What does genetics say about the origin of Germanic people?

[Ygorcs]

Germanic language didn't exist in the north of Europe before 500 BC, other than genetic evidences that we are talking about it here, we should also trace the Germanic culture to know where this language was spoken before 500 BC.

Tell me one sole scientifically sound reason to claim that the Germanic language didn't exist in the north of Europe before 500 B.C. And please don't tell me that it is because Proto-Germanic has been estimated to have been spoken around 500 B.C. duh!, because that would be a confession of total ignorance about even the most basic aspects of historical linguistics.

 

[Cyrus]

I meant that chronology matters, so the direction of the genetic flow is obvious if autosomal admixtures and parental markers are disbuted in time and space and appear first in some place and only much later pop up in other place with the same genetic characteristics not just found earlier elsewhere, but also derived from earlier admixtures and lineages also found in that other place. If R1b-U106 appears together with a previously nonexistant European-derived Steppe_MLBA ancestry in a place (Pakistan, Afghanistan) only centuries after it was found in Europe, and there is a striking chronological concomitance between the arrival of that haplogroup and the arrival of a clearly European genetic signal that didn't exist there before... then, well, what do you think that suggests to us? Of course, that U106 arrived in South-Central Asia in the BA and as late as the IA, just like other haplogroups and just like the BA steppe admixture, and that it came via Central Asia from Europe. If you don't understand even that, then it's a lost case, indeed.

And no, U106 is not a literal "Germanic haplogroup" since its inception. There isn't such a thing. It's just a haplogroup that, probably because of several factors of genetic drift, became particularly common in the population that would later form the Proto-Germanic speakers. U106 is correlated with Germanic speakers, but it is obvious that haplogroups are not languages, and people have always moved and shifted their language, so males with U106 could've spoken any number of languages in the past (though probably not most of them).

As you said haplogroups are not languages, so it is possible male with U106 were originally a non-Indo-European people in the north of Europe, they migrated to the Caspian steppe and adopted an IE language and then they came to Iran and created proto-Germanic language and then came back to Europe. What is wrong about it?

 

[Cyrus]

Tell me one sole scientifically sound reason to claim that the Germanic language didn't exist in the north of Europe before 500 B.C. And please don't tell me that it is because Proto-Germanic has been estimated to have been spoken around 500 B.C. duh!, because that would be a confession of total ignorance about even the most basic aspects of historical linguistics.

OK, for example I believe θ(th) didn't exist in the north of Europe before the arrival of proto-Germanic language in 500 BC, now please show evidences that this sound existed.

 

[Ygorcs]

As you said haplogroups are not languages, so it is possible male with U106 were originally a non-Indo-European people in the north of Europe, they migrated to the Caspian steppe and adopted an IE language and then they came to Iran and created proto-Germanic language and then came back to Europe. What is wrong about it?

Answer: lack of any evidence, especially if you consider - as you should - the chronology of events. Science cannot be based on mere hypothetical possibility. Your hypothesis is predicated on an increasingly flimsy argument, which is that Proto-Germanic language and culture were imposed onto much of Northern Europe, but that left negligible or nonexistant impact in the overall ancestry of the population (since BA or IA Iranian admixture really does not exist in ancient or modern DNA samples from that region).

 

[Cyrus]

Answer: lack of any evidence, especially if you consider - as you should - the chronology of events. Science cannot be based on mere hypothetical possibility. Your hypothesis is predicated on an increasingly flimsy argument, which is that Proto-Germanic language and culture were imposed onto much of Northern Europe, but that left negligible or nonexistant impact in the overall ancestry of the population (since BA or IA Iranian admixture really does not exist in ancient or modern DNA samples from that region).

Would you please tell me what BA or IA Iranian admixture does not exist in ancient or modern DNA samples from Northern Europe? People who live in the west of Iran and north of Europe have these haplogroups: R1b, R1a, I, E1b1b, J, Q, G, N. And almost all European haplogroups are subclades of Iranian ones.

 

[Cyrus]

What about haplogroup J2 in Scandinavia:

It doesn't seem to be J2b:

What is it?

 

[hrvclv]

Here is what experienced genetics buffs think of the matter :

This is how things look in a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of Northern European genetic variation based on my Global25 test. Strikingly, Nordic_MN_B, SWE_Battle_Axe, Nordic_LN and Nordic_BA more or less recapitulate the cluster made up of present-day Swedish samples.

