I'm not sure I'd call 15-20% WHG showing up eventually in LN farmers in Europe is nearly as important as percentages ranging from 55% down to 25-30% for steppe admixture. Plus, that 15-20% admixture would have come from HG women as well.
Its the same as it is in Sardinia and their steppe contribution. If the incoming conquerors and/or colonists were already mixed with a similar component, it might not look that much at first sight, but if you consider e.g. Southern French or North East Italian/Dalmatian coming in, which were already heavily EEF mixed steppe, this means it was a big shift, no complete replacement at all, but a big shift. The same can be said for the Middle Neolithic. We are not dealing with an almost complete replacement, not even the steppe people did this in most places (exception: British Isles), but how big it really was will be proven with future, more detailed and fine grained data and research.
Also, from what I can tell, we're seeing I2a showing up relatively early in western Europe where there's no indication of "pastoralism" before the arrival of steppe people to my knowledge; domesticated animals, yes, and maybe some transhumance as all farmers practice, but not pastoralism. Yes, there's I2a in the border areas of central Europe, among people who might have traded animals to the steppe and maybe even did some initial pastoralism, but I doubt it was a Europe wide phenomenon, or at least I've seen no papers indicating that it is.
@Riverman,
"TRB (Funnel Beaker Culture) and GAC (Globular Amphora Culture) are the two most obvious cases of a partial to full takeover of forager clans from the borderzone. They became the dominant element in the Neolithic community and there was a shift to a more warlike and agro-pastoralist way of life in the North."
Could you please provide academic papers supporting this contention.
The quotation and the following lines from the Sardinian paper make it clear - if Sardinia itself could prove it with more data: Intial LBK and Cardial Ware vs. Middle Neolithic almost throughout Europe -> big shift to I2a and WHG. If you count all known samples so far, I2a was present among predominantely G2a communities indeed, but at what percentage? Not much stronger than that of E, C, H etc. Yet in the Middle Neolithic, you have a dominance of I2a in Britain, Iberia, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Pannonia and some G2a still standing on their own in just a few places and as a minority element in TRB & Co.
Globular Amphora were, like all Neolithic people in Europe carefully looked at so far, patriarchal and patrilocal. Gimbutas even believed that they were directly related to Corded Ware, which is not that far fetched even from their skeletons, yet they, as you know, they had no significant genetic influence at all. They were cattle herders and used animal remains for their burials. Wikipedia writes about them:
The inclusion of animals in the grave is seen as an intrusive cultural element by
Marija Gimbutas. The practice of
suttee, hypothesized by Gimbutas is also seen as a highly intrusive cultural element. The supporters of the
Kurgan hypothesis point to these distinctive burial practices and state this may represent one of the earliest migrations of
Indo-Europeans into Central Europe. In this context and given its area of occupation, this culture has been claimed as the underlying culture of a
Germanic-
Baltic-
Slavic continuum.
This was the emergence of the hunter-warrior tradition from the forager cultures, which transitioned easier and more successfully to a more pastoralist way of life and economy, which was also better suited for the Northern European habitat. I think we can say, with little doubt, that these agro-pastoralists influenced, one way or another, the Corded Ware people and the steppe people as a whole, but particularly those of the forest steppe. They were quite alike, in many ways, even though GAC was overwhelmingly from EEF, especially on the maternal side.
But the WHG shift is clearly noticeable, for convenience, Wikipedia again:
Of the eight samples of
Y-DNA extracted, all were found to belong to
I2a-L801. The fifteen samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to various subclades of
T,
H,
J,
K,
HV. The skeletons were determined to have about 70% Neolithic farmer ancestry and 30%
Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry, meaning they had no
steppe ancestry. The archaeological and genetic evidence collected from the grave indicated that the Globular Amphora culture was
patriarchal and kinship-oriented, which appears to have been the norm for Late Neolithic communities in
Central Europe.
