic Anatolia was already much more mixed IIRC; 2) Sorry you misunderstood what I said, I did not mean to imply the genetic signature of the Steppe was different from the Vinca steppe-like ancestry, what I was trying to say was that the L23 West Asians would certainly be totally different from the mainly EEF plus small amounts of Steppe EBA-like that the Vinca people had (anyway I think the Vinca would be too late to be a proxy for your hypothetical M269 Balkanic population, since you assume that by the Chalcolithic the L23 would already be starting its expansion to Europe).

Wow, this is a bit weird of a thing to say, but verisimilitude is actually such a useful word to know, glad I know it now lol

I don't think they were mostly Anatolian Chalcolithic, I think they would have been a hybrid of something Iron Gates-like and something Anatolian Chalcolithic-like, before further blending with the EEFs they would have come across further West across the Mediterranean (none of these blends are necessarily 50/50 by the way). If I'm not mistaken, the right proportions of that blend would produce something Beaker-like - but the thing I don't like about autosomal genetics being so over-utilised is that so many blends can create the same rough thing, because after the migrations of people intensified from the Late Neolithic onwards everyone became so mixed up (at least relative to these "purer" populations like WHG etc.) - as one example, it seems like most in academia see Corded Ware as descended from Yamnaya, but there's so many lines of evidence to show that that isn't the case. Just because they are both approximately EHG-CHG hybrids, doesn't necessarily mean one is an extension of the other, as these ancestral profiles could have been (and I think definitely were) achieved in parallel. That's the main reason I really like looking at Y DNA for tracing male-dominant migrations, because the precision leaves no room for ambiguity, but anyway.

And I don't see early Vinca as too late: it's from the 6th millennium BC and has the earliest known example of copper smelting. With a migration of some of these metallurgical folk from early/middle Vinca to West Asia (perhaps in the search for new finds of metal like has been speculated with the metallurgical Beaker folk, who knows - this also works with the idea that they would be nomadic pastoralists, whose presence was known at least from Ubaid), Vinca wouldn't just collapse or become significantly less advanced or anything like that - you wouldn't expect to see much of a change at all, as the Vinca people proper (the mainly EEF farmer population) were advanced in their own right (as I said, I think the proto-writing, despite swastikas in the Danube script, surely has to be attributed to them, as to put it bluntly R1b-M269+ folk and literacy didn't get on very well until even well after the Iron Age in some cases).

This puts a migration of M269-carriers out of the Balkans to West Asia sometime during the 6th millennium BC if I had to guess, which leaves 1-2 thousand years of development until the L23 mutation comes along, which could be why the variance of M269 is by far highest in Turkey and Northern Syria (despite it not being the homeland of M269, it seems the much much earlier M269 in Eastern Europe was really unsuccessful).
 
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Wow, this is a bit weird of a thing to say, but verisimilitude is actually such a useful word to know, glad I know it now lol

I don't think they were mostly Anatolian Chalcolithic, I think they would have been a hybrid of something Iron Gates-like and something Anatolian Chalcolithic-like, before further blending with the EEFs they would have come across further West across the Mediterranean (none of these blends are necessarily 50/50 by the way). If I'm not mistaken, the right proportions of that blend would produce something Beaker-like - but the thing I don't like about autosomal genetics being so over-utilised is that so many blends can create the same rough thing, because after the migrations of people intensified from the Late Neolithic onwards everyone became so mixed up (at least relative to these "purer" populations like WHG etc.) - as one example, it seems like most in academia see Corded Ware as descended from Yamnaya, but there's so many lines of evidence to show that that isn't the case. Just because they are both approximately EHG-CHG hybrids, doesn't necessarily mean one is an extension of the other, as these ancestral profiles could have been (and I think definitely were) achieved in parallel. That's the main reason I really like looking at Y DNA for tracing male-dominant migrations, because the precision leaves no room for ambiguity, but anyway.

