The conflict between archaeology and ancient genomics

Angela

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See:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6

The context is the paper on the Bell Beakers in England.

"[FONT=&quot]et long barrow served as a tomb and ceremonial site for more than a millennium. Credit: Robert Harvey/Natural World Photography[/FONT][FONT=&quot] PDF version
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[FONT=&quot]Thirty kilometres north of Stonehenge, through the rolling countryside of southwest England, stands a less-famous window into Neolithic Britain. Established around 3600 BC by early farming communities, the West Kennet long barrow is an earthen mound with five chambers, adorned with giant stone slabs. At first, it served as a tomb for some three dozen men, women and children. But people continued to visit for more than 1,000 years, filling the chambers with relics such as pottery and beads that have been interpreted as tributes to ancestors or gods.
The artefacts offer a view of those visitors and their relationship with the wider world. Changes in pottery styles there sometimes echoed distant trends in continental Europe, such as the appearance of bell-shaped beakers — a connection that signals the arrival of new ideas and people in Britain. But many archaeologists think these material shifts meshed into a generally stable culture that continued to follow its traditions for centuries.
“The ways in which people are doing things are the same. They’re just using different material culture — different pots,” says Neil Carlin at University College Dublin, who studies Ireland and Britain’s transition from the Neolithic into the Copper and Bronze Ages.
But last year, reports started circulating that seemed to challenge this picture of stability. A study1 analysing genome-wide data from 170 ancient Europeans, including 100 associated with Bell Beaker-style artefacts, suggested that the people who had built the barrow and buried their dead there had all but vanished by 2000 BC. The genetic ancestry of Neolithic Britons, according to the study, was almost entirely displaced. Yet somehow the new arrivals carried on with many of the Britons’ traditions. “That didn’t fit for me,” says Carlin, who has been struggling to reconcile his research with the DNA findings."

"Some archaeologists are ecstatic over the possibilities offered by the new technology. Ancient-DNA work has breathed new life and excitement into their work, and they are beginning once-inconceivable investigations, such as sequencing the genome of every individual from a single graveyard. But others are cautious.
“Half the archaeologists think ancient DNA can solve everything. The other half think ancient DNA is the devil’s work,” quips Philipp Stockhammer, a researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, who works closely with geneticists and molecular biologists at an institute in Germany that was set up a few years ago to build bridges between the disciplines. The technology is no silver bullet, he says, but archaeologists ignore it at their peril."

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Before going deeper in the reading I can say that IMO clearly a lot of scientists are putting their own discipline higher than others disciplines; only "their science" can explain things, the other sciences are of poor worth; thanks God, other scientists are more open minded.
 
Wow i didn't know that Neolithic came that late in the british islands, 3600 BCE is almost contemporary to Yamnaya.
 
The history of human settlements in the British Isles is very interesting. I think it is as interesting as the history of the settlers of the Iberian Peninsula. Today I read this article that talks about the people who built Stonehenge and I decided to share with you:

Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders


By Paul Rincon
Science
editor, BBC News website

16 April 2019

6kHu1za.jpg


The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown.
Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.
The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia before heading north.
They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.
Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000BC that introduced farming to Europe.
Before that, Europe was populated by small, travelling groups which hunted animals and gathered wild plants and shellfish.
One group of early farmers followed the river Danube up into Central Europe, but another group travelled west across the Mediterranean.
DNA reveals that Neolithic Britons were largely descended from groups who took the Mediterranean route, either hugging the coast or hopping from island-to-island on boats. Some British groups had a minor amount of ancestry from groups that followed the Danube route.

