R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 in the Bronze Age Levant (16th century BC)

[Angela]

I can't find any scientific/academic publication associated with that reconstruction, only some online news articles.

Here's what one of them says:

"According to the Dr. Stocker, the warrior appears to have been a handsome man, with the facial reconstruction having been based on a stamp that was found inside the tomb. The reconstruction was performed by Tobias Houlton, a specialist in reconstruction, and his colleague Lynne Schepartz of University of the Witwatersrand.

'It was multi-fragmented, with evident deterioration of the bones across the mid-face, affecting the nasal region and inner eye details,' Houlton told Rossella Lorenzi referring to the skull that was found in poor condition. 'Prior to re-assembly, we were uncertain that a facial reconstruction would be possible.'

Houlton used the Manchester method for the reconstruction – facial tissues were laid from the skull surface outward by using depth marker pegs to determine the thickness. And he gauged the look of the facial features, such as the eyes and mouth, by the underlying skull. However, due to the poor condition of the skull, Houlton was unable to accurately reconstruct the area around the eyes and nose. Instead, the team used average face templates of 50 modern Greek males that were 25 to 35 years old.

They also looked at artifacts from the Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations, such as wall paintings, to determine the Griffin Warrior's skin tone and hair color. The finished product is a broad, handsome face with a square jaw and powerful neck."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...ffin-Warrior-elite-group-3-500-years-ago.html


DNA wasn't used in the reconstruction, and no DNA has been published yet, however: "Davis and Stocker are also planning DNA tests and isotope analyses that they hope will provide information about his ethnic and geographic origins."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...exposes-roots-western-civilization-180961441/

That was back in 2017 (when the reconstruction was made) so we might learn some more about him in the near future.


The article mentions that the reconstruction was (partly) based on a 'stamp' from the tomb. That appears to be referring to the 'Pylos Combat Agate':




The long curly/wavy hair in the reconstruction looks like it's based on the main figure with the sword. However that looks like it might be a depiction of a Minoan (the seal is thought to be Minoan).

The pigmentation of the Mycenaeans is based on ancient dna: all had black hair, dark brown eyes, and relatively dark skin, probably darker than a lot of mainland Greeks today, and so decidedly NOT Nordic in coloring. If they came from Catacomb culture it would make sense, since they were quite dark from the evidence of the dna.

The work done on the Griffin Warrior may be iffy as to the eye and nose but the rest is based on modern forensic reconstruction and it shows he had a wide face and jaw, and so AGAIN, absolutely not Nordic. Plus, it was partly based on their art, i.e. how they portrayed themselves, not some Nordicist's fantasies.

Just give it up. The Mycenaeans weren't "Nordic" people, and they didn't LOOK like Nordic people, despite the fact that they had all the hallmarks of an Indo-European society. They had a minute, minority percentage of steppe. Period.

 

[Philjames100]

They had a minute, minority percentage of steppe.

How do you think a minute, minority percentage of steppe managed to make the large, majority of non-steppe adopt the language of the minute steppe minority?

 

[Philjames100]

The pigmentation of the Mycenaeans is based on ancient dna: all had black hair, dark brown eyes, and relatively dark skin, probably darker than a lot of mainland Greeks today, and so decidedly NOT Nordic in coloring.

J.L. Angel was talking about 'skull type' and other skeletal traits. He doesn't say anything about pigmentation.

 

[Angela]

How do you think a minute, minority percentage of steppe managed to make the large, majority of non-steppe adopt the language of the minute steppe minority?

How did the Huns do it? What was their autosomal impact? 5%? How did the Romans change the language of France and Spain? If Pannonia hadn't been invaded by the Germanics, a Romance language would still be spoken there too. One rule doesn't fit all situations.

If they only had, what, 11-17% steppe, then that's what they had. Or do you doubt it? Are we going to try to change the facts now, because we don't like them? Before you say it, the "upper class" sample had the same autosomal mix. So, it is what it is. When a bunch of samples turns up that are 30-50% steppe, let me know.

As for Angel, he was talking about skull and face type in order to come up with a designation like "Nordic". That's not what modern forensics concluded about the Griffin Warrior. The problems were with the eye and nose, not the skull and face shape.

Most of that old nonsense is just that: nonsense. If you want to talk about Corded Ware types much further north, that may be different, but imo Corded Ware people were Indo-Europeanized, not the source of the blended EHG/CHG culture we know as the Indo-Europeans. Certainly, the Mycenaeans didn't get their culture from Corded Ware; the Corded Ware people weren't sophisticated enough.

