New conference on Bronze Age mobility in Europe

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

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.

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?

I think that's the Bashkirs, they also have a lot of Z2103. This is evidence of sorts for a migration of men from the Caucasus to the Steppe, some of which carried Y DNA J2b (and the rest Z2103). The reason for Balkan Y DNA J2b is then likely the same as the reason they have Y DNA Z2103 - from the Yamnaya expansion, but I'd have to look more into the phylogeny and I can't be bothered.

 

[halfalp]

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.

Dont understand the Occam Razor reference here. The most simplier hypothesis for Metallurgy is likely a place were Metals are found, wich is not the case for the East European Plain. Vinca -> Cucuteni in the West and South Caucasus -> Maikop in the South are clear facts of Metallurgical places. For a long time, Maikop was believed to be at the origin of Yamnaya because the Metallurgy is almost the same, now we know they had nothing in common genetically. What's your conclusion for both culture having the same Weapons? Found me an article of a Yamnaya site being a smelting center. It's like saying most of AK-47 are in Africa, so Africa are making AK-47.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Dont understand the Occam Razor reference here. The most simplier hypothesis for Metallurgy is likely a place were Metals are found, wich is not the case for the East European Plain. Vinca -> Cucuteni in the West and South Caucasus -> Maikop in the South are clear facts of Metallurgical places. For a long time, Maikop was believed to be at the origin of Yamnaya because the Metallurgy is almost the same, now we know they had nothing in common genetically. What's your conclusion for both culture having the same Weapons? Found me an article of a Yamnaya site being a smelting center. It's like saying most of AK-47 are in Africa, so Africa are making AK-47.

The point about the Steppe being basically flat and useless for metals is true, all I'm saying is that it seems unlikely to assume Yamnaya was unable to smelt bronze themselves and relied solely on importing it. I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure there are finds of bronze smelting within Yamnaya territory. I'll check though.

 

[Johane Derite]

I think that's the Bashkirs, they also have a lot of Z2103. This is evidence of sorts for a migration of men from the Caucasus to the Steppe, some of which carried Y DNA J2b (and the rest Z2103). The reason for Balkan Y DNA J2b is then likely the same as the reason they have Y DNA Z2103 - from the Yamnaya expansion, but I'd have to look more into the phylogeny and I can't be bothered.

For J2b2-L283 I think that its fairly certain it was from the north based on his admixture:

"[FONT=&quot]The oldest J2b2-L283 sample recovered among ancient DNA samples is a Late Bronze Age (1700-1500 BCE) individual from southern Croatia ([/FONT]Mathieson et al. 2017[FONT=&quot]). His genome possessed about 30% of Steppe admixture and 15% of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer, which suggest a recent arrival from the Steppe. He was accompanied by a woman with similar admixtures, and both possessed typical Pontic-Caspian Steppe mtDNA ([/FONT]I1a1[FONT=&quot] and [/FONT]W3a[FONT=open sans, sans-serif, verdana, neue helvetica, helvetica, geneva])."[/FONT]


[FONT=open sans, sans-serif, verdana, neue helvetica, helvetica, geneva]Does anyone here know how much steppe the 2700BC Croatian Z2103 (that was also found in the same Mathieson paper) had?[/FONT]

 

[halfalp]

The point about the Steppe being basically flat and useless for metals is true, all I'm saying is that it seems unlikely to assume Yamnaya was unable to smelt bronze themselves and relied solely on importing it. I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure there are finds of bronze smelting within Yamnaya territory. I'll check though.

I dont say they were unable, we have a later proof as Sintashta that tey could control they whole production line. I just say in the transition of Neolithic-Eneolithic, Metallurgical centers were more likely from the Balkans and the Caucasus. Khvalynsk already were using Metals but Copper can be modeled with a simple rock, so it's not a huge proof of smelting site. We know from craniometry that Cucuteni for exemple, was Early almost 100% Mediterranean, so Neolithic. But Late saw an introgression of Steppic people, likely in the Eneolithic and showing some demic and cultural influences. So overall, we dont know if Yamnaya and laters were Metallurgists, we know they knew it and used it. The collapse of Cucuteni and Maikop could have induce a migration process to found the needed goods in more western and southern territories.