And I don't see early Vinca as too late: it's from the 6th millennium BC and has the earliest known example of copper smelting. With a migration of some of these metallurgical folk from early/middle Vinca to West Asia (perhaps in the search for new finds of metal like has been speculated with the metallurgical Beaker folk, who knows - this also works with the idea that they would be nomadic pastoralists, whose presence was known at least from Ubaid), Vinca wouldn't just collapse or become significantly less advanced or anything like that - you wouldn't expect to see much of a change at all, as the Vinca people proper (the mainly EEF farmer population) were advanced in their own right (as I said, I think the proto-writing, despite swastikas in the Danube script, surely has to be attributed to them, as to put it bluntly R1b-M269+ folk and literacy didn't get on very well until even well after the Iron Age in some cases).

This puts a migration out of the Balkans to West Asia of these metallurgical folk somewhere around perhaps the year 5,000 BC if I had to guess, which leaves 1,000 years until the L23 mutation comes along.

The thing is, we dont really know if Yamnaya, Bell Beaker, Unetice, Vucedol were Metallurgists at all. Much of the metal artifacts from those cultures were weapons and jewelry wich is clearly about social status and they were found in Hoards. Hoards is much more a characteristic of Thiefs, War treasurs and maybe Trading. There is more chance than IE people were something like Pastoralists past-time Warriors and/or past-time Mercenaries who accumulate a lot of wealth by trades and payments from local populations with strong metallurgical culture.
 
The thing is, we dont really know if Yamnaya, Bell Beaker, Unetice, Vucedol were Metallurgists at all. Much of the metal artifacts from those cultures were weapons and jewelry wich is clearly about social status and they were found in Hoards. Hoards is much more a characteristic of Thiefs, War treasurs and maybe Trading. There is more chance than IE people were something like Pastoralists past-time Warriors and/or past-time Mercenaries who accumulate a lot of wealth by trades and payments from local populations with strong metallurgical culture.

Well looking at Yamnaya and Bell Beaker, we know that they would have been skilled metallurgists. One of the main reasons Yamnaya completely dominated the densely-populated Balkans is because of their bronze weapons - the advantage of having bronze weaponry really cannot be overstated, it is almost like comparing a semi-automatic rifle to a musket. And Bell Beaker seems to have picked up Bronze smelting technology from contacts with Hungarian Yamnaya, but they too were clearly metallurgists even before this. I don't think anyone really doubts that perhaps the main (but if not, one of the main) factor for the successful spread of Yamnaya and the Bell Beaker culture was due to metallurgy.
 
Well looking at Yamnaya and Bell Beaker, we know that they would have been skilled metallurgists. One of the main reasons Yamnaya completely dominated the densely-populated Balkans is because of their bronze weapons - the advantage of having bronze weaponry really cannot be overstated, it is almost like comparing a semi-automatic rifle to a musket. And Bell Beaker seems to have picked up Bronze smelting technology from contacts with Hungarian Yamnaya, but they too were clearly metallurgists even before this. I don't think anyone really doubts that perhaps the main (but if not, one of the main) factor for the successful spread of Yamnaya and the Bell Beaker culture was due to metallurgy.

What? Yamnaya had bronze weapons? What are you talking about?
 
They had copper not bronze

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Maybe the Sardinian samples are from the interior where there was little or zero BB settlements (?) no mines and no plains there only mountains

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We already know from all the recent papers on Sardinia that the samples so close to EEF and even MN Europe from Sardinia were taken by Cavalli Sforza from the remote and isolated Barbagia. At the same time we know from those same papers that the remainder of the Sardinian population is not hugely different from those samples. The influence from this early movement of Iran Neo like ancestry into Sardinia, as well as whatever genetic material may have been contributed by Bell Beakers or later on by some Phoenicians and by migration from the mainland was not enough to move them all that far from the relict population.
 
What? Yamnaya had bronze weapons? What are you talking about?