 

[Riverman]

"The problem" with Proto-Anatolian and Proto-Greeks seems to be that it was a demic diffusion and elite dominance combined, in between, but not one such case, but a series of cases from up the Bug down to the Aegean. If you think about it, its a logical thing and only "racial segregation", a strictly caste like society could have kept the original high steppe level intact. I'm not even saying that didn't happen at all, for some royal lineages it might have happened, but it doesn't have to be and it was not the main agent for the spread. The main agent for the spread was steppe ancestry roughly cut in half with every movement down to the South. So in the end you get a people which might, even in their upper ranks, being far from a 50 percent share of steppe ancestry, with many non-steppe elite lineages included and so on. Its quite a distance from Moldavia down to the Bosporus. A lot can happen in between and the steppe ancestry wasn't 100 percent when they started, because the Western steppe people which formed PIE had significant Neolithic ancestry from the start. So we might deal with a fairly big wave of Proto-Greeks coming in, but they were not predominantely steppe of course.

 

[Philjames100]

Here are some other reconstructions (by Musgrave, Reave and Prag, 1995), based on some skulls from Grave Circle B at Mycenae, that were also analysed by J.L. Angel in 1973 (along with other skulls from Mycenae):



Angel described this skull (A62) as 'Mixed Alpine'.



Z59 'Nordic-Iranian in a Corded Nordic sense'



∑131 'Mixed Alpine'



Γ51 'Nordic-Iranian'




B52 'Iranian-Mediterranean'




Γ55 ‘intermediate Dinaroid impression’




Γ58 ‘varying in a lateral direction from a Nordic-Iranian norm’






Musgrave 1995

Angel 1973


I have no idea how reliable any of these reconstructions are.


J.L. Angel's overall description of skeletons from the Grave Circles at Mycenae (excerpts):

“The surprising thing about the males in this small sample of Middle Bronze Age Greek aristocracy is that in spite of their tallness their bones are not relatively slenderer than those of short and stocky peoples but are actually relatively as well as absolutely thicker […] This massiveness and ruggedness shows up further in large hands and feet, generally pronounced markings for muscle attachments and large trunks … Fourteen princes at 171.5 cm with a stature range from just over 160 to over 180 average over 5cm taller than commoners at 166.3. […]

these Mycenaean aristocrats were not mere fattened figureheads. The wounds on the left side of the head of 51 and of 59, the healed spinal column fractures of 25, probably of 59 together with the signs of extra muscular strength show that these men were indeed involved in fighting and capable of being champions. […]

[their] skull vaults approach Upper Palaeolithic male size, indicating a brain mass unusually large for any population in a Mediterranean rather than cold climate. Such extra brain size does not necessarily mean any greater capacity for intelligence but correlates with the greater size of body and viscera in these aristocrats. […]

In contrast with the 3rd millennium BC pre-Greeks, short (162 cm), with rather small heads, just mesocrane, and fairly linear faces and noses, the Middle Bronze commoners are taller, with larger heads (longer and higher especially) and wider and shorter faces, wider noses and lower orbits. The pre-Greeks were mainly Mediterranean, Basic White and Alpine (both “Eastern” and “European” Alpine) … The intruders during and after E.H. III [Early Helladic III] seem to have been, on the one hand, Iranian plus Eastern Alpine like the Trojan plus Cappadocian plus Pamphylian areas of Anatolia, and, on the other hand, Corded Nordic plus Mixed Alpine like the westernmost steppe populations of the N.E. Balkans, and somewhat like later Illyrians. […]

The aristocrats share the diversity of the the general Middle Bronze propulation, with variability 20% above normal. But they are less Mediterranean and more intermediate Dinaroid-Mixed Alpine than the common people, with strong Nordic-Iranian influence. […]

The rulers buried in the Mycenaean Shaft Graves during the time of transition from Middle Bronze Age to full “urban” Mycenaean period (about 1630 to 1500 BC) were 171-172 cm tall on the average, about 5 cm taller that their subjects and with individuals taller that 180cm. […] They have remarkably thick bones, and relatively and absolutely massive bodies and heads […] in terms of arbitrary type tendencies they show less Mediterranean, Basic White, and Alpine (“pre-Greek” trait combinations) and more Nordic-Iranian and Dinaroid-Mixed Alpine tendencies than commoners show.

These small trait shifts are in the direction of Iranian steppe (...)

It is likely that the rulers spring directly from the extraordinarily mixed late Middle Bronze Age population which they ruled over and that their differences result from (a) better diet and training and (b) social selection for both ability and strength and subsequent microevolution."