 

[Pygmalion]

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

"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."

No, they lacked bronze weapons, along with alone bronze armors of course. You should provide evidence instead of disliking posts.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I dont say they were unable, we have a later proof as Sintashta that tey could control they whole production line. I just say in the transition of Neolithic-Eneolithic, Metallurgical centers were more likely from the Balkans and the Caucasus. Khvalynsk already were using Metals but Copper can be modeled with a simple rock, so it's not a huge proof of smelting site. We know from craniometry that Cucuteni for exemple, was Early almost 100% Mediterranean, so Neolithic. But Late saw an introgression of Steppic people, likely in the Eneolithic and showing some demic and cultural influences. So overall, we dont know if Yamnaya and laters were Metallurgists, we know they knew it and used it. The collapse of Cucuteni and Maikop could have induce a migration process to found the needed goods in more western and southern territories.

It's surprisingly hard to find anything about this online (maps of copper and tin mines in Yamnaya), but I did find as you say maps of Sintashta copper mines in what was previously Yamnaya territory - besides, Yamnaya had control of some of the Northern Caucasus too. I suppose I have overlooked your possibility of the Yamnaya migration being caused by a sudden lack of supply of bronze that they outsourced, but I think it's more likely instead that bronze weaponry just allowed them to expand due to the technological advantage. That's in contrast to the early Beaker folk, who I think were actually wandering about for metal sources.

 

[halfalp]

It's surprisingly hard to find anything about this online (maps of copper and tin mines in Yamnaya), but I did find as you say maps of Sintashta copper mines in what was previously Yamnaya territory - besides, Yamnaya had control of some of the Northern Caucasus too. I suppose I have overlooked your possibility of the Yamnaya migration being caused by a sudden lack of supply of bronze that they outsourced, but I think it's more likely instead that bronze weaponry just allowed them to expand due to the technological advantage.

You need to keep in mind that in Europe, the first time of Chalcolithic, only maybe 10% of weapons were made of Copper, Stone Axes ( for Yamnaya and Chalcolithic Europe ) and Stone Maces ( for Yamnaya ) were still the norm for a long time. CWC have predominentaly Stone weapons, while Unetice made very great use of Copper.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

No, they lacked bronze weapons, along with alone bronze armors of course. You should provide evidence instead of disliking posts.

Here's one source I found for Yamnaya having bronze weaponry in two seconds: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40377357?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Or you could just google it and find a million other sources in two seconds too. Not hard.

 

[Angela]

good site Angela.



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).

I noticed the similar dates too. Very interesting. I hope the Reich group wait to publish their paper on Iberian dna until they have tested samples from El Argar proper.

Berun, the closest ancient populations to the samples taken from the Sardinian Barbagia are the Middle Neolithic Europeans. That's because of the substantial amount of WHG in both samples.

You can see it here:

Now, if the comparisons done in various papers use a "Sardinian" component, then the WHG is "hidden" in there. It's like when certain posters look at Admixture results for Tuscans and say they have no WHG. That's incorrect. They have it, but it's "hidden" in the MN like material. See what I mean?

You'll notice that there is no "West Asian" or "Iran Neo" or whatever we want to call it in this analysis. However, that's of those isolated samples. There is a bit in the other, more populous parts of the island, just as they have some "steppe".

However, when Chiang et al looked at the whole genomes, there's not much difference between the various parts of the island. For example, if the Bell Beakers and the Phoenicians didn't move large populations onto the island, you may find some of their ancient samples, but the overall genetic effect is going to be minor.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/12/07/092148.full.pdf

"As an alternative visualization of pan-Mediterranean population structure, an analysisusing the ADMIXTURE software inferred four ancestral components, with one componentassociated primarily with Sardinians and Southern Europeans (“red”), and remainingcomponents corresponding to North African (“blue”), Middle East and Caucasus (“purple”), andNorthern Europeans (“green”) (Figure 4C; see Figure S3 for results at other values of K). TheArzana individuals contained 100% of this red component and Sardinians from Cagliaricontained 93% of this red component."