From this page : http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/05/who-were-people-of-nordic-bronze-age.html

In plain English : there has been NO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN THE GENETIC MAKEUP OF GERMANIC POPULATIONS SINCE THE BRONZE AGE. Their DNA today is basically what it was 3000 years ago. All of it locally produced.

No... no Iranian introgression of any kind!! Get it?

 

[Ygorcs]

OK, for example I believe θ(th) didn't exist in the north of Europe before the arrival of proto-Germanic language in 500 BC, now please show evidences that this sound existed.

What? Do you think a sound must be brought to some region from outside for it to start existing due to some sound change in a given language? There is no proof at all that /th/ existed or DID NOT EXIST (don't you believe it existed? So what? who cares about your personal beliefs? This is about evidence, and you have none to make any sort of claim. Do you even have any evidence whatsoever of languages spoken in the Early Iron Age in North Europe? No? Then don't create fantasies in your mind). By the way, it is obvious that it should be enough that (pre-)Proto-Germanic had developed this sound, other languages don't need to have had the same phoneme.

But all of that is in fact completely irrelevant, a non-issue, because sound changes bring new phonemes to a certain language due to the internal dynamics of language evolution, with one phoneme slowly but surely changing more and more its actual realization until it becomes a new phoneme. New sounds appear and disappear all the time, they don't need to be the same already found in languages of the same area. The /th/ of Castillian Spanish only appeared around the 17th century from earlier /ts/. It did not exist in the languages of the Iberian Peninsula before that. Or do you think it was necessary for Icelandic or English people to migrate to Spain to "teach" the locals about the phoneme /th/? Man, your knowledge of linguistics is not just extremely shallow, it even lacks plain common sense.

P.S.: By the way, reconstructed Proto-Italic had the /th/ sound. It was probably spoken originally in Central Europe.

 

[Ygorcs]

Would you please tell me what BA or IA Iranian admixture does not exist in ancient or modern DNA samples from Northern Europe? People who live in the west of Iran and north of Europe have these haplogroups: R1b, R1a, I, E1b1b, J, Q, G, N. And almost all European haplogroups are subclades of Iranian ones.

I talk about admixture and you reply talking about Y-DNA haplogroups, and the most upstream forms of those haplogroups generically? Do you know what autosomal admixture means? Honestly I can't even take your post seriously any longer...

Besides, it's obvious that most European Y-DNA subclades of haplogroups do not derive directly from clades originated in Iran and expanded from there, but from clades that already existed in Neolithic "Old Europe", in Neolithic Anatolia or in the Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age Pontic-Caspian steppe. Most of the Y-DNA haplogroups you keep talking about were already well established in Europe by the Copper Age or even before that. There is little direct relationship between the most common subclades of haplogroups of Northern Europe and the most common subclades of haplogroups of Iran, and some of these clearly came from Europe and Central Asia to Iran, not the other way around. Contrary to most of Northern Europe after the Early Bronze Age, Iran did experience a significant genetic change between the Late Neolithic and the modern era.

Sorry, repeating your mantra countless times won't make it true.

 

[Cyrus]

Here is what experienced genetics buffs think of the matter :



From this page : http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/05/who-were-people-of-nordic-bronze-age.html

In plain English : there has been NO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN THE GENETIC MAKEUP OF GERMANIC POPULATIONS SINCE THE BRONZE AGE. Their DNA today is basically what it was 3000 years ago. All of it locally produced.

No... no Iranian introgression of any kind!! Get it?

Instead of these ultra-nationalist claims, please reply my questions, Eupedia website itself says haplogroup Q came in the last 3000 years, if you believe J2 dates back to more than 3000 years ago, you should explain how? Haplogroup R1a and R1b existed in other lands too, it is certainly possible that they came back from other lands too.

 

[halfalp]

There is not really ultra-nationalist claims here, everyone is saying what we have analyzed as amateur for years now. About y-dna modern distribution, J2b is probably the closest thing that would fit your hypothesis of a prehistoric lineage coming from Iran to Europe in Late Neolithic / Chalcolithic.

 

[Cyrus]

There is not really ultra-nationalist claims here, everyone is saying what we have analyzed as amateur for years now. About y-dna modern distribution, J2b is probably the closest thing that would fit your hypothesis of a prehistoric lineage coming from Iran to Europe in Late Neolithic / Chalcolithic.

It is at least good that you say there could be also a migration from Iran to Europe, it is the first time that I hear it in this forum but Scandinavian one doesn't seem to be J2b.