It3cVvd.jpg



When the researchers analysed the DNA of early British farmers, they found they most closely resembled Neolithic people from Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal). These Iberian farmers were descended from people who had journeyed across the Mediterranean.
From Iberia, or somewhere close, the Mediterranean farmers travelled north through France. They might have entered Britain from the west, through Wales or south-west England. Indeed, radiocarbon dates suggest that Neolithic people arrived marginally earlier in the west, but this remains a topic for future work.
In addition to farming, the Neolithic migrants to Britain appear to have introduced the tradition of building monuments using large stones known as megaliths. Stonehenge in Wiltshire was part of this tradition.
Although Britain was inhabited by groups of "western hunter-gatherers" when the farmers arrived in about 4,000BC, DNA shows that the two groups did not mix very much at all.
The British hunter-gatherers were almost completely replaced by the Neolithic farmers, apart from one group in western Scotland, where the Neolithic inhabitants had elevated local ancestry. This could have come down to the farmer groups simply having greater numbers.
"We don't find any detectable evidence at all for the local British western hunter-gatherer ancestry in the Neolithic farmers after they arrive," said co-author Dr Tom Booth, a specialist in ancient DNA from the Natural History Museum in London.
"That doesn't mean they don't mix at all, it just means that maybe their population sizes were too small to have left any kind of genetic legacy."
Co-author Professor Mark Thomas, from UCL, said he also favoured "a numbers game explanation".

P115bdL.jpg



Professor Thomas said the Neolithic farmers had probably had to adapt their practices to different climatic conditions as they moved across Europe. But by the time they reached Britain they were already "tooled up" and well-prepared for growing crops in a north-west European climate.
The study also analysed DNA from these British hunter-gatherers. One of the skeletons analysed was that of Cheddar Man, whose skeletal remains have been dated to 7,100BC.
He was the subject of a reconstruction unveiled at the Natural History Museum last year. DNA suggests that, like most other European hunter-gatherers of the time, he had dark skin combined with blue eyes.
Genetic analysis shows that the Neolithic farmers, by contrast, were paler-skinned with brown eyes and black or dark-brown hair.
Towards the end of the Neolithic, in about 2,450BC, the descendants of the first farmers were themselves almost entirely replaced when a new population - called the Bell Beaker people - migrated from mainland Europe. So Britain saw two extreme genetic shifts in the space of a few thousand years.
Prof Thomas said that this later event happened after the Neolithic population had been in decline for some time, both in Britain and across Europe. He cautioned against simplistic explanations invoking conflict, and said the shifts ultimately came down to "economic" factors, about which lifestyles were best suited to exploit the landscape.
Dr Booth explained: "It's difficult to see whether the two [genetic shifts] could have anything in common - they're two very different kinds of change. There's speculation that they're to some extent population collapses. But the reasons suggested for those two collapses are different, so it could just be coincidence."

 
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The history of human settlements in the British Isles is very interesting. I think it is as interesting as the history of the settlers of the Iberian Peninsula. Today I read this article that talks about the people who built Stonehenge and I decided to share with you:

Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders


By Paul Rincon
Science
editor, BBC News website

16 April 2019

6kHu1za.jpg


The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown.
Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.
The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia before heading north.
They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.
Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000BC that introduced farming to Europe.
Before that, Europe was populated by small, travelling groups which hunted animals and gathered wild plants and shellfish.
One group of early farmers followed the river Danube up into Central Europe, but another group travelled west across the Mediterranean.
DNA reveals that Neolithic Britons were largely descended from groups who took the Mediterranean route, either hugging the coast or hopping from island-to-island on boats. Some British groups had a minor amount of ancestry from groups that followed the Danube route.

