New Study Shows MASSIVE Ancient BA Immigration Into Ireland

[berun]

It will be necessary to finetune BB processes as to know how it populated europe.

For bottleneck i mean the necessary assumption to make L21 of BB origin as to become the isles' subclade, if "spanish" DF27 would be the irish main subclade then another bottleneck effect would be done there, but at least it would'nt be necessary to force such event at 2500-2400 BC as with L21.

Later events that would deliver L21 to the continent:

- inner migrations inside the roman empire
- romano-britons after the romans left britain in 400 (unsure about tribal's politics for romanized people and how would be the new economic " laws")
- britons taking refuge after saxon and irish attacks and ravagings (going so far as north spain, even having their own bishropic in galicia)
- 100 years war against france (british occuping and controlling much territory)
- migration of catholics to france after the british state was not favoring more them.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

exactly what I red and ment: just to recall that selection is not straighforwards sometimes: balance between homozygoty and heterozygoty for some diseases. How explain so numerous letal genes survived so long times among diverse populations...

Yes exactly. It makes me wonder how many genetic diseases have some unknown positive effect - or had a positive effect in the past in a particular region due to local climate. diet or whatever.

 

[Greying Wanderer]

Carts and Wagons

The benefit of wagons to both settled farmers and (potentially) more mobile pastoralists seems about equal to me but the availability of draught animals would tip it to the farmers imo...

although when I thought of draft animals I first thought oxen then horses but then I remembered...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8_rUxIqRo...s400/Screen+shot+2013-03-08+at+2.40.19+PM.png

http://www.everythingchurchill.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/dogSled_07.jpg

http://doglawreporter.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/dogs-of-great-plains-nations.html

"A strange sight likely met the Spaniards several days march north of the Pecos River in 1541. Thousands of Indians crossing an endless stretch of flat country, with tents, packs, children, even round river boats—all their possessions—dragged and carried by dogs mixed among and coaxed by the women, a moving city spread out as far as the eye could see, searching for the great woolly cattle that sustained them."

#

not relevant but love this one

https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e6253060876bd8913729ec3a19f6b9ab?convert_to_webp=true

#

Dog sleds of various kinds don't prove anything but if someone forced me to guess I'd say the people most likely to first develop carts would be
a) settled farmers with domesticated oxen
b) who lived adjacent to some dog-sled nomads

#

edit:

actually, now i think of it - could dog skeletons show signs of use as draft animals?

edit2:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4LGabZ2OGf4/UHW3ihdUupI/AAAAAAAAC5w/Fz5qE3wiI0U/s1600/newfcart.jpg

http://browningmgs.com/Images_1919A4/Postcards/New/07_GreatDanes&Maxim.jpg

Dog sleds/carts would be great for carrying the little kids freeing up the women to carry everything else

https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7c47d00c19f3303f1b15f0e2296909d9?convert_to_webp=true

(jk)

Makes me wonder if there's a correlation between very physically large dog breeds and being good with kids?

edit3

http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/10-large-dog-breeds-that-are-gentle-giants

 

[Greying Wanderer]

Goodness, are you calling your WHG ancestors dwarves?! What a very pejorative term to use for the ancestors who represent such a large part of your genome.

WHG/Loschbour was 1.6 or 5’3. “Robust” means bone size, not height.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/02/mesolithic-mtdna-haplogroup-u5a-from.html


Oetzi was 1.65 or 5’4.

(The Anatolian farmers were actually taller on average than the farmers in Europe, I think. The authors of Mathiesen et al seem to think that there was actually selection going on for a decrease in height in Neolithic Spain, at least. Might it also have been admixture with the shorter WHG?)


Steppe Yamnaya people were 1.75 so 5’7

“As per Haak et al as quoted by Dienekes...
"The Yamna population generally belongs to the European race. It was tall (175.5cm), dolichocephalic, with broad faces of medium height. Among them there were, however, more robust elements with high and wide faces of the proto-Europoid type, and also more gracile individuals with narrow and high faces, probably reflecting contacts with the East Mediterranean type (Kurts 1984: 90)."

So, that begs the question: where did the people who were the subject of this paper get their extreme height? Is it some previously unmeasured population? Does anyone have figures for SHG or EHG? Or was it the effect of the adoption of the dairy eating culture of Central Europe on the steppe genes? Interesting.

