Northener
Elite member
- Messages
- 2,024
- Reaction score
- 533
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Groningen
- Ethnic group
- NW Euro
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- E1b1b/ E-V22
What is being ignored, AGAIN, despite all the papers and all the threads and the reams of posts is that there isn't a one size fits all "invasion".
What went on in parts of the northern border regions (and perhaps even Britain) that were barely populated was different from what went on in a Central Europe that had experienced population crashes and was perhaps weakened by malnutrition and the diseases (the plague) perhaps carried by the new arrivals, which was different again from what happened, perhaps, in southern Europe, or in Anatolia and Iran, etc. in the Near East.
There are also big differences by time period. I know some people in this hobby, particularly young men, love a sort of Conan the Barbarian or Viking kind of narrative, but it doesn't fit a lot of what went on. Corded Ware only got a little bronze at the very end. They barely had copper weapons. They did not have a big military superiority over the MN people they encountered. That's very different from the Mycenaeans, for example.
You can't make one story fit all.
What I do think is true as a rather global matter is that you often have a civilized "core" built up over generations and hundreds of years which starts to develop problems, perhaps because of climate change, or environmental damage, or class differences which result in mass conflict, and populations of the periphery, perhaps nomadic herders in some areas, swoop in and take over, sometimes with pretty significant genetic changes altogether, sometimes as an elite, sometimes with broad autosomal replacement, sometimes with autosomal admixture but a yDna sweep. You see it in China, in Africa, in the Near East. It has nothing to do with "superiority" whatever the racist "philosophers" and anthropologists of the late 19th century might have thought.
If you have never read or have forgotten about all of this, you can find detailed discussions about these matters if you use the search engine.
I think that in the case upcoming R1b in Northwestern Europe due to the Unetice culture I have a clear example where archeology and DNA research come together.
Maciamo:
"The principal Proto-Germanic branch of the Indo-European family tree is R1b-S21 (a.k.a. U106). This haplogroup is found at high concentrations in the Netherlands and north-west Germany. It is likely that R1b-S21 lineages expanded in this region through a founder effect during the Unetice period, then penetrated into Scandinavia around 1700 BCE, thus creating a new culture, that of the Noridc Bronze Age."
The Unetice culture in Northwestern Germany and Northern Netherlands is called the Sögel Kreis.
Prof Harry Fokkens (1998):
''The northern Netherlands is part of the northern group (NW Germany and Denmark) especially of the Sögeler Kreis characterized by a number of distinctive men's graves. The Drouwen grave is the best known Dutch example.It's remarkable that the Elp culture has never been presented as the immigration of a new group of people. Because clearly this period was a time when a number of new elements made their entry while others disappeared. The disappearance of beakers, the appearance of the Sögel men's graves with the first 'swords', among other things, the fully extended burial posture, under barrows; all the factors have been reason enough in the past to conclude that the Elp culture represented an immigration of Sögel warriors."
Clear example!