Neolithic migration was family-based, Bronze Age invasion was male-dominated

Tomenable

Well-known member
Messages
5,457
Reaction score
1,359
Points
113
Location
Poland
Ethnic group
Polish
Y-DNA haplogroup
R1b-L617
mtDNA haplogroup
W6a
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/30/078360

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/09/30/078360.full.pdf

Abstract:

(...) Dramatic events in human prehistory, such as the spread of agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and the Late Neolithic/Bronze Age (LNBA) migration from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people that lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations. We use a mechanistic admixture model to compare the sex-specifically-inherited X chromosome to the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 LNBA human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggested by the patrilocality of many agricultural populations, we find no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic. For later migrations from the Pontic steppe during the LNBA, however, we estimate a dramatic male bias, with ~5-14 migrating males for every migrating female. We find evidence of ongoing, primarily male, migration from the steppe to central Europe over a period of multiple generations, with a level of sex bias that excludes a pulse migration during a single generation. The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest a view of differing cultural histories in which the Neolithic transition was driven by mass migration of both males and females in roughly equal numbers, perhaps whole families, whereas the later Bronze Age migration and cultural shift were instead driven by male migration, potentially connected to new technology and conquest. (...)

Davidski's comments:

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/09/male-dominated-conquest-of-europe-by.html

Looks like there were multiple waves of population movements from the steppe into Central Europe with three main Y-HGs involved: R1a-M417, R1b-L51 and also I2 (ancestors of Unetice), probably in that order. Women also came, but usually not very many in relative terms.
 
Given papers like Brandt et al I think we anticipated this about the steppe migrations, but it's good to have this confirmation using the X vs autosome comparison.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24115443

timeline.jpg


I don't know why they would have thought the Neolithic migrations were anything but family based; I mean, look at what happened to the mtDna.

Anyway, this is interesting:

"Even for a small admixed population, the largest bias consistent with the observed X and autosomal ancestries is less than 1.2 males for every female, with a median over 1,000 simulations of 1.07. Consistent with the slightly larger X than autosomal ancestry observed for HG ancestry, under the simulation framework, we estimate a median of 1.91 females for every male from the HG population to early Neolithic Central Europeans. The signal of female bias in contributions from HG to CE might be caused by a male-biased inheritance structure in the new farming population. That is, it is possible that the migration from Anatolia involved substantial contributions from both men and women, but once in central Europe, a shift to patrilocality might have made absorption of local HG females easier than of HG males. However, the absolute difference between male and female contributions is small (~0.06). Correspondingly, differences in the numbers of female and male migrants would be small or are potentially a result of sampling."
 

lol, .........I said here years ago, that the R1's dominated Europe due to introducing a "Royal" system, where the R1 "king" controlled the women as a sort of personnel "concubine", allowing the "chief/king" to be the only one to impregnate the women of their territory followed by his sons and then their sons.........

It does not take many generations of this system to dominate an area in your Ydna

It is written that this "royal" system was still in use in the 19th century in Zulu-land , South Africa, where Shaka ( king of the zulu ) had the same system as above.
read the non-fiction book............the washing of the spears ...........to see how the system worked.
 
Two aspects make the migration of Anatolian farmers and Steppe Patoralites differnt; 1. Anatolians and natives continued to mix for 1,000s of years while Steppe and natives stopped mixing after less than 1,000 years. 2. Anatolians recieved much much less native admixture than Steppe did.

Admixture between WHG and EEF continued for 1,000s of years after the first arrival of EEF from Anatolia. Less than 1,000 years after the arrival of Steppe folk we see many peoples with genetic makeups identical to modern inhabitants in the same land 4,000 years later. Amounts of WHG ancestry in farmers peak\ed after 2,000 years of admixture at 20-30%, admixture EEF/WHG ancestry in Steppe-derived groups was at 30% only after a few hundred years and 50% in less than 1,000 years.

To know if admixture between WHG and EEF was sex biased what you need to do is test the X-chromosme of farmers from every era, because admixture with WHG continued for 1,000s of years after the first arrival from Anatolia.

I'm confused how Steppe people migrated with mostly men if they made such a big genetic impact? In less than 1,000 years over half of Europe went from 0% Steppe to 50% on average. How could groups of 800 men and 200 women do this? I can't imagine that. That is as logical as saying the native EEF/WHG populations were mostly made up of women. IMO, a situation where large numbers of Steppe populations that were 50/50 male/female and that were absorbing smaller native populations with admixture usually being Steppe male and native female makes more sense. Steppe women and EEF/WHG men weren't non-existent, it's just they were reproducing less.
 