I would just note that we’re supposed to be approaching all these issues from a scientific perspective. There's no absolute value in being taller or having massive body and facial bones. It all boils down to adaptation to environment. It's been a long time since I took physical anthropology, but I thought it was pretty accepted that broad, bony faces and thickset, stocky bodies were better for cold climates. If you're living in a warmer climate, less fat is better, so are lighter bones.
We discussed this extensively on this thread:


http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...70&highlight=height+Yamnaya+people#post469270

I'd guess
- WHG as shorter/robust
- SHG/EHG taller/robust (due to either cold adaptation or extra high protein diet or both)
- farmers tending to shorter/gracile
had a lot to do with how much protein they got in their diet.

So if farming tended to reduce height/robustness over time this process may have been slowed down among dairy-focused populations.

 

[Tomenable]

2. Central European and later Bell Beaker people, especially the males, were tall, robust, and round-headed (brachycephalic).

By the way, those Bronze Age Rathlin Island individuals were real giants (for their times):

They were 5,11 and 6,1 and 6,2 tall (that's like 180.34 cm, 185.42 cm and 187.96 cm).

Steppe Yamnaya people were 1.75 so 5’7

As per Haak et al as quoted by Dienekes...
"The Yamna population (...) was tall (175.5cm), dolichocephalic, with broad faces of medium height. Among them there were, however, more robust elements with high and wide faces of the proto-Europoid type, and also more gracile individuals with narrow and high faces, probably reflecting contacts with the East Mediterranean type (Kurts 1984: 90)."

WHG/Loschbour was 1.6 or 5’3.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/02/mesolithic-mtdna-haplogroup-u5a-from.html

So, that begs the question: where did the people who were the subject of this paper get their extreme height? Is it some previously unmeasured population? Does anyone have figures for SHG or EHG? (...)

Yes, I have found figures for EHGs - EHG hunters were much taller than WHG ones. Formicola and Giannecchini, "Evolutionary trends of stature in upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europe" (from 1999) estimated that the average height of Mesolithic males in Eastern Europe (EHG) was 173.2 cm (n = 75) and in Western Europe (WHG) only 163.1 cm (n = 96):

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10074386

Many EHGs were dolichocephalic - a 10,800 ybp skull from Peschanitsa to the south of Lake Ladoga (in Lyubytinskiy Rayon of Novgorod Oblast) and a 10,300 ybp skull from Popovo to the north east of Lake Onega (in Arkhangelsk Oblast) are dolichocehalic and also the earliest known examples of "Nordic type". Peschanitsa skull is "gracile Nordic" and Popovo skull is "robust Nordic". Around that time there was a migration of hunters from Russia to Scandinavia (likely they were the source of EHG admixture in SHG):

The First Eastern Migrations of People and Knowledge into Scandinavia: Evidence from Studies of Mesolithic Technology, 9th-8th Millennium BC

Abstract:

In this paper a team of Scandinavian researchers identifies and describes a Mesolithic technological concept, referred to as ‘the conical core pressure blade’ concept, and investigates how this concept spread into Fennoscandia and across Scandinavia. Using lithic technological, contextual archaeological and radiocarbon analyses, it is demonstrated that this blade concept arrived with ‘post-Swiderian’ hunter-gatherer groups from the Russian plain into northern Fennoscandia and the eastern Baltic during the 9th millennium bc. From there it was spread by migrating people and/or as transmitted knowledge through culture contacts into interior central Sweden, Norway and down along the Norwegian coast. However it was also spread into southern Scandinavia, where it was formerly identified as the Maglemosian technogroup 3 (or the ‘Sværdborg phase’). In this paper it is argued that the identification and spread of the conical core pressure blade concept represents the first migration of people, technology and ideas into Scandinavia from the south-eastern Baltic region and the Russian plain. (...)

Source: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00293652.2013.770416?journalCode=sarc20#.Voqw0leTngA

I'd guess
- WHG as shorter/robust
- SHG/EHG taller/robust (due to either cold adaptation or extra high protein diet or both)
- farmers tending to shorter/gracile

EHGs were on average 10 cm taller than WHG, with a mix of both more gracile (Peschanitsa) and more robust (Popovo) males. Peschanitsa-Popovo skulls (8750 BC - 8300 BC) are dolichocephalic and were also classified by anthropologists as "Nordic".

They are the oldest known specimens of "Nordic anthropological type" found so far.

At that time in North-Western Russia there was the so called Boreal Period (11,000 - 10,000 years ago), when climate in that region was warmer than today in the Winter (-12°-8° C in January), but cooler than at present in the Summer (6°-18° C in July).

Bell Beakers from Central Europe were tall but brachycephalic (perhaps brachycephalized Nordic = Sub-Nordic).

 

[Tomenable]

So if farming tended to reduce height/robustness over time this process may have been slowed down among dairy-focused populations.

But was that farming reducing robustness, or rather gracile farmers mass migrating to hunter lands ???

