Why R1b couldn't have been spread around Western Europe by the Bell Beaker people

[Mikewww]

...

2) R1b-U106. It could be envisaged that L11 crossed by sea from the Balkans to western Iberia, and that the Proto-Celtic R1b-P312 (aka S116) first appeared in south-western Iberia and spread with the Beaker folk from there. But then what of the other main subclade of L11, namely the Proto-Germanic U106 (S21) ? How did it end up in northern Europe if R1b-L11 migrated by sea to Iberia ? The centre of genetic diversity of R1b-U106 clearly lies between the Benelux and Denmark.

....

4) A successful large-scale, organised maritime invasion of Iberia from the Balkans is highly improbable. It would take thousands of well-armed soldiers to invade a densely settled place like the Atlantic coast of Neolithic Iberia. If the R1b people were numerous and powerful enough to do it, why not continue to Central Europe or even take over the whole Italian peninsula ? Why seek the furthest possible place as a launching pad to conquer all Western Europe ? That just doesn't make any sense.
....

I agree with your general premise but not to the point that I would say no R1b (of any kind) was involved with Bell Beaker folks. I particularly agree with your points 2 and 4.

The distribution patterns of R1b-L11 subclades fits more of an overland east to west expansion (versus Mediterranean) and the germ-line TMRCA estimates fit nicely with Italo-Celtic and pre-Germanic expansions.

However, I do not necessarily rule out that R1b was in the latter period Bell Beakers migrations from Eastern/Hungarian Cspel Beaker folks.

Desideri's study of dental traits led her to the "reflux" west to central and then back to the west again Beaker movement theory. As I've noted on other forums, she may have been mistaken the "reflux" for what really was a "break through" of Yamanized male lineages moving out of the Central Europe and from the Danube.

Have you considered the latter Beaker phases in the west really being a Yamanized folk with new male lineages brought from Cspel Beaker/Corded Ware Hungarian/Czech area?

The Chalcolithic from the Balkans to the west were of the technology called the "Carpatho-Balkan Metallurgy Province" (CBPM). The CBMP collapsed and was replaced by the "Circumpontic Metallurgy Province" (CPM). The Maykops practiced CPM and may have introduced it to the Yamanaya as it made its way west. Some people disagree with Amzallag but he thinks the advancements in the smelting process were key to CMP's expansion. The early smelting by the Western Beakers was not advanced and not of the CMP type. However, by about 2400 BC, Amzallag thinks Rio Tinto received the new smelting capabilities. I think this could have just been the extension "break through" of Yamanaya-ized people westward. The Beaker pots were made by the women anyway and may be confusing people. All Beaker folks were not a like.

In fact, Desideri noted that her Czech mixed study group showed that there were differences among the females between Eastern Beakers, Corded Ware and Unetice. However, she noted the male dental traits were homogenous among the three groups in the Czech digs.

Of course, none of this means that multiple waves of R1b-L11 types didn't drive across France and the Alpine area into Iberia and the British Isles. The first could have come with a latter and new kind of Beaker folks that hit Rio Tinto and Wessex. If I remember right, Wessex had ties with Unetice.... different pots, but maybe the same male lineages, trade networking and metalworking?

 

[Tabaccus Maximus]

Introduction

One of the hottest controversies of the last few years in European prehistory and population genetics has been the origins and dispersal of haplogroup R1b. As recently as 2008 almost everybody thought that R1b had been in Western Europe since the Palaeolithic and re-expanded from the Franco-Cantabrian refugium after the Last Glacial Maximum. 23andMe still describes R1b as the male lineage descending from Cro-Magnon. I have argued for an Indo-European origin of R1b and a Bronze Age invasion of Europe since early 2009. In January 2010, Balaresque et al. published a paper claiming that R1b came to Europe with Neolithic farmers, a theory vehemently supported by Dienekes Pontikos. Ancient DNA tests have since disproved that Neolithic farmers belonged to R1b.