Clearly, you shouldn't be so sure of yourself:

[FONT=&quot]"We may imagine the domestication of the horse was the final ingredient in a package of innovations that enabled the creation of something the world had never seen before: highly mobile, mounted warriors on horseback, shielded in bronze armor and wielding terrifying new weapons of bronze, with logistical support provided by wheeled wagons." [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
 
Well looking at Yamnaya and Bell Beaker, we know that they would have been skilled metallurgists. One of the main reasons Yamnaya completely dominated the densely-populated Balkans is because of their bronze weapons - the advantage of having bronze weaponry really cannot be overstated, it is almost like comparing a semi-automatic rifle to a musket. And Bell Beaker seems to have picked up Bronze smelting technology from contacts with Hungarian Yamnaya, but they too were clearly metallurgists even before this. I don't think anyone really doubts that perhaps the main (but if not, one of the main) factor for the successful spread of Yamnaya and the Bell Beaker culture was due to metallurgy.

We dont know if they really smelt and create their weapon themselves tho. It's a suposition looking for exemple Sintashta clearly had Smelting place and were really close to the South Urals were the minerals were. But what about Yamnaya, is there clear sign of Metallurgy? Where were the center of those smelting? Most of their weapons could have come from other cultures like Maikop and when Maikop decade, they needed to migrate to found their components until likely develop their own Metallurgy.
 
We dont know if they really smelt and create their weapon themselves tho. It's a suposition looking for exemple Sintashta clearly had Smelting place and were really close to the South Urals were the minerals were. But what about Yamnaya, is there clear sign of Metallurgy? Where were the center of those smelting? Most of their weapons could have come from other cultures like Maikop and when Maikop decade, they needed to migrate to found their components until likely develop their own Metallurgy.

That's dumb and goes against Occam's razor - they clearly knew how to make the tools themselves. Humour me though, if Maykop somehow was the factory producing bronze weapons and bronze armour for Yamnaya, what did Yamnaya give to Maykop in exchange? Horses? How is it so hard to accept Yamnaya had bronze smelting technology and used it for tools, literally nobody doubts it - that doesn't mean bronze metallurgy began in the Steppes though.
 
I have been saying this for years even without genetic evidence that Greek arrived from near Armenian teritory through Anatolia,even thought all were denying this.
I am on same opinion even for Albanian now,the southern route Iran_Neo took to Italy maybe the sister language like Messapic.
Let's see what other hypothesis we can make further.

Hmm. Just a couple of days ago you were saying Albanian comes from the Carpathians. Vladimir Orel, who is a proponent of this theory finds almost no Armenian isoglosses with Albanian (only 4). This would make what you are saying a bit difficult.

Genetically speaking, the ancient balkan J2b2-L283 being steppe enriched makes it difficult. Likewise the relative lack of EV13 in Armenia and it more likely being Balkanic is also difficult. R1b-Z2013 also found in croatia is dated 2700BC, which would be quite an ancient entry if you are arguing that albanian was from anatolia.

There are things which could be relevant here if bell beakers, etc are being discussed. Albanians are the dinaric population par excellence (bell beakers were dinaric).

In the balkans, Albanians have the highest R1b-Pf7562 (very rare), R1b-m269(xl51), and among the highest Z2103 also. The distributions because of the diversity cannot reasonably be argued to be inflated by sample size or founder effects.

Neither do these distribution support ottoman related late entry as the distribution of these groups would be higher in Turkey, and ancient Z2103 has been found in Croatia dated 2700BC.

The lack of these specific Albanian R1b clades in south slavs also testifies to their presence since at least deep antiquity, or at the very confirmed least: pre slav migrations.

Kosovo Albanians also seem to have the highest concentration of these R1b clades (oldest copper axe in europe found in Prokuplje near Kosovo border in a Vinca site)


All these things are some issues with Albanian being part of a Albano-Greco-Armenian language group entering with Iran_Neo/CHG through anatolia.

tree.JPG


R1b-PF7562.JPG


R1b-Z2103.JPG


source: http://r1b-pf7562.blogspot.com/



Btw can somebody explain to me why this region in Russia is also showing up as having high percentages also with J2b as well as the R1b -Z2103 and Pf7562?

Haplogroup-J2b.gif
 

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