For example in America Paleoindians = more robust skulls (like modern Eskimos) and modern Amerindians = more gracile skulls.

Eskimos have never become farmers (too cold there), while among Native Americans many became farmers.

In Japan Jomon culture and modern Ainu = more robust skulls, while Yayoi culture and modern Japanese = more gracile skulls.

But as far as I know, modern Japanese and modern Ainu are two different groups, not so closely related.

=====================================

See the photos below:

Left: Jomon Skull (Mesolithic Japan - hunters)
Right: Yayoi Skull (Neolithic Japan - farmers)

Jomon skull resembles modern Ainu more, while Yayoi resembles modern Japanese more:

http://thekishicut.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/screen-shot-2011-12-03-at-08-53-00.png

More Jomon specimens: http://www.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/publish_db/Bulletin/no27/27img/27platei-02.jpg

Left: Paleo-American Skull, 12,000 years old (hunter)
Right: Pre-Columbian Native American, 1000 years old

https://physicalanthropologymzi.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/sin-tc3adtulo1.jpg

Paleo-American skull is more similar to skulls of modern Eskimos / Inuits (Left skull below):

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e181/Borntobeking/skulls-1.jpg

You can see the robustness of Eskimos by looking at their faces too (notice the massive jaw of the guy in the middle):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Image_from_My_Life_with_the_Eskimo.png

 

[Tomenable]

I remember someone claiming that "East Asians / Mongoloids all look the same to me" - well, it's not the case.

They are just as diverse as Caucasoids on the whole.

But for example Han Chinese are all descended from a very small founder population which became farmers and expanded into huge numbers, similar to those Anatolian G2a hunters who flooded Europe. That's why Han Chinese look similar to each other.

However, there is much more to East Asians / Mongoloids than Chinese. Look at those Eskimos - much different.

 

[Tomenable]

Probably it has much more to do with climatic conditions than with farming / hunting. Paleoamericans came from Siberia through Beringia after all. So they came from very cold and dry climate. Later they evolved more gracile in hotter and more humid climatic zones. Eskimos never moved to hotter and humid climates, so they preserved the ancestral robust type of Paleoamericans.

As for farming, it correlates with gracile type because farming was invented in southern climates and spread to the north. Farming couldn't be invented in northern climates, they were too unfavourable for it. It could only spread there later from the south.

 

[Tomenable]

Coming back to post #146 and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers:

Some Hunter-Gatherer skulls from Russia (dates range from the 9th millennium BC to the 2nd millennium BC):

================================================


As you can see those EHG skulls posted above look very differently from La Brana and Loschbour skulls below:

 

[Greying Wanderer]

another candidate for pre oxen carts are goat carts

http://www.eieio.org/images/gotcrt2.gif

especially when you consider thor's mythological goat pulled chariot

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/10/cf/6c/10cf6cd6953fbcf965002a42a03302b7.jpg

(which always seemed very silly to me until just now)

 

[Greying Wanderer]

@Tomenable

But was that farming reducing robustness, or rather gracile farmers mass migrating to hunter lands ???

I was thinking maybe a bit of both - definitely the latter but maybe also northern HG descended people coming south (e.g. maybe Rastlin Island) and gradually shrinking / becoming more gracile over time as their diet shifted (or cold climate selection faded).

 

[Angela]

Yes, I have found figures for EHGs - EHG hunters were much taller than WHG ones. Formicola and Giannecchini, "Evolutionary trends of stature in upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europe" (from 1999) estimated that the average height of Mesolithic males in Eastern Europe (EHG) was 173.2 cm (n = 75) and in Western Europe (WHG) only 163.1 cm (n = 96):

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10074386

Many EHGs were dolichocephalic - a 10,800 ybp skull from Peschanitsa to the south of Lake Ladoga (in Lyubytinskiy Rayon of Novgorod Oblast) and a 10,300 ybp skull from Popovo to the north east of Lake Onega (in Arkhangelsk Oblast) are dolichocehalic and also the earliest known examples of "Nordic type". Peschanitsa skull is "gracile Nordic" and Popovo skull is "robust Nordic". Around that time there was a migration of hunters from Russia to Scandinavia (likely they were the source of EHG admixture in SHG):



Source: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00293652.2013.770416?journalCode=sarc20#.Voqw0leTngA



EHGs were on average 10 cm taller than WHG, with a mix of both more gracile (Peschanitsa) and more robust (Popovo) males. Peschanitsa-Popovo skulls (8750 BC - 8300 BC) are dolichocephalic and were also classified by anthropologists as "Nordic".

