Beaker folk features in modern day Europe!?

[Northener]

From earlier findings of Gerhard (1965) and Louwe Kooijmans (1974) until the state of the art research about the Bell Beakers, the description of their phenotype is very clear: 'tall, robust and most of all broadheadend (brachycephalic) and with a flat occiput.'

My features are exact these but in a more exaggerated form. When I look at my autosomal DNA I see that for ten generation (1024 persons) my ancestors came from the Northeastern part of the Netherlands and Northwestern Germany. When I go 15 generations (more than 16000 persons) back I see besides a Mediterranean influence (due to the Spanish Army...) this still is the case, so that makes it for over 90% Northwest European.

And most of all these regions correspondence with the settlements of the Beaker folk in the Netherlands and Germany. The Bell Beaker folk are often associated with haplotype R1b, in my region over 60% of the men have this haploptype. The Bell Beaker must have had significant influence on the genepool in the region of my ancestors.

So am I jumping to conclusions when I state that my features are in some way related to the Beaker folk? Can the 'phenotype echo' of the Beaker folk be so clear in modern day Europe?

Are there suggestions about the background of the brachycephalic and flat occiput features? Are these originated in Portugal and Spain (most probably heartland Beakerfolk) and spread (and blended) into (North-) Western Europe?

I'd like to know your opinions about this, thanks in advance!

 

[MOESAN]

We know almost nothing about the physical aspect of the very BBs of Iberia, waiting results of new studies running on just now. We knwo 'dinaric' types were present in Southern Iberia even before BBs times, since the Chalcolithic, they formed a minority in the allover pop. The BBs remnants studied to date are Northern Europe-Germany-UK ones. And the Round Barrows Beakers of Britain are a mixt where true 'dinaric' types (not so robust before crossings, spite very tall) are recently mixed with numerous so called 'borreby' types and rarer 'corded' types according to Coon. The Worms region in Germany shew a more dominantly 'dinaric' type', close enough by average to 'dinarics' of Kybros (Cyprus) of the Chalco and later. I doubt someone in Northern Netherlands could think he is a direct descendant of the BBs: 'dinaric' (I saw some planoccipital brachys among Frisian too) is today a weak component among people of these regions. Resurgence of some features in individuals is normal by genetic hazard, but the BBs were never the majority of the pop in these lands, I think, rather an elite.
I avow I don't know if a link has been established between typical craniometric 'dinarics' and the Y-R1b haplos. I would think rather no special link but I can be wrong. (by example, some specific lignages could be linked with 'dinaric' types but I cannot know without scientific publications). Allways the same question: who were the first genuine BBs? And which lands they came across?

 

[Nik]

R1b could have picked up the Dinaric type while passing by the Balkans. Nowadays the most Dinaroid regions are almost entire E-V13 and J2b among Albanians, and I2a and E-V13 among Montenegrins and Serbs. R1b shows rather a link to the Alpinoid subrace centered around the lowlands and seldom in the hills.