Two aspects make the migration of Anatolian farmers and Steppe Patoralites differnt; 1. Anatolians and natives continued to mix for 1,000s of years while Steppe and natives stopped mixing after less than 1,000 years. 2. Anatolians recieved much much less native admixture than Steppe did.

Admixture between WHG and EEF continued for 1,000s of years after the first arrival of EEF from Anatolia. Less than 1,000 years after the arrival of Steppe folk we see many peoples with genetic makeups identical to modern inhabitants in the same land 4,000 years later. Amounts of WHG ancestry in farmers peak\ed after 2,000 years of admixture at 20-30%, admixture EEF/WHG ancestry in Steppe-derived groups was at 30% only after a few hundred years and 50% in less than 1,000 years.

To know if admixture between WHG and EEF was sex biased what you need to do is test the X-chromosme of farmers from every era, because admixture with WHG continued for 1,000s of years after the first arrival from Anatolia.

I'm confused how Steppe people migrated with mostly men if they made such a big genetic impact? In less than 1,000 years over half of Europe went from 0% Steppe to 50% on average. How could groups of 800 men and 200 women do this? I can't imagine that. That is as logical as saying the native EEF/WHG populations were mostly made up of women. IMO, a situation where large numbers of Steppe populations that were 50/50 male/female and that were absorbing smaller native populations with admixture usually being Steppe male and native female makes more sense. Steppe women and EEF/WHG men weren't non-existent, it's just they were reproducing less.
Why would they choose native females over their own kind in such large numbers? U mean that they kept 1 Steppe wife and raped several native women?

To me their conclusion seems fair as they simply passed on their genes on the local populations by not altering much their appearance. If both Steppe men and women moved in large amounts that I believe the Spaniards and Scots would look more alike then they actually do.
 
Why would they choose native females over their own kind in such large numbers? U mean that they kept 1 Steppe wife and raped several native women?

No. All we know is that when admixture occurred between EEF/WHG and Steppe, most of the time the women was EEF/WHG and the man was Steppe. Most Steppe men might of usually reproduced with Steppe women, but when Steppe people admixed with EEF/WHG it was usually a Steppe men doing it. By the way, rape of foreign women won't change the genetic makeup of the man's population. The baby from that rape would go into the woman's population not the man's population. The women has to live with the man's population for her to influence their genes.

I just can't imagine a Steppe population that is 80% male could migrate from Russia to Germany without dying out. That sounds very unrealistic to me.
 
Some sort of male Amazon's maybe,where they kept male only for procreation,they would raised the girls while get rid of men for religious purposes :laughing:
 
I must admit that I'm lost with that, very lost. My mind can't get it, too sophisticated. How could be that a relation of six Neolithic women for each Steppe man could deliver a 70% of Steppe autosomals in the Corded Ware culture. I'm thinking now that some steppe men were used to go as women... maybe a secondary effect of having too many lone herders waiting too much time in an empty land...
;)
 
I must admit that I'm lost with that, very lost. My mind can't get it, too sophisticated. How could be that a relation of six Neolithic women for each Steppe man could deliver a 70% of Steppe autosomals in the Corded Ware culture. I'm thinking now that some steppe men were used to go as women... maybe a secondary effect of having too many lone herders waiting too much time in an empty land...
;)
According to David Reich ( http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/32879-David-Reich-s-summary-of-the-population-history-of-Europe ) Neolithic folks could be simply replaced by Steppe people, like te Europeans replaced Native Americans in Northern America. Native Americans couldn't handel the viruses / plague brought by the Europeans and huge percentage of them died out. They found some tracks of black death / deadly pestilence in Native Europeans.

So you can compare native (neolithic) European population with native Americans (Indians) at the time of Columbus...


like Darwin said, only the strongest survive. And native European were the weakest and were for a great part replaced by the new incoming population.
 
I must admit that I'm lost with that, very lost. My mind can't get it, too sophisticated. How could be that a relation of six Neolithic women for each Steppe man could deliver a 70% of Steppe autosomals in the Corded Ware culture. I'm thinking now that some steppe men were used to go as women... maybe a secondary effect of having too many lone herders waiting too much time in an empty land...
;)

oookkkk... So, steppe gave us gays. Makes sense.
Also, according to Yamnaya fanatics they brought horses to Europe... Damn!
 