They are the oldest known specimens of "Nordic anthropological type" found so far.

At that time in North-Western Russia there was the so called Boreal Period (11,000 - 10,000 years ago), when climate in that region was warmer than today in the Winter (-12°-8° C in January), but cooler than at present in the Summer (6°-18° C in July).

Bell Beakers from Central Europe were tall but brachycephalic (perhaps brachycephalized Nordic = Sub-Nordic).

Thanks for finding that, Tomenable. We should make a sticky for this data perhaps, so we have it in one place.

So:
WHG 163.1-5'3"

Oetzi 165 or 5'4"

Anatolian farmers: ? (Mathiesen said they were taller than European Neolithic but I couldn't find a precise figure. Anyone know?

Yamnaya 175 so 5'7-8

EHG 173.2 so 5'6-7, a little shorter than Yamnaya.

So, we still have to find an explanation for the much greater height of this Irish sample, yes? Has someone checked the height? That seems like a really big increase. Still, I've seen families where the American diet results in a three to four inch increase between father and sons in one generation.

Tomenable, there's a mountain of literature on how selection based on climate favors certain body types and individual features. People evolved to fit their environment. They didn't burst fully formed from the head of Zeus. Just look it up.

That doesn't mean migration and admixture doesn't have a role to play, however, after the type has been "set".

 

[Tomenable]

So, we still have to find an explanation for the much greater height of this Irish sample, yes?

Angela, I think I know one possible explanation: a culture of milk drinking. All three Rathlin males were lactose tolerant, IIRC.

So perhaps they were a milk-drinking society, and this is good for growing tall in childhood and adolescence.

Today the "Celtic Fringe" of Britain and Ireland have the highest lactase persistence frequency in Europe, IIRC.

BTW - I have read somewhere, that drinking milk is actually a much younger custom/tradition than creating various products - such as cheese, kefir, kumis or sour milk - from milk. And lactase persistence is not required to eat cheese or to drink kumis:

(Mongols have a low frequency of lactase persistence, AFAIK - correct me if I'm wrong though):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis

Kumis, also spelled kumiss or koumiss in English (or kumys, see other transliterations and cognate words below under terminology and etymology) is a fermented dairy product traditionally made from mare's milk. The drink remains important to the peoples of the Central Asian steppes, of Huno-Bulgar, Turkic and Mongol origin: Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Kyrgyz, Mongols, and Yakuts.[1]

Kumis is a dairy product similar to kefir, but is produced from a liquid starter culture, in contrast to the solid kefir "grains". Because mare's milk contains more sugars than cow's or goat's milk, when fermented, kumis has a higher, though still mild, alcohol content compared to kefir.

I guess that lactase persistence rose to high frequencies via selection only in those cultures which were drinking raw milk.

And also it rose to high frequencies in areas where drinking milk was a major factor when it comes to chances of survival.

 

[Fire Haired14]

There are only 3 height examples from BA Ireland. There's no way that was the average. A few years ago I read a study, with bones from all over Europe dating to the Roman period, and average height ranged from 5'6-5'7.5. Also, the average height in Medieval England: 5'6. The tallest I saw was a collection from Medieval Denmark at 5'8.5. There's plenty of old bones to look at, the average man didn't reach 5'10-6'0 till the 1800s.

British and Irish today are not noticeable tall. 5'9-5'10 is the average.

There were no pre-historic giants. 5'6-5'8 is probably the human male average. The only exception would be few strangely short people in East and South Asia and strangely tall some people in East Africa and maybe elsewhere.

 

[Tomenable]

Coming back to post #146 and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers:

Some Hunter-Gatherer skulls from Russia (dates range from the 9th millennium BC to the 2nd millennium BC):

================================================


As you can see those EHG skulls posted above look very differently from La Brana and Loschbour skulls below:

Yamnaya skull (covered in ochre) looks similar to some of those earlier EHG skulls from Russia posted above:

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/skullred-800x1067.jpg

BTW:

Using ochre in burial rituals was practiced by EHG in Russia and Finland long before Yamnaya - links:

"The Use of Ochre in Stone Age Burials of the East Baltic":

http://mikroarkeologi.se/publications/ch11_Ilga.pdf

"Postglacial pioneer settlement in the Sarvinki area, Eastern Finland. A red ochre grave in Rahakangas 1 site":

https://orbi.ulg.ac.be/bitstream/2268/189411/1/Postglacial_pioneer_settlement_in_the.pdf

So it seems that Yamnaya adopted the use of ochre from EHG, who were ca. 60% of their ancestors as we know.