 

[Cyrus]

It seems no one wants to talk about haplogroup J2 in Scandinavia, I just found something:

J1a-FGC58748FGC58748/Z43008 formed 2600 ybp > J1a-FGC58748* id:YF11104 SWE

What does it mean?

 

[hrvclv]

Present-day distribution :

J2 in Germany : 4.5%
J2 in Sweden : 2.5%
J2 in Norway : 0.5%

J1 in Germany : close to 0
J1 in Norway and sweden : 0

Wow... that's surely enough to change the language.

As for Germanic-oriented nationalist claims, from me, in central France???!! It takes some stretch of the imagination, doesn't it?

You are T-ROLLING THIS FORUM. I hope everyone will just give up answering you, and let this ABSURD thread die its natural death.

 

[spruithean]

Would you please tell me what BA or IA Iranian admixture does not exist in ancient or modern DNA samples from Northern Europe? People who live in the west of Iran and north of Europe have these haplogroups: R1b, R1a, I, E1b1b, J, Q, G, N. And almost all European haplogroups are subclades of Iranian ones.

The admixture we are referring to would be components such as Iran_Neolithic, Iran_Chalcolithic, Iran_BA, Iran_IA, etc. We don't find any of those components in Scandinavia or Germanic populations. Various Migration period and Medieval Period Germanic populations plot quite closely with Nordic BA and associated samples. Uniparental markers are part of the story, but autosomal DNA tells you more in regards to a person's origins.

Now the second part right there, that is a BOLD claim, where is your evidence for that? Let me guess, Grugni et al 2012? The same study we've discussed 100 times over in this thread? The very same study which didn't test BEYOND the SNPs they listed? Come on. You can't make those claims when the specifications of a paper limited their depth of haplogroup testing (see the list of SNPs they tested). Besides several of those Haplogroups you mention PREDATE Indo-Europeans and are found in Europe as early as the Paleolithic period (I-M170 clades most notably), again we have very old samples of I, I2, G, I1, etc in Europe ranging from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic prior to the migration of the IE people. Now the I1 and I2 samples can easily be explained without really extravagant theories and the paper (Grugni) specifically calls these lineages (I-M170/I2/I1) "West Eurasian" or "European".
In terms of haplogroup Q, I refer you to the study I linked previous, and again the limited SNP depth of Grugni et al is not definitive of anything in terms of phylogeny of Iranian or European haplogroups because "low resolution" haplogroups without actually getting close to a terminal SNP can lead to really broad statements.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00438-017-1363-8

Also, Eupedia's page on Haplogroup Q has a subheading for Q in Scandinavia and it mentions an early sample of Q-L56 in Khvalynsk culture. Which is the precursor to Yamnaya. The specific branch of Q in Scandinavia is from a distinctly European lineage. Haplogroup Q more likely originates in Siberia where it expanded with a great amount of Q being quite common among indigenous people of North America.
Again, it is not appropriate to claim that these Iranian haplogroups discussed in Grugni et al are all predecessors to European haplogroups without actually knowing what the real terminal SNPs are for these various modern Iranian samples. We know from private testing that Iranian haplogroups are quite a bit downstream of the ones featured in Grugni et al. You can see examples at FamilyTreeDNA's Iranian DNA Project these can be seen via the tables of results and SNPs they provide. https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/iranian-y-dna/dna-results
In regards to U106 and non-IE... that's unlikely. We find U106 in the samples I mentioned like Lille Beddinge, Sweden (Allentoft et al 2015), Únětice, Czech Rep. (Olalde 2018), De Tuithoorn, NL (Olalde 2017) and these are dated to the Bronze Age timeframe. Haplogroups in Europe that could be considered non-IE, are those that were there early on from the Paleolithic onward, I, C, G, F*, etc.

What about haplogroup J2 in Scandinavia:

It doesn't seem to be J2b:

What is it?

A specific J2 lineage. J2 is quite old and probably associated with the diffusion of domesticated cattle and goats, so not exactly IE and doesn't correlate well with any Bronze Age Migration out of Gutium. Like all haplogroups J2 is old and it has many subclades all with specific geographic origins. The map at Eupedia is quite all encompassing, because it is looking at OVERALL distribution of the paragroup of J2.
For your most recent post https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-FGC58748/
It's a very specific lineage of J2 which quite downstream from the paragroup J2. This lineage looks European with related collateral branches above this node having a distinct Balkan to Central Europe spread.

