Urnfield culture was a religious-societal-technological model and phenomenon in the first place. It did most definitely encompass different ethnic groups, but its origin go back exactly, to a large part, to the E-V13 Daco-Thracians, because these people in the Eastern Carpathians were the ones which continuously or in some cases again and again, spread cremation rites and other related customs which spread with Urnfield.
Now what was the origin of Urnfield culture? It was the meeting of these E-V13 Daco-Thracians with R-L2 Tumulus culture people in the Eastern Carpathian region, along the Tisza. When the Tumulus culture people invaded the Carpathians basin, they were stopped by the local cremating people at the border and Suciu de Sus as the main group began to interact with the Tumulus culture people in the Carpathian Tumulus culture group/Egyek etc. The result were culturally more mixed people like Cehalut group, Berkesz-Demecser etc. which combined various interregional influences.
In the end, the Tumulus culture people got converted and the Eastern Carpathian and North Carpathian groups started to adopt some customs in common with the TC people. So we had at the end result groups which were deeply connected culturally, religiously, ideologically, technologically, but remained ethnic groups apart.
This is very evident if looking at the Eastern Urnfield groups of Lusatians (I2 dominated), Kyjatice (so far two J2a) and Gáva-Holigrady (I expect E-V13) vs. the Central and Western Urnfield groups which were either mixed with Lusatians or fully R-L51/R-L2, like the Middle Danubian UF group or Knoviz.
We see this later in Vekerzug too, namely a complete mix of Lusatian, Kyjatice and Gáva elements beside TC. TC in this context likely represents Italo-Celtic related Kentum speakers, whereas Lusatians are more likely to represent a later extinct group of people between Germanic and Baltoslavic, whereeas Gáva-Holigrady likely represents a Daco-Thracian element. In Italy we have within the UF horizons the Venetic people as the main IE carrying group, but they interacted with local Etruscans resulting in their "conversion" and participation in the UF sphere.
The most likely scenario at this point is that E-V13 was present in Epi-Lengyel, Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztur, Petresti or a subset of Tripolye-Cucuteni. We now have evidence for E-L618 being present in Lengyel, Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztur and Tripolye-Cucuteni. Tripolye-Cucuteni is also highly interesting, because they were among the first to practise the kind of "invisible" burials we later see in Daco-Thracian/Thracian Hallstatt derived groups again and again, with cremation and scattered remains. Petresti is the only group not sampled yet, therefore it is a big unknown.
What supports Tripolye-Cucuteni is that they were Indoeuropeanised early on, within Usatovo-Gorodsk, from where we have the first E-L618 from a likely Indoeuropean context!
Therefore the question is whether E-V13 was Indoeuropeanised in the Tisza-Transylvanian area, or whether it already came in with the Indoeuropeans which transformed the region to the following Cotofeni horizon.
In any case, I think that E-V13 was a minority group in the already mixed/IE Cotofeni group and these were the Pre-Thracians. There are options for a later Indoeuropeanisation from Epi-Corded groups (which contributed to Makó for example) or Füzesabony-Otomani etc., but an early IE already in the Western steppe/forest areas or in Transylvania-Tisza region appears to be the most likely scenario. Therefore E-V13 was highly IE at the point it started to grow and branch again, which is around 3.000 BC, and it must have been IE by about 2.400 BC. Because any later point in time is hard to align with the fact that E-V13 has a growth and pattern on its own, without other haplogroups growing within the same E-V13/Proto-Thracian population.
Therefore the logical conclusion is:
- Early Indoeuropeanisation in the Copper Age, either in the Western steppe or Transylvania-Tisza-Danube region
- Fast growth within the Pre-Thracian people, by 2.400 the E-V13 clan-tribal group had largely replaced all other haplogroups which might have been present initially in this still small but already more sizeable Pre-/Proto-Thracian population.
I don't think so, because the local people of Cotofeni did defend themselves from Yamnaya. The earlier IE influence on the region was coming from Usatovo-Gorodsk and Cernovoda. And these groups seem to have been highly mixed (from Tripolye-Cucuteni!), but with R1a being the dominant IE lineage and part of the corded decorated Western steppe pottery horizon.
You see this zone of interaction between Usatovo-Gorodsk, Cernovada, Cotofeni and Vucedol and its from this context, not Yamnaya proper, from which the already IE E-V13 Pre-/Proto-Thracian population is supposed to have emerged:
Therefore the closer relation, in my opinion, is with Corded Ware people than with Yamnaya proper.