In August 2012, a paper by Lee et al. announced that they had found a sample of R1b1b2 at a site in Kromsdorf, Thuringia, dating from circa 2550 BCE. They attributed the site to the Bell Beaker culture. I immediately doubted the association of R1b with the Bell Beaker culture, and still do. Most people, however, have since taken to believe that the Bell Beaker people are the ones responsible for the diffusion of R1b from Iberia to the rest of Western and Central Europe. It has been brought to my attention that the company BritainsDNA had just argued in their blog a few days ago in favour of a Beaker dispersal of R1b. I have ample reason to believe that this is false though, and I will demonstrate it in this thread.


Why the Beaker people could not have been the source of European R1b

1) Geography & Chronology : R1b indubitably originated in Asia, like R1a and R2. R1b1b1 (M73) and R1b1b2 (M269) most likely arose in the Middle East, either in Mesopotamia or Eastern Anatolia. L23, the oldest subclades of R1b1b2, are found around the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Anatolia. The next subclades in the R1b phylogeny are L51 and L11, which are found mostly in Central Europe, especially in and around Germany, not in Iberia. The Bell Beaker culture, however, clearly originated in central Portugal, then spread from Iberia northward and eastward. The oldest European subclades of R1b (L51 and L11) should all be found in western Iberia to support a Beaker dispersal. That is however not the case, as they are found between Hungary and Scandinavia.

2) R1b-U106. It could be envisaged that L11 crossed by sea from the Balkans to western Iberia, and that the Proto-Celtic R1b-P312 (aka S116) first appeared in south-western Iberia and spread with the Beaker folk from there. But then what of the other main subclade of L11, namely the Proto-Germanic U106 (S21) ? How did it end up in northern Europe if R1b-L11 migrated by sea to Iberia ? The centre of genetic diversity of R1b-U106 clearly lies between the Benelux and Denmark.

3) Steppe pastoralists do not suddenly become maritime traders. It is rather far-fetched that the R1b people stopped following the Danube and instead crossed the Alps, made thousands of boats to migrate to Corsica, then Sardinia, then all the way to Portugal and Galicia to start a new culture. How do steppe tribe with a long pastoralist tradition and riding on horses suddenly turn into a maritime people ? Additionally both Portugal and Galicia have the lowest frequency of R1b in Iberia, but plenty of E1b1b, G2a and J2.

4) A successful large-scale, organised maritime invasion of Iberia from the Balkans is highly improbable. It would take thousands of well-armed soldiers to invade a densely settled place like the Atlantic coast of Neolithic Iberia. If the R1b people were numerous and powerful enough to do it, why not continue to Central Europe or even take over the whole Italian peninsula ? Why seek the furthest possible place as a launching pad to conquer all Western Europe ? That just doesn't make any sense.

5) The R1b sample from Kromsdorf did not belong to Beaker people, but to Proto-Indo-European from the Unetice culture or its immediate predecessor. Both culture co-existed side-by-side in that region until about 2200 BCE. The maternal lineage recovered from the Kromsdorf site look nothing like the typical Beaker mtDNA (heavy from haplogroup H). They actually look typically Indo-European, a mixture or Caucasian (K1, I1, T1a) and Northeast European (U2e, U5a1, W5a). The very detailed summary of ancient European mtDNA compiled by Brandt et al. (2013) is unequivocal on this matter. Haplogroups I and U2 were not found on any other Beaker site not any Neolithic site in Europe. They both first appear with the Indo-European Corded Ware and Unetice cultures (see Supplementary Materials page 30/87).

6) The most important argument is that Bronze Age and Indo-European values & lifestyle were not present in Iberia during the Beaker period. The Bell Beaker culture started as a late Neolithic or early Chalcolithic society. The R1b cultures of the Balkans were already in the Bronze Age. It is only because R1b had bronze weapons that they could overthrow the rich, advanced and populous Chalcolithic cultures of south-east Europe. They would have needed their bronze weapons to conquer Iberia too. So how comes that the early Beakers of Iberia had no knowledge of bronze working ? This argument alone is enough to destroy the hypothesis that R1b steppe people founded the Beaker culture in Iberia.

I have read Robert Chapman's book, Emerging complexity: The latter prehistory of south-east Spain, Iberia and the western Mediterranean, and the whole book confirms that Neolithic and Chalcolithic Iberia, including the Beaker culture, could not have been Indo-European. There is a clear continuity from the Megalithic to the Beaker culture, and a clear rupture with the past with the advent of the Bronze Age, which started in Iberia circa 1800 BCE with the El Argar culture around modern Murcia. The Bronze Age society progressively replaced the Beaker culture from west to east over the next centuries.