It3cVvd.jpg



When the researchers analysed the DNA of early British farmers, they found they most closely resembled Neolithic people from Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal). These Iberian farmers were descended from people who had journeyed across the Mediterranean.
From Iberia, or somewhere close, the Mediterranean farmers travelled north through France. They might have entered Britain from the west, through Wales or south-west England. Indeed, radiocarbon dates suggest that Neolithic people arrived marginally earlier in the west, but this remains a topic for future work.
In addition to farming, the Neolithic migrants to Britain appear to have introduced the tradition of building monuments using large stones known as megaliths. Stonehenge in Wiltshire was part of this tradition.
Although Britain was inhabited by groups of "western hunter-gatherers" when the farmers arrived in about 4,000BC, DNA shows that the two groups did not mix very much at all.
The British hunter-gatherers were almost completely replaced by the Neolithic farmers, apart from one group in western Scotland, where the Neolithic inhabitants had elevated local ancestry. This could have come down to the farmer groups simply having greater numbers.
"We don't find any detectable evidence at all for the local British western hunter-gatherer ancestry in the Neolithic farmers after they arrive," said co-author Dr Tom Booth, a specialist in ancient DNA from the Natural History Museum in London.
"That doesn't mean they don't mix at all, it just means that maybe their population sizes were too small to have left any kind of genetic legacy."
Co-author Professor Mark Thomas, from UCL, said he also favoured "a numbers game explanation".

P115bdL.jpg



Professor Thomas said the Neolithic farmers had probably had to adapt their practices to different climatic conditions as they moved across Europe. But by the time they reached Britain they were already "tooled up" and well-prepared for growing crops in a north-west European climate.
The study also analysed DNA from these British hunter-gatherers. One of the skeletons analysed was that of Cheddar Man, whose skeletal remains have been dated to 7,100BC.
He was the subject of a reconstruction unveiled at the Natural History Museum last year. DNA suggests that, like most other European hunter-gatherers of the time, he had dark skin combined with blue eyes.
Genetic analysis shows that the Neolithic farmers, by contrast, were paler-skinned with brown eyes and black or dark-brown hair.
Towards the end of the Neolithic, in about 2,450BC, the descendants of the first farmers were themselves almost entirely replaced when a new population - called the Bell Beaker people - migrated from mainland Europe. So Britain saw two extreme genetic shifts in the space of a few thousand years.
Prof Thomas said that this later event happened after the Neolithic population had been in decline for some time, both in Britain and across Europe. He cautioned against simplistic explanations invoking conflict, and said the shifts ultimately came down to "economic" factors, about which lifestyles were best suited to exploit the landscape.
Dr Booth explained: "It's difficult to see whether the two [genetic shifts] could have anything in common - they're two very different kinds of change. There's speculation that they're to some extent population collapses. But the reasons suggested for those two collapses are different, so it could just be coincidence."


I made the mistake of reading the comments following a BBC article quoting this. It turned into a hateful debate about modern immigration.

A lot of the British respondents kept on talking about how they are descendants of the "indigeneous" Britons. They didn't absorb at all that they are mostly the descendants of the third "mixed" steppe/MLN of Europe wave.

So, their ancestors were part of a "replacement" wave.

Of course, no one wants to be "replaced" or pushed aside in one's own country, but what happened in the past happened. It's no conspiracy to influence today's politics.
 
I made the mistake of reading the comments following a BBC article quoting this. It turned into a hateful debate about modern immigration.

A lot of the British respondents kept on talking about how they are descendants of the "indigeneous" Britons. They didn't absorb at all that they are mostly the descendants of the third "mixed" steppe/MLN of Europe wave.

So, their ancestors were part of a "replacement" wave.

Of course, no one wants to be "replaced" or pushed aside in one's own country, but what happened in the past happened. It's no conspiracy to influence today's politics.

Yes Angela.
We have to accept the reality of the facts as they are. Denial is a kind of escape and only generates hatred and resentment. When I performed my autosomic tests, I hoped to find the DNA of the Brazilian natives, more specifically the DNA of the KRENAK botocudos, who were the original inhabitants of the region where I live and where my first ancestors were established from 1750. The Botocudos did not at any time surrender to the Portuguese. They were killed or expelled from their lands. Today they live in isolated indigenous reserves in the northeast of my state, Minas Gerais. I was very disappointed when the results revealed that I do not have anything Amerindian. I had even scheduled a visit to a KRENAK reservation to meet my ancestral cousins. You can not even imagine my frustration when the results came and shouted loudly in my ears: You, Duarte, are a descendant of the killers. At first it was hard, but now I accept the reality of the facts, respecting and maintaining a great admiration for this beautiful and heroic people.