[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globular_Amphora_culture
The shift was on the way even before TRB, but in TRB we find the climax of an evolution. I think this quotation is very informative:
It therefore seems that we are involved here with a
subsistence (agriculture vs. hunting/gathering) and cultural
(Neolithic vs. Late Mesolithic) dualism, enriched by
transitional phenomena (Paraneolithic). The dualism of this
kind began to change around 4000 BC due to the appearance
of the Funnel Beaker culture (TRB). Over the first half of
the 4th millennium BC, the TRB gradually encompassed
Southern Scandinavia, the northern part of Central Europe
from the Netherlands to the Polish lowlands, and – something
which is at times neglected – considerable areas of the
southern, upland part of Central Europe. Its “bearers” settled
all the ecological zones and not only those which were the
most favourable for farming. Roughly speaking, with this
archaeological culture most of the territory of Poland came
irreversibly within the orbit of the Neolithic. This is why the
spread of the TRB may be referred to as the second stage
of neolithisation (Figure 2) which finally proved to be even
more important than the first one.
On the other hand, TRB populations surely did not
encompass the entire territory under discussion. There still
existed groups whose subsistence was based on hunting
and gathering. As in the previous period, they frequently
possessed, adopted, and adapted selected Neolithic elements,
in the first place pottery. They consistently and firmly resisted,
however, the adoption of farming and animal husbandry as
basic sources of food. They should still be referred to as the
Paraneolithic (Figure 2). Interestingly, abundant remains of
groups of this kind have been discovered primarily in North-
East Poland but also locally within the formal range of the
TRB. Paraneolithic societies were incorporated into the
agricultural formation only during the Late Neolithic (into
the Globular Amphorae and Corded Ware cultures) and the
Early Bronze Age (into the Trzciniec culture?), i.e. within the
3rd millennium BC and the first half of the 2nd millennium BC.
[h=1]
Neolithisation in Polish Territories: Different Patterns, Different Perspectives, and Marek Zvelebil’s Ideas[/h]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316291685_Neolithisation_in_Polish_Territories_Different_Patterns_Different_Perspectives_and_Marek_Zvelebil's_Ideas
This development which started in Central Europe, found its way in TRB and culminated in GAC was brought to its final stage with the steppe people. Because they introduced the innovations which were needed to finally colonise most of Europe up to the arctic and deserts with a higher, producing culture. The initial farming societies which came with their toolkit from the Near East were not as good in crossing the ecological barrier. Because of this, the borderzone could develop its own adaptations under the influence of foragers or "paraneolithic" cultures like in the paper.
Their biggest advantages were less dependence from wild food (hunting, fishing, gathering), yet still a protein rich diet (milk products!) and greater mobility than both crop farmers with small droves, less animals and foragers too.
But the change did go much further, it reached Iberia and Sardinia, but also Pannonia and the Balkans. I don't want to search long, so I stick with Wiki for this. A survivor of the older layer was for quite some time the Lengyel culture, yet:
It was associated with the cover-term
Old Europe by
Marija Gimbutas, though may have been undergone "kurganization" by the
Proto-Indo-Europeans and become integrated into the successor
Globular Amphora culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lengyel_culture
So we have a culture which was under pressure from the North, from GAC, and started to become more agro-pastoralist, warlike etc. too. Like later in the Baden culture under the influence of warlike agro-pastoralits from both directions. Like with the steppe expansion, even if some groups were not overwhelmed, that was because they adapted themselves while trying to make alliances with steppe groups. I think that's the way various male lineages and non-IE languages survived well into historical times. Those were adapting in time and only disappeared later, with the next big waves from the Northern agro-pastoralists, in Roman times.
The data from France in particular will prove the changes: First G2a initial Neolithisation, then 2nd stage with I2a spread and increased WHG, third the spread of BB and R1b. I'm not saying complete replacement or replacement at all everywhere, but the Europe-wide shift will be very noticeable on every ancient DNA map with more data. The spread won't be brought into accordance with the idea of local Neolithic communities assimilating only single forager males. This happened too, from the earliest period on, but the big shift, with the additional increase of WHG, was brought by the general shift in subsistence and way of life, it was the spread of a new culture, most likely people, even if from within the Neolithic framwork.