"Surprisingly though, whenexamining allele sharing within Sardinia, we found that both ancient Neolithic farmer ancestryand pre-Neolithic ancestry are enriched in the Gennargentu-region. First, we find that shareddrift with Neolithic farmers and with pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers is significantly correlated withthe proportion of “Gennargentu-region” ancestral component estimated from ADMIXTUREanalysis, while shared drift with Steppe pastoralists has a weak negative correlation withGennargentu-region ancestry (Figure 6B). Second, using supervised estimation of ancestryproportion based on aDNA (Haak et al. 2015), we estimate higher levels of Neolithic and preNeolithicancestries in the Gennargentu region and higher levels of Steppe Pastoralist ancestryoutside the region (Figure S10)."

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

You need to keep in mind that in Europe, the first time of Chalcolithic, only maybe 10% of weapons were made of Copper, Stone Axes ( for Yamnaya and Chalcolithic Europe ) and Stone Maces ( for Yamnaya ) were still the norm for a long time. CWC have predominentaly Stone weapons, while Unetice made very great use of Copper.

Yeah, what's interesting about CWC is they made their stone weaponry to mimic copper weaponry, which suggests they lacked either copper smelting skills or copper itself.

If Yamnaya and Maykop were part of the same cultural horizon, I could believe a lot of Yamnaya's bronze tools came from Maykop - just as certain nations today would have some regions with lots of mines supplying others without. But the idea that Yamnaya and Maykop are as you say separate entities and that Maykop basically built most of Yamnaya's bronze weaponry for them doesn't make much sense in the context of bilateral trade. I definitely overlooked that possibility though, so fair enough.

Regardless, Yamnaya definitely had bronze tools, and it's super unlikely they didn't know how to create it.

 

[Pygmalion]

Here's one source I found for Yamnaya having bronze weaponry in two seconds: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40377357?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Or you could just google it and find a million other sources in two seconds too. Not hard.

That's an incredibly vague source. Point me to one of your many sources mentioning a specific bronze (not copper) weapon. And please provide a source that mentions the presence of bronze armors in the Yamnaya culture, that's be grand.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

That's an incredibly vague source. Point me to one of your many sources mentioning a specific bronze (not copper) weapon. And please provide a source that mentions the presence of bronze armors in the Yamnaya culture, that's be grand.

The bronze armour thing may be incorrect, I got that from a popular-archaeology article (which is usually correct and here written up by an affiliate professor, so I trusted it even if it may be wrong). As for bronze weapons existing in Yamnaya, basically everyone seems to refer to it (Wikipedia for one, and Eske Willerslev too), but I cannot for the life of me find a direct source - so these many sources aren't that great (though the chance that they are all wrong is unlikely). I'll look a bit harder for a few minutes though.

I do have Anthony though, with reference to Usatovo and Yamnaya, and also this book and this book, which refers to arsenical bronze specifically (though I don't know if you can see it in the preview).

That should be enough evidence of bronze weaponry in Yamnaya, which shouldn't really be needed considering it is seen as a Bronze Age culture... though I'm not saying bronze was used more than copper.

 

[halfalp]

Yeah, what's interesting about CWC is they made their stone weaponry to mimic copper weaponry, which suggests they lacked either copper smelting skills or copper itself.

If Yamnaya and Maykop were part of the same cultural horizon, I could believe a lot of Yamnaya's bronze tools came from Maykop - just as certain nations today would have some regions with lots of mines supplying others without. But the idea that Yamnaya and Maykop are as you say separate entities and that Maykop basically built most of Yamnaya's bronze weaponry for them doesn't make much sense in the context of bilateral trade. I definitely overlooked that possibility though, so fair enough.

Regardless, Yamnaya definitely had bronze tools, and it's super unlikely they didn't know how to create it.