Qu0K57P.jpg

dBPrVvY.jpg

4B7y71j.jpg

I always keep my firm conviction of be a Luso-descendant and I will die saying it. But the reality of a descendant of settlers is not so simple. When the Portuguese arrived here in the gold rush in 1750, German, Italian, English, and other adventurers also arrived and I could never, categorically, say that there would not had been some sort of miscegenation with them. The Portuguese were the faithful representatives of the crown and were here to secure the share of the King. The Portuguese were alway traveling by inland and leaving their wifes alone for months.



My maternal grandfather is from the "PESSOA” family. This family emigrated from Northeast Brazil, a region that was colonized by the Dutch and was called "New Holland". He had green eyes and 1.86 meters tall (about 3ft 37 in). He was not much like a Mediterranean type, but always declared himself a descendant of Portuguese. So I'd think be better to me, ever, declare my ethnicity as Brazilian. No GEDmatch calculator will get, precisely, my real ethnic mix :)


PS: I ask apologizes for the long speech.
 
Yes Angela.
We have to accept the reality of the facts as they are. Denial is a kind of escape and only generates hatred and resentment. When I performed my autosomic tests, I hoped to find the DNA of the Brazilian natives, more specifically the DNA of the KRENAK botocudos, who were the original inhabitants of the region where I live and where my first ancestors were established from 1750. The Botocudos did not at any time surrender to the Portuguese. They were killed or expelled from their lands. Today they live in isolated indigenous reserves in the northeast of my state, Minas Gerais. I was very disappointed when the results revealed that I do not have anything Amerindian. I had even scheduled a visit to a KRENAK reservation to meet my ancestral cousins. You can not even imagine my frustration when the results came and shouted loudly in my ears: You, Duarte, are a descendant of the killers. At first it was hard, but now I accept the reality of the facts, respecting and maintaining a great admiration for this beautiful and heroic people.

Qu0K57P.jpg

dBPrVvY.jpg

4B7y71j.jpg

I always keep my firm conviction of be a Luso-descendant and I will die saying it. But the reality of a descendant of settlers is not so simple. When the Portuguese arrived here in the gold rush in 1750, German, Italian, English, and other adventurers also arrived and I could never, categorically, say that there would not had been some sort of miscegenation with them. The Portuguese were the faithful representatives of the crown and were here to secure the share of the King. The Portuguese were alway traveling by inland and leaving their wifes alone for months.



My maternal grandfather is from the "PESSOA” family. This family emigrated from Northeast Brazil, a region that was colonized by the Dutch and was called "New Holland". He had green eyes and 1.86 meters tall (about 3ft 37 in). He was not much like a Mediterranean type, but always declared himself a descendant of Portuguese. So I'd think be better to me, ever, declare my ethnicity as Brazilian. No GEDmatch calculator will get, precisely, my real ethnic mix :)


PS: I ask apologizes for the long speech.

No apologies necessary. I like to hear people's stories. :)

If it's any consolation, it may be one or more of them was in your family tree, but through random combination their ancestry disappeared.

They are indeed beautiful people. I remember when I first saw the film "The Mission". I wept through most of the second half, and it wouldn't leave me for days. What a disgrace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUy5D0RKvfk

That's how "replacement" can happen, and it isn't always pretty.
 
I made the mistake of reading the comments following a BBC article quoting this. It turned into a hateful debate about modern immigration.

A lot of the British respondents kept on talking about how they are descendants of the "indigeneous" Britons. They didn't absorb at all that they are mostly the descendants of the third "mixed" steppe/MLN of Europe wave.

So, their ancestors were part of a "replacement" wave.

Of course, no one wants to be "replaced" or pushed aside in one's own country, but what happened in the past happened. It's no conspiracy to influence today's politics.

I have some very good friends who are into Welsh independence and all things Celtic. Good people, smart and educated but you cannot tell them that the Celts were not the original inhabitants of Britain. They just wont absorb that.
 

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