A few notes from the book:

Neolithic roots of the Beaker culture

- Anthopomorphic idols, also known as fecundity figurines, were found throughout Iberia in Megalithic and Beaker times (p.37). They represent the Mother Goddess, which traces its origins back in the Early Neolithic Levant. The oldest specimens in Iberia date back to 4000 BCE (p.47).

- Beaker tombs, like Megalithic tombs, were communal passage tombs without ascribed status (pp. 82, 190-192). Individuals were typically disarticulated (p.215-6) and bones of various individuals mixed together until the Late Copper Age. No social stratification or prestige items were found in late Beaker sites (p. 236). This contrasts with the single graves of the Indo-Europeans and the elite tumulus/kurgan filled with prestige goods, even for upper class children.

- Radical change of mortuary practice from the Chalcolithic Los Millares culture to the Bronze Age El argar culture (p.195), passing from collective monumental tombs to individual invisible tombs under houses (pit graves).

- Neolithic and Chalcolithic production of finely decorated pottery, stone vessels, idols, etc. come to an end in the Bronze Age (p.168).

- The Tagus Estuary (cradle of the Beaker culture) during the Copper Age had an economy dominated by cereals, olives, vines, cattle and pigs, but hardly any horses.


Indo-European roots of the Argaric culture

- Faïence beans from the Argaric Bronze Age have a similar composition to those found in Bronze Age Wessex (p.34).

- The Bronze Age brings a whole new lifestyle, including new pottery style (less decorated), new burial customs (individual instead of collective), new architecture (multiple-room rectilinear dwellings replace individual circular ones), and new settlement pattern (acropolis defended by high stone walls) (pp. 84, 151, 159, 172).

- The earliest wheeled vehicles in Galicia date from 1720 BCE (p.122), i.e. after the Beaker period ended.

- Horses were used for heavy work and transport in Bronze Age Iberia (p.136), as opposed to meat in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic.

- The first stables in south-east Spain date from the Argaric Bronze Age (p.138), hinting that horses were not ridden before that. Increased frequency of horse bones from the Early Bronze Age, but NOT during the Beaker period (p. 217).

- No evidence of silver working before the Bronze Age in Iberia (p.160).

- Few variations in styles of swords in Spain during the Bronze Age compared to Central Europe (p.164), confirming that bronze working started earlier and was more advanced in Central Europe than in Iberia. Even Ireland produced three times more halberds than the whole of Iberia during the Bronze Age (p. 165). All copper produced in south-east Spain during the Bronze Age amounts to 12 times less than the copper mined daily at Mitterberg in Austria at the time ! (p.165) Metallurgical innovations were much slower in the West Mediterranean than in the Aegean and north-west Europe during the Bronze Age.

- Tin and copper were little exploited in Iberia, Sardinia and Etruria until approximately 1000 BCE, towards the end of the Bronze Age in the rest of Europe (p.166).

- Bronze swords from south-east and northern Spain could have been made in the same place (p.173), hinting that they could have been imported from abroad rather than made locally.

- Separation of the elite from productive activities during the Bronze Age, and beginning of class division (p.174).

- Argaric society (Bronze Age) was stratified with hereditary leadership and ascribed status (pp. 197, 206, 218), unlike Neolithic and Chalcolithic/Beaker societies. The richest Argaric burials date from 1650-1400 BCE.

I would like to comment more on this fully at a later time. I saw this last week but have been globetrotting so I really can't fully argue the points here.

I don't have a fully dogmatic position on what cultural affiliation or y haplogroup the Beakers had, but I disagree with some of the basic assumptions here...

3) Steppe pastoralists do not suddenly become maritime traders.

I don't know that "Steppe pastoralist" = "Indo-European". Perhaps according to the Kurgan hypothesis, but it seems that PIE was too sophisticated to be a language of simple nomads. Certainly the steppe pastoralists were Indo-European, but not every people fits into that paradigm. Probably not the Hittites, most definately not Proto-Euphrateans, assuming there was such a thing. (probably IMO)

4) A successful large-scale, organised maritime invasion of Iberia from the Balkans is highly improbable.