 

[Tomenable]

1) The use of ochre in East Baltic region; later the use of Ochre in Yamnaya culture;

2) Genetically EHG type people in East Baltic region (Karelia); 60% EHG in Yamnaya;

3) Yamnaya had not only ca. 60% of their ancestry from EHG, also similar skull shapes;

Reminds me of that supposedly "fringe" theory that Homer's Epic Tales originated somewhere close to the Baltic Sea, in cold climate:

"The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baltic_Origins_of_Homer's_Epic_Tales

According to this theory, events of Iliad and Odyssey take place in sub-arctic climate similar to Finland, rather than Mediterranean climate. Author suggests, that although the epic tales were written down in the Mediterranean world, they include memories of the "Urheimat":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urheimat

According to his assumptions, the events told by Homer did not take place in the Mediterranean area, as the tradition asserts, but rather in the seas of Northern Europe, Baltic Sea and Northern Atlantic. This theory has been widely taken into consideration (both in Italy, where the author has been invited to present it in some universities and high schools, and in the rest of the world) and has caused heated debate among the academic community: some of them agree with Vinci, but the great majority argue that his ideas don't have well-grounded linguistic and archeological bases.

Could it be, that Karelian-type EHG passed their own oral legends to Yamnaya.

And then Yamnaya transmitted them orally to Proto-Greeks?

Finally, certain Homer decided to write them down ???

====================================

I wouldn't dismiss such connections immediately - for example "Ebu Gogo" oral traditions in the Island of Flores, turned out to be true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebu_gogo

The Nage people of Flores describe the Ebu Gogo as having been able walkers and fast runners around 1.5 m tall. They reportedly had wide and flat noses, broad faces with large mouths and hairy bodies. The females also had "long, pendulous breasts."[2] They were said to have murmured in what was assumed to be their own language and could reportedly repeat what was said to them in a parrot-like fashion.

Ebu Gogo myths describe Homo Floresiensis, with whom ancestors of modern Nage of Flores had contact before this hominid got extinct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis

Homo floresiensis ("Flores Man"; nicknamed "hobbit" and "Flo") is an extinct species widely believed to be in the genus Homo. The remains of an individual that would have stood about 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in height were discovered in 2003 on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Partial skeletons of nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as "LB1".[1][2] These remains have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they represent a species distinct from modern humans. This hominin is remarkable for its small body and brain and for its survival until relatively recent times (possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago).[3] Recovered alongside the skeletal remains were stone tools from archaeological horizons ranging from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago. Some scholars suggest that the historical H. floresiensis may be connected by folk memory to ebu gogo myths prevalent on the isle of Flores.[4]

 

[Tomenable]

There were no pre-historic giants.

Surely there were "Giants" (just like "Ebu Gogo" myth turned out to be true after discovery of Homo Floresiensis :wink:

Meganthropus was an extinct hominid on average ca. 8 feet (2.44 m) tall and ca. 400 to 600 lbs (181 – 272 kg):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganthropus

I think that many hominids got extinct much later than we have been assuming. Recent evidence seems to confirm this.

First Homo Floresiensis, now this (another hominid who survived until at least 14,000 years ago, perhaps longer):

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...e-thigh-bone-survival-ancient-human-ancestors

 

[Fire Haired14]

@Tomenable,

There's a low chance any Pre-Historic European groups were very noticeable taller than each other. There's hardly any height diversity in Europe today. In most parts of the world the genetic height is 5'6-5'8.

 

[Tomenable]

Well, according to Mathieson genetic height of "Steppe people" (STP) was greater than this of modern Europeans (CEU & IBS):

Green "HG" are WHG perhaps (?), it seems that their genetic height was not so low - probably poor diet made them just 5'3" :

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015...c_variants_that_appear_-a-4_1448299801759.jpg

 

[Greying Wanderer]

@Tomenable,

There's a low chance any Pre-Historic European groups were very noticeable taller than each other. There's hardly any height diversity in Europe today. In most parts of the world the genetic height is 5'6-5'8.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon#Physical_attributes

They are thought to have stood on average 176.2 cm (5 feet 9 ¹⁄[SUB]3[/SUB] inches) tall,^[32] male fossils are recorded as being 195 cm (6 feet 5 inches) and taller.^[33][34] They differ from modern-day humans in having a more robust physique and a slightly larger cranial capacity

There's a possible simple explanation for why

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergmann's_rule

Bergmann's rule is an ecogeographic principle that states that within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions.

Although I'd still imagine that rule would require a high calorie (and protein?) intake to physically build and fuel the larger size so bigger but fewer might be the trade off?

It's just speculation but if they were bigger when it was colder they may have shrunk gradually as it got warmer.