Angel 1973

 

[Philjames100]

An engraved seal from grave Γ55:


Musgrave 1995

of course the 'Mask of Agamemnon', from Grave Circle A at Mycenae:

 

[Philjames100]

"The intruders during and after Early Helladic III seem to have been, on the one hand, Iranian plus Eastern Alpine like the Trojan plus Cappadocian plus Pamphylian areas of Anatolia, and, on the other hand, Corded Nordic plus Mixed Alpine like the westernmost steppe populations of the N.E. Balkans, and somewhat like later Illyrians."

That sounds pretty similar to

'Caucasus + Sintashta-like + Catacomb + Balkans'

 

[Shahmiri]

 

[Shahmiri]

1600 BC in the east.

High mitochondrial diversity of domesticated goats persisted among Bronze and Iron Age pastoralists in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0233333

 

[Aaron1981]

I completely agree. That's always been my position, and I was, in fact, surprised that no Z2103 turned up among the Mycenaeans.

Inside sources suggest it has and will be published soonish(?). I know some of the BA Greeks found so far have the same line J2a as the Minoans, which obviously suggests continuity and not that of a northern intruder, which is the only thing R1b could be. At least one video a few years back demonstrated a "R1b" male in Classical Greece who had positives for blonde hair and lactose intolerance. I believe this is different from the Mycenaeans though.

 

[Aaron1981]

Lazaridis et al certainly held that out as a possibility, but I am skeptical. Something from the direction of Catacomb culture looks more likely to me, but I could be wrong.

Someone posted some Angel commentary about what Mycenaeans looked like based on some bones. Using modern forensic anthropology tools, this is what a wealthy Mycenaean warrior looked like based on his skull and dna data: certainly brawny and tall looking, but he doesn't look absolutely anything like any brand of Nordic.

Old time anthropologists were basically Nordicists. They saw Nordic features in every culture they wanted to claim. It's bunk. How anyone could have ever looked at a bust of Julius Caesar, for example, and seen a Nordic is beyond me. That one example alone should cause any thinking person to toss most of it out.

Most definitely that fellow looks like many contemporary Greeks I have seen (but not all), and certainly was a look that would have been common in West Asia and the Levant during the Bronze Age and possibly even Neolithic Europe. However, I'd be skeptical if the R1b guys looked like that, since they were in a different part of the world for tens of thousands of years from the G2/J2/J1/E1b men, and had their own genetic path. Some of the busts above do look far more like north European men, who happen to have R1b as a common haplogroup, but I hate that term "Nordic", it's a major misnomer. One of those busts looks like a "Hun" to me.

Maybe your definition of "Nordic" is different than mine, but Julius Caesar is clearly like a contemporary European, but the Greek reconstruction looks far more West Asian or Levantine.

 

[Aaron1981]

Which could be associated with the spread of R1b plus E-V13 according to some (Cetina).

R1b and E-V13 don't really correlate with each other, anywhere, so I'd be skeptical if they were linked. E-V13 seems to have already been in the Balkans, or if it was a contemporary of R1b-M269, it came from a different direction. I2-M223 seems to be linked to R1b-M269 very often, despite the fact the former is extremely ancient in Europe and linked to many groups.

 

[Aaron1981]

In 2019 Eurogenes also looked at an individual buried at Tel Shaddud in Israel (near Megiddo), dated to c.1250 BC, who was found to have R1b-M269.

First a description of the individual:

"A Canaanite individual from a clay coffin burial in Tel Shaddud (ca.1250 BC), reported as of hg. R1b1a1b-M269, has been interpreted as a Canaanite official residing at this site and emulating selected funerary aspects of Egyptian mortuary culture, apparently connected to the administrative centre at Bet Sheʽan during the 19th and 20th Dynasties." p.195 / Link 2

Eurogenes:

“Surprisingly, individual I2062 is listed in the anno files as belonging to Y-haplogroup R1b1a1a2, which is also known as R1b-M269. The reason that this is a surprise to me is because R1b-M269 is closely associated with the Bronze Age expansions of pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe … intriguingly, his autosomes do show a subtle signal of Yamnaya-related ancestry from the Pontic-Caspian steppe that is missing in earlier ancients from the Levant. …

Samples associated with the Kura-Araxes or Early Transcaucasian culture are particularly strong references for the eastern ancestry in I2062. This probably isn't a coincidence, and it might also explain his Y-haplogroup, because, at its maximum extent, the territory occupied by the Kura-Araxes culture stretched all the way from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to the southern Levant.”