And yet, this did happen precisely (or likely) from the Balkans with the later Sea Peoples (likely R1b) and also with the even later Northmen (heavily R1b). The Sea People invasion was so catastrophic over a period of several hundred years that it effectively collapsed nearly every Bronze Age society in the Mediterranean.


Many of your other points I have read opposite or conflicting data. I would like to reference these so I can poke holes more effectively. (!)
One of the biggest problems is seperating "Beaker people" from "Beaker stuff". It seems there is a lot of argument on 'who' a beaker person is or is not.

As far as continuity with Megalithic sites, I have read that Beakers maintained these sites, but only out of context from the original use and usually after the site had been abandoned.

Overall, if Beaker men weren't R1b, then you are faced with a European invasion of Amazonian (H1, H3) women in the chalcolithic, because the Beaker males were not racially typical for Neolithic Europeans. There doesn't seem to be a feasible solution for how these haplogroups become dominant in Western Europe.
Most of all, how do you account for the genetic landscape of Ireland?

 

[Angela]

Just as a general question, which I alluded to in my post up thread...doesn't the wide spread, and, more importantly, the speed with which R1a and R1b came to dominate Europe pre-suppose a relatively mass movement or folk movement of people, regardless of the direction or origin of the group? What evidence is there in the archaeology for such a movement into western Europe from the kurgans in the Hungarian plain? Or a movement from the Balkans into central Europe that isn't associated with the early Neolithic, or from anywhere into Portugal at this relevant time period?

Certainly, there were upheavals with the collapse of the Bronze Age, but is there evidence of folk movement during that period into Iberia or western Europe?

 

[toyomotor]

Just as a general question, which I alluded to in my post up thread...doesn't the wide spread, and, more importantly, the speed with which R1a and R1b came to dominate Europe pre-suppose a relatively mass movement or folk movement of people, regardless of the direction or origin of the group? What evidence is there in the archaeology for such a movement into western Europe from the kurgans in the Hungarian plain? Or a movement from the Balkans into central Europe that isn't associated with the early Neolithic, or from anywhere into Portugal at this relevant time period?

Certainly, there were upheavals with the collapse of the Bronze Age, but is there evidence of folk movement during that period into Iberia or western Europe?

It would be interesting to find out if there was a mass migration, and particularly from where. I'm inclined towards an east to west movement, rather than south to north. As I've said before, R1b was found in the Tarim Basin, it's also found in western Europe in large proportions. We're still waiting on an answer for the birth place of R1b.

 

[Aberdeen]

There was a west to east movement (Bell Beaker), followed by a west to east movement (the IE expansion). Maciamo has explained why subclade details etc. indicate that R1b moved into western Europe from the Balkans as a result of the IE expansion. However, I think that the R1b distribution is some places, such as western Ireland and the Basque country, would make more sense if R1b was already in place before the IE expansion, because those should have been the areas least affected in terms of Y haplotype replacement, IMO. As the analysis of Y haplotypes in ancient bones becomes easier and cheaper, we should eventually have an answer as to when R1b first arrived where. Whether those results will make sense to some of us may be another answer. If the high levels of R1b in parts of western Europe are a result of the IE expansion, I would still think that the distribution is puzzling.

 

[bicicleur 2]

There was a west to east movement (Bell Beaker), followed by a west to east movement (the IE expansion). Maciamo has explained why subclade details etc. indicate that R1b moved into western Europe from the Balkans as a result of the IE expansion. However, I think that the R1b distribution is some places, such as western Ireland and the Basque country, would make more sense if R1b was already in place before the IE expansion, because those should have been the areas least affected in terms of Y haplotype replacement, IMO. As the analysis of Y haplotypes in ancient bones becomes easier and cheaper, we should eventually have an answer as to when R1b first arrived where. Whether those results will make sense to some of us may be another answer. If the high levels of R1b in parts of western Europe are a result of the IE expansion, I would still think that the distribution is puzzling.

It's very dificult to know what realy happened during Bell Beaker.

My guess : it started as a trading zone between copper age Iberia and the very first R1b who had just arrived in Central Europe, followed by multiple R1b expansions in different directions to Western Europe.
These expansions continued after Bell Beaker.