Illyrians were not E-V13, they were dominated by R-Z2103 (early) and J-L283 (later).
The question remains how the E-V13 Pre-Thracians and the Proto-Illyrians being connected. This is not easy to answer but goes back to Vucedol and the Maros culture. The Maros culture was a highly mixed culture and population, and we already know they had admixture from the ancestral group to Encrusted Pottery (= Somogyvar-Vinkovci), but also new Yamnaya input and of course these already regional elements in Maros.
Now these regional elements in Maros are probably some of the closest autosomal relatives we have for early Pre-Thracians and we also know that Vucedol did influence crucial East Carpathian groups like Nyirseg, which might have been a core group for E-V13/Proto-Thracian people. Therefore if there is any relationship of J-L283-Illyrians with E-V13-Thracians, it dates back to this period, to the period of the Maros culture the latest and more probable to Vucedol. But I don't think even that is highly likely. After Vucedol and Maros, there was no relationship until they both met in the Balkans again, fought and mixed with each other.
We can't be 100 % sure about the Dorians and Macedonians, Northern Greek tribes, but the Mycenaeans might have had some migrants with E-V13, coming as artisans, traders, mercenaries, slaves etc. to their states, but they themselves were not E-V13.
In the first century BC E-V13 was all over the place, but the bulk was still among Thracians and Dacians.
After the Urnfield migrations E-V13 was established in the Balkans, but there were mutliple later migrations, especially from the Dacians, to increase its numbers and spread new subclades.
Based on the E-V13 phylogenetic pattern, I think that Dacians were well above 90 % E-V13 and made up the bulk of the E-V13 population in Antiquity.
The answer is simply that if it would have been a Dacian continuity, there would be no Romanian language but a Dacian derived dialect. However, this is due to the fact that both local Dacians in the Danubian provinces, resettled Dacians from the Dacia and newly arriving Dacian tribals at the end of the Empire were all subjected to Romanisation processes. Like every newcomer, even if there was a constant flow, was still in the minority and came into still existing Roman structures. I'm however pretty confident that with the exception of some Roman colonies and urban centres, E-V13 was still very much dominant North of the Danube after the Roman conquest.
We will get some Dacian Roman samples, which are highly mixed according to the abstract, once we get those, we will see how the "most Roman" of samples look like. Because that are these. Just like the Ciumbrud group, these samples represent the peak Roman influence, as Ciumbrud represents the peak Scythian influence. If even those most Romanised people were still very much Dacian, we know the Roman impact was low. If they were highly mixed and Romanised, the influence might have been bigger even beyond the colonies and centres.
Well, in such instances you always need to subtract the obvious newcomers, in this case for the Romans the Slavic contribution and look which haplogroup is dominant then.
One of the Romanian and earlier Dacian absolute centres was through time Oltenia. And Oltenia has according to this statistic a frequency of 16 percent E-V13.
However, about 50 % of the haplogroups, or more, are Slavic and Germanic. If we do simple maths, this means you can roughly double E-V13 for Oltenia, say a bit came with Slavs too, this makes about 30 % E-V13 in regional Vlach population and while its still no absolute majority, it is clearly the most common haplogroup for the Pre-Slavic locals.
Statistics for Romania: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...M8NNxZ5kyhKU/edit?gid=101641811#gid=101641811
And clearly, the Vlachs were not Dacians, but Romanised-mixed people with a strong Dacian contribution. That's a difference. We can say that about every 3rd early Romanised male for the Romanian core regions was E-V13.
That E-V13 was central for the Vlach expansion can be seen in the fact, that even in areas which are overwhelmingly Slavic and where other "Southern" haplogroups go radically down, E-V13 remains still in the double digits and being the most important Carpatho-Balkan haplogroup by far.
E.g. in Rep. of Moldova, E-V13 is at 14 %, but if subtracting the clearly foreign lineages, it is actually more dominant in the remaining core Romanised Vlach group, than even in Oltenia, making up almost 50 %, while J2 makes up just 1/3 of the E-V13 frequency.
This shows that the early/core Northern Vlach groups are likely to have been more strongly dominated by E-V13, similar to some Bulgarian regions, unlike the more Illyrian-Roman mixed later populations in the South/South West. Whereas other Southern haplogroups vary much more greatly within Romania (e.g. J2 varies tremendously from one region to another), E-V13 remains stable at above 30 % after subtracting foreign haplogroups. This means it was at the core of the Northern Vlach expansion, showing how strong of an influence the Daco-Thracians had on their people.