 

[Cyrus]

Present-day distribution :

J2 in Germany : 4.5%
J2 in Sweden : 2.5%
J2 in Norway : 0.5%

J1 in Germany : close to 0
J1 in Norway and sweden : 0

Wow... that's surely enough to change the language.

As for Germanic-oriented nationalist claims, from me, in central France???!! It takes some stretch of the imagination, doesn't it?

You are T-ROLLING THIS FORUM. I hope everyone will just give up answering you, and let this ABSURD thread die its natural death.

J2 in Luristan: 17%
J1 in Luristan: 2%

As I have said several times the most important haplogroups are R1b and R1a which have the highest frequency in Luristan.

J2a, Q-M346(L56) and other haplogroups actually prove there was a migration from Iran to Scandinavia.

I didn't say you are nationalist but your link claimed nationalist things (a pure race with no change in the last 3000 years!!), anyway I already know what I wanted to know, so it really doesn't matter other ones reply or not.

 

[spruithean]

Jeez, no one has said pure race. That's you misunderstanding data, yet again. You are really t-rolling this board now, it is quite obvious.

Read my post above for J2 and Q. They are specific lineages found in Scandinavia that belong to European branches. They are not evidence of anything. You have a tendency to link things without actually doing the research. This thread is tired as it is the same discussion all the time that leads absolutely nowhere because you fail to see what anyone is saying in favour of accusing people of "ultra-nationalism", that's rich coming from you quite honestly. We constantly circle back around to the same 2012 citation that discusses modern distribution in a modern country. So because ample evidence and strong counter arguments have been given through evidence with support from ancient samples and very indepth genetics papers you still refuse to see the writing on the wall here, and instead accuse people of nationalism. Incredible.

What other haplogroups? Are you citing Grugni et al again? The very same study which only tested a limited amount of SNPs and did not provide any higher clade resolution because of the list of SNPs they tested? Yet when we look at private studies we find very specific lineages in the Iranian DNA project.

This thread is essentially a revolving door.

 

[Cyrus]

For your most recent post https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-FGC58748/
It's a very specific lineage of J2 which quite downstream from the paragroup J2. This lineage looks European with related collateral branches above this node having a distinct Balkan to Central Europe spread.

Armenia is not in Balkan or Central Asia, that is really very interesting, as I said in the thread about Indo-European phonology, Persian sources also talk about Gutian migration to Armenia. Skjoldr (Skayordi in the Persian/Armenian sources) was the first Gutian king of Armenia (Urartu/Heorot) who helped Cyaxares in the conquest of Assyrian empire.

 

[spruithean]

I'm well aware that Armenia is not in the Balkans. Are you aware that Europeans were active in Armenia since the Byzantine Empire? You are aware that Armenians settled in Europe throughout the middle ages for various reasons, yes? Or will this thread always jump to your theory instead of first looking at more recent movements of people?


Do you have evidence for Skjöldr being Skayordi? Besides a loose linguistic argument? Evidence for Urartu being Heorot? Or again, more wishful thinking?

 

[Cyrus]

Jeez, no one has said pure race. That's you misunderstanding data, yet again. You are really t-rolling this board now, it is quite obvious.

Read my post above for J2 and Q. They are specific lineages found in Scandinavia that belong to European branches. They are not evidence of anything. You have a tendency to link things without actually doing the research. This thread is tired as it is the same discussion all the time that leads absolutely nowhere because you fail to see what anyone is saying in favour of accusing people of "ultra-nationalism", that's rich coming from you quite honestly. We constantly circle back around to the same 2012 citation that discusses modern distribution in a modern country. So because ample evidence and strong counter arguments have been given through evidence with support from ancient samples and very indepth genetics papers you still refuse to see the writing on the wall here, and instead accuse people of nationalism. Incredible.

What other haplogroups? Are you citing Grugni et al again? The very same study which only tested a limited amount of SNPs and did not provide any higher clade resolution because of the list of SNPs they tested? Yet when we look at private studies we find very specific lineages in the Iranian DNA project.

This thread is essentially a revolving door.

I should really thank you, you helped too much about my theory, the fact is I didn't know anything about genetic relations between people who lived in the west of Iran and Scandinavians, if you look at my first posts in this thread I firstly thought it probably related to haplogroup I! The fact is for many years I thought there are just cultural relation between two lands but I already know many things about genetic relations too, thanks again.