No. All we know is that when admixture occurred between EEF/WHG and Steppe, most of the time the women was EEF/WHG and the man was Steppe. Most Steppe men might of usually reproduced with Steppe women, but when Steppe people admixed with EEF/WHG it was usually a Steppe men doing it. By the way, rape of foreign women won't change the genetic makeup of the man's population. The baby from that rape would go into the woman's population not the man's population. The women has to live with the man's population for her to influence their genes.

I just can't imagine a Steppe population that is 80% male could migrate from Russia to Germany without dying out. That sounds very unrealistic to me.
The native populations were absorbed into the new IE society, hence the spread of IE and disappearance of the native ones. So rape still counts as an option.

And it is not assumed that the Steppe people's goal was to reach Germay as a final destination. They could have invaded and obdsorbed neighbouring western populations step by step, so every time a military campaign is launched a majority of men conquer the new lands and enjoy the spoils of war until the next neighbours become their prey. It could have taken generations until new lands were conquered, but the strategy remained the same. At least this is how I see it being possible.
 
berun said:
How could be that a relation of six Neolithic women for each Steppe man

What ??? How did you count this ???

Steppe men almost entirely replaced Neolithic men. So it is already ~50% of the population.

And some Steppe women also came (I think the authors underestimate female contribution).

BTW, it would be good to see which mtDNA haplogroups were characteristic of Steppe people.
 
Why would they choose native females over their own kind in such large numbers?

This is very easy to explain, if you know how early Indo-European societies worked. Indo-Europeans commonly practiced polygyny, which means that one man could have many wifes. The most powerful and influential men had the largest number of wives.

For example, chieftains could have 10 wifes each (or at least several).

However, the proportion of males to females in every population is always close to 50:50. So if only 1 man marries 10 women, it means that 9 other men had to remain "singles". There were just not enough women in the population for them to marry.

And in my opinion, that was one of driving forces of Indo-European expansions.

Those low-status men, who could not find native Steppe wifes on the Steppe, had to:

1) Either kidnap wifes from somewhere else, and then bring them back to the Steppe;


OR:

2) Emigrate from the Steppe, invade another tribe, and capture their women as wifes.

In fact, genetic and archaeological data provides evidence, that both happened. The increase of CHG admixture among Steppe people, was due to kidnapping wifes from the Caucasus region, and then bringing them back to the Steppe. Later on, they stopped kidnapping & bringing wifes to the Steppe, and instead started emigrating from the Steppe in search of wifes to conquer. That was most likely due to improvements in technology (they acquired metals, horses, wheels and wagons - becoming more mobile).

Before acquiring those technological advantages, they were only able to organize raids for women (quickly surprise-attacking a settlement of farmers, kidnapping women and food, then quickly running away back to the Steppe).

But after gaining an advantage in military power, they could conquer sedentary populations.
 
I just can't imagine a Steppe population that is 80% male could migrate from Russia to Germany without dying out.

Are you saying that Muslim "refugees" are going to die out ??? Because they are also 80% male.

Just read what I wrote above.

It was exactly as I described it. Those Indo-Europeans who invaded Europe were young low-status single males who couldn't find native Steppe wifes, because all native women were already taken by powerful chieftains with 10+ wifes each.

Where is polygyny still practiced today? Correct, in the Muslim World. Sheikhs have huge harems.

How are Muslim immigrants in Germany going to marry and procreate, if 80% of them are males ???

Well, of course they are going to procreate with native German women. They will try to do this at least.
 
hmm

MAYBE STEPPE WOMEN WERE UGLY????
 
Were for example Amazons described by Ancient Greeks as ugly?

By the way, Amazons could emerge when Steppe males emigrated, leaving women alone on the Steppe. :laughing:

No, just kidding. It was as I described - there was shortage of women (and excess of men) due to polygyny.

Single men of low social status, who could not find Steppe wives, were forced to look for foreign wives.
 
Were for example Amazons described by Ancient Greeks as ugly?

By the way, Amazons could emerge when Steppe males emigrated, leaving women alone in the Steppe. :laughing:

No, just kidding. It was as I described - there was shortage of women (and excess of men) due to polygyny.

Single men of low social status, who could not find Steppe wives, were forced to look for foreign wives.

well, as a man Iwould not marry an Amazon for sure,
they cut one of their breast, and they carry guns,
who wants such a wife?
 
I would not marry an Amazon for sure, they cut one of their breast

Don't complain. Brad Pitt's wife cut both of her breasts.
 
Back
Top