'R1b-M269 in the Bronze Age Levant’ (Monday, April 22, 2019)

I'm skeptical on that conclusion since the only R1b in Kura-Araxes has been R1b-V1636, an early offshoot into the eastern Caucasus from the steppes, including the most recent 2020 paper on Neolithic/Early BA Anatolia. There would have been plenty of non-R1b immigrants to the Levant from Kura-Araxes whose autosomes are lost in this shuffle and can be identified among locals, no need to link to R1b. The most likely scenario is from the BA Balkans. We know after a handful of generations, immigrant autosomes will look like locals. Even the R1a "outlier" is in the process of being absorbed by locals.

There was also a Russian paper a year back that found R1b in an Egyptian mummy, so that makes at least 3 R1bs in BA Levant, and sheds some more possibility on the controversial "Tut" result. What I'd like to know is if this Megiddo R1b guy was L51+ which has been suggested as a possibility over at Anthrogenica.

 

[Riverman]

R1b and E-V13 don't really correlate with each other, anywhere, so I'd be skeptical if they were linked. E-V13 seems to have already been in the Balkans, or if it was a contemporary of R1b-M269, it came from a different direction. I2-M223 seems to be linked to R1b-M269 very often, despite the fact the former is extremely ancient in Europe and linked to many groups.

The difference though is that I2 was picked up from a large sea of preceding dominance, while E-V13 emerged, like I1, as a new Bronze Age winner, while being not as widespread before. R1b and E-V13 are linked for a very early wave of PIE to the Balkans it seems, but let's see with more samples what's coming up. This early wave of R1b/E-V13 incomers was later dispersed and partly replaced, especially during the Central Asian steppe and Slavic expansion from Late Antiquity on.

 

[ratchet_fan]

How do you think a minute, minority percentage of steppe managed to make the large, majority of non-steppe adopt the language of the minute steppe minority?

Violence. R1 has a violent history dating back to when it was K2b imo.

 

[ratchet_fan]

I'm skeptical on that conclusion since the only R1b in Kura-Araxes has been R1b-V1636, an early offshoot into the eastern Caucasus from the steppes, including the most recent 2020 paper on Neolithic/Early BA Anatolia. There would have been plenty of non-R1b immigrants to the Levant from Kura-Araxes whose autosomes are lost in this shuffle and can be identified among locals, no need to link to R1b. The most likely scenario is from the BA Balkans. We know after a handful of generations, immigrant autosomes will look like locals. Even the R1a "outlier" is in the process of being absorbed by locals.

There was also a Russian paper a year back that found R1b in an Egyptian mummy, so that makes at least 3 R1bs in BA Levant, and sheds some more possibility on the controversial "Tut" result. What I'd like to know is if this Megiddo R1b guy was L51+ which has been suggested as a possibility over at Anthrogenica.

L51+ would not be that surprising given it was found in Afanasievo.

 

[tyuiopman]

Excellent! Now we can work with something.

R1a-F17329 (aka YP1505) is a subclade of Z93 that formed around 4000 years ago. It seems to be found chiefly in the Altay region. The FTDNA R1a project also has one YP1505 from Azerbaijan. Its parent clade, YP1506, is also found in Pakistani Punjab. So it looks definitely more Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian.

So that R1a could have come with the Mitanni, who are AFAIK the only Indo-Aryan people who invaded the region in the 16th century BCE, establishing a state around what is now Kurdistan from c. 1500 BCE.

I spoke too fast about the Proto-Armenians. They only arrived around Armenia c. 1200 BCE, so the Megiddo samples are a bit too old to be compatible.

As for the mtDNA correspondance, I am not aware of the presence of T2b7 and U2e1b in Russia/Siberia, Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan or India that could corroborate the Indo-Aryan hypothesis. However both were found in R1a-associated Indo-European cultures, such as the Corded Ware and Bronze Age Poland and Bulgaria, so it's definitely possible that they were found among Indo-Aryans.

The issue is, as others have pointed out before, there's no evidence of a Balkanic migration to Armenia in the genetic record at 1200 BCE, which was proposed by Diakonoff in 1968 (obviously prior to genetic testing). Nor is there in the archaeological record. Ironically, this is one of the few points that Armenian, Greek, and Turkish scholars agree on--that the Mushki came from the east (eastern Turkey/Armenia/the South Caucasus) and not the west. Here's a good writeup of that. http://smea.isma.cnr.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Kossian_The-Mushki-problem-Reconsidered.pdf

Diakonoff was working under the assumption that Mushki=Phrygians and therefore they came from the west (Balkans).

There is really nothing connecting Armenians to Balkan migrants during the second or first millennium BCE. There's even a debate regarding Armenian's linguistic proximity to Greek (and by extension, Phrygian).