My bet is, if Yamnaya smelt some of their weapons themselves, it would have been in the same area as cultures like Cucuteni and Maikop, and not in the middle of the steppe with wild horses. Also i talked about Unetice, but Unetice was a very multicultural package as Tomenable said few years ago.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/32687-Unetice-culture-was-clearly-multi-ethnic

Also, interesting that North Caucasus, Dolmen LBA, Eastern Yamnaya and ultimately Afanasievo through Okunevo samples had mtdna in common such as H6a1 and H13a1a. I know it doesn't tell much about cultural package, but it's still a maternal link between North and South that could motivated trade and relationship.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

My bet is, if Yamnaya smelt some of their weapons themselves, it would have been in the same area as cultures like Cucuteni and Maikop, and not in the middle of the steppe with wild horses. Also i talked about Unetice, but Unetice was a very multicultural package as Tomenable said few years ago.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/32687-Unetice-culture-was-clearly-multi-ethnic

Also, interesting that North Caucasus, Dolmen LBA, Eastern Yamnaya and ultimately Afanasievo through Okunevo samples had mtdna in common such as H6a1 and H13a1a. I know it doesn't tell much about cultural package, but it's still a maternal link between North and South that could motivated trade and relationship.

I guess I agree most Yamnaya smelting would take place in those regions, yeah. The more I think about it, when considering the motives for expansion (given the Steppe is basically a paradise for pastoralists), the quest for metals does make sense. I always linked migrations in the search of metals to the Bell Beaker folk, but I just assumed Yamnaya was inherently warlike and just picked up the bronze and copper weaponry (and horses of course) to conquer for the sake of some kind of adventurous spirit - that is clearly naïve though, but it does match nicely with things like the Afanasievo culture, which was clearly just expansion for the sake of expansion.

I disagree that Yamnaya was somehow just buying weapons from the Caucasus and were oblivious to the technology behind creating bronze alloys though, and I've always said Yamnaya's metallurgical influences came from the South. But yeah, point taken about how by far the main centres of metallurgy near Yamnaya are in the Caucasus and in the Balkans.

 

[berun]

The oldest J2b2-L283 sample recovered among ancient DNA samples is a Late Bronze Age (1700-1500 BCE) individual from southern Croatia (Mathieson et al. 2017). His genome possessed about 30% of Steppe admixture and 15% of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer, which suggest a recent arrival from the Steppe. He was accompanied by a woman with similar admixtures, and both possessed typical Pontic-Caspian Steppe mtDNA (I1a1 and W3a)."

this is absurd, from which room of the hell yamnayans might take extra EHG share in the way to the Balkans?? It's not from steppe but Kievan Rus area, which could have extra EHG

 

[berun]

Also having Albania such richness of old R1b clades is favouring to take R1b as herders, Albania is hilly and rains only allow wheat/barley agriculture near the coast, so a good country to keep a majority of herders over farmers and to know how were the Neolithic waves after landing in Europe.

 

[berun]

@Angela, I must check the Sardinian samples to who were compared.

@all, bronze (copper and tin) in Yamnaya was not but arsenical copper.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

@Angela, I must check the Sardinian samples to who were compared.

@all, bronze (copper and tin) in Yamnaya was not but arsenical copper.

Didn't know that Yamnaya bronze used arsenic and not tin to alloy with the copper, thanks.

 

[Milan.M]

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.

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?

Doesn't need to be related to Armenian to come from that area,there was many other Anatolian languages,Iranic languages for example.
Albanian at least to me seem connected to Germanic and Balto-Slavic the most,but this could be later influence maybe?
Also i was discussing other possibilities not only the Carpathian which i said need to be proven,even if it was "Dacian" or "Illyrian" related really could have come from there.

E-V13 was not probably in the Indo-European migration.
J2b2-L283 is probably Indo-European but we are yet to see from where it came from.
For the R1b-Z103 we don't know if Albanians descent exactly from this sample,there is many haplotypes under R1b-Z103.
I am not excluding more "ancient" entry,but R1b-Z103 being eastern related i think Albanian took same route as the Greek for which i think came from there.

After all for right now i think that two "groups" carried IE,steppe groups and the Iran_Neo,ultimate PIE homeland-Armenia,Iran,Kurdistan maybe parts of eastern Anatolia,that area somewhere.