In western Europe, IE expansions and R1a/R1b expansions are the same.

 

[adamo]

Personally, I find it disturbing how bell beaker culture fits the R1b pattern across Western Europe, I can't upload images via iPad but if you write bell beaker maps into google and search you'll find many photos, although I am like usual tempted to follow Maciamo as he seems to be correct 99% of the time lol

 

[Maciamo]

However, I do not necessarily rule out that R1b was in the latter period Bell Beakers migrations from Eastern/Hungarian Cspel Beaker folks.

Desideri's study of dental traits led her to the "reflux" west to central and then back to the west again Beaker movement theory. As I've noted on other forums, she may have been mistaken the "reflux" for what really was a "break through" of Yamanized male lineages moving out of the Central Europe and from the Danube.

Have you considered the latter Beaker phases in the west really being a Yamanized folk with new male lineages brought from Cspel Beaker/Corded Ware Hungarian/Czech area?

If you look at my migration maps from 2009, read my R1b history and check my older posts on the forum, you'll see that my position hasn't changed over the years. I have always said that R1b invaded Western Europe during the Bell Beaker period, and that R1b were not the people who created the Beaker culture but those who brought it to an end. Obviously that "conquest", as fast as it appears from the archaeological record, actually took a few centuries. R1b people were not not numerous enough for a massive invasion that destroyed the whole Beaker culture in the space of decades. Their purpose may probably not have been to destroy the Beaker culture either, but rather to take control of the region politically and exploit the tin, copper, gold and silver in Western Europe. R1b people would have established small settlements in various areas of Western Europe at first, then progressively expanded their regional influence from these bases. That is why the map from 2500 to 2000 BC shows red dots (representing R1b) in the middle of the blue Beaker culture. The two populations co-existed and R1b people surely acquired a lot of (prestige) Beaker goods, so that from the archaeological record some Indo-European tombs (single graves, tumulus) may look more Bell Beaker by their content. That doesn't mean that these were tombs of the actual Beaker people who manufactured those goods, but those of the new foreign elite who acquired them.

Based on this vision of things, I expect that no R1b-L11 (+ subclades) will show up in the oldest Beaker sites in Portugal or on the Atlantic rim, but that R1b will progressively appear first in sites from Central Europe, move to Atlantic Europe towards the Late Beaker period. I wouldn't venture as to determine the century when R1b started penetrating the Beaker culture. Carbon-14 dates are too approximate and on top of that tombs only reflect the goods acquired by their owners, not the owner's origin. The dental record may be more reliable than funerary items, but since R1b people got hybridised by taking local wives I would expect that this isn't an entirely reliable approach either.

The Chalcolithic from the Balkans to the west were of the technology called the "Carpatho-Balkan Metallurgy Province" (CBPM). The CBMP collapsed and was replaced by the "Circumpontic Metallurgy Province" (CPM). The Maykops practiced CPM and may have introduced it to the Yamanaya as it made its way west. Some people disagree with Amzallag but he thinks the advancements in the smelting process were key to CMP's expansion. The early smelting by the Western Beakers was not advanced and not of the CMP type. However, by about 2400 BC, Amzallag thinks Rio Tinto received the new smelting capabilities. I think this could have just been the extension "break through" of Yamanaya-ized people westward. The Beaker pots were made by the women anyway and may be confusing people. All Beaker folks were not a like.

I agree with that.

 

[Maciamo]

I don't know that "Steppe pastoralist" = "Indo-European". Perhaps according to the Kurgan hypothesis, but it seems that PIE was too sophisticated to be a language of simple nomads. Certainly the steppe pastoralists were Indo-European, but not every people fits into that paradigm. Probably not the Hittites, most definately not Proto-Euphrateans, assuming there was such a thing. (probably IMO)

I strongly believe that PIE was born as a hybrid language from two sources:

1) East Anatolian/Caucasian/Mesopotamian R1b (possibly accompanied by some G2a3b1, J2b and T), as indicated by the distant similarities of PIE with Hurrian and even a little bit with Semitic and Northwest Caucasian languages. This branch inherited the vocabulary of advanced Middle Eastern societies and all words related to deserts, mountains and the sea (thanks to the Black