I agree that this was probably connected to some sort of Indo-Iranian (or maybe early Indic-speaking, specifically) population. There was clearly the presence of an Indo-Iranian people not only in Mitanni, but also in the Kassites of northern Iran, in the lands located to the immediate east of Hatti--Pahhuwa, Ishuwa, possibly Hayasa (the latter mention the Indo-Iranian god "Agni" in a treaty with the Hittites), and maybe Syro-Palestine by the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE.

 

[MOESAN]

Here are some other reconstructions (by Musgrave, Reave and Prag, 1995), based on some skulls from Grave Circle B at Mycenae, that were also analysed by J.L. Angel in 1973 (along with other skulls from Mycenae):



Angel described this skull (A62) as 'Mixed Alpine'.



Z59 'Nordic-Iranian in a Corded Nordic sense'



∑131 'Mixed Alpine'



Γ51 'Nordic-Iranian'




B52 'Iranian-Mediterranean'




Γ55 ‘intermediate Dinaroid impression’




Γ58 ‘varying in a lateral direction from a Nordic-Iranian norm’






Musgrave 1995

Angel 1973


I have no idea how reliable any of these reconstructions are.


J.L. Angel's overall description of skeletons from the Grave Circles at Mycenae (excerpts):

“The surprising thing about the males in this small sample of Middle Bronze Age Greek aristocracy is that in spite of their tallness their bones are not relatively slenderer than those of short and stocky peoples but are actually relatively as well as absolutely thicker […] This massiveness and ruggedness shows up further in large hands and feet, generally pronounced markings for muscle attachments and large trunks … Fourteen princes at 171.5 cm with a stature range from just over 160 to over 180 average over 5cm taller than commoners at 166.3. […]

these Mycenaean aristocrats were not mere fattened figureheads. The wounds on the left side of the head of 51 and of 59, the healed spinal column fractures of 25, probably of 59 together with the signs of extra muscular strength show that these men were indeed involved in fighting and capable of being champions. […]

[their] skull vaults approach Upper Palaeolithic male size, indicating a brain mass unusually large for any population in a Mediterranean rather than cold climate. Such extra brain size does not necessarily mean any greater capacity for intelligence but correlates with the greater size of body and viscera in these aristocrats. […]

In contrast with the 3rd millennium BC pre-Greeks, short (162 cm), with rather small heads, just mesocrane, and fairly linear faces and noses, the Middle Bronze commoners are taller, with larger heads (longer and higher especially) and wider and shorter faces, wider noses and lower orbits. The pre-Greeks were mainly Mediterranean, Basic White and Alpine (both “Eastern” and “European” Alpine) … The intruders during and after E.H. III [Early Helladic III] seem to have been, on the one hand, Iranian plus Eastern Alpine like the Trojan plus Cappadocian plus Pamphylian areas of Anatolia, and, on the other hand, Corded Nordic plus Mixed Alpine like the westernmost steppe populations of the N.E. Balkans, and somewhat like later Illyrians. […]

The aristocrats share the diversity of the the general Middle Bronze propulation, with variability 20% above normal. But they are less Mediterranean and more intermediate Dinaroid-Mixed Alpine than the common people, with strong Nordic-Iranian influence. […]

The rulers buried in the Mycenaean Shaft Graves during the time of transition from Middle Bronze Age to full “urban” Mycenaean period (about 1630 to 1500 BC) were 171-172 cm tall on the average, about 5 cm taller that their subjects and with individuals taller that 180cm. […] They have remarkably thick bones, and relatively and absolutely massive bodies and heads […] in terms of arbitrary type tendencies they show less Mediterranean, Basic White, and Alpine (“pre-Greek” trait combinations) and more Nordic-Iranian and Dinaroid-Mixed Alpine tendencies than commoners show.

These small trait shifts are in the direction of Iranian steppe (...)

It is likely that the rulers spring directly from the extraordinarily mixed late Middle Bronze Age population which they ruled over and that their differences result from (a) better diet and training and (b) social selection for both ability and strength and subsequent microevolution."

Angel 1973

I'm late here.
I don't know if these Mycenians are the same ones who have been genetically tested, not sure at all?
Concerning reconstructions, for the noses and lips even more, I have more than a doubt. THat said, the apparent discrepancy between total autosomes and aspect (if they are so less 'steppic') could be explained by the late part of the Angel's notes here: social selection.

 

[MOESAN]

Violence. R1 has a violent history dating back to when it was K2b imo.

You go back very far in past!
and violence is not a guarantee to linguistic dominence if it's without some minimum political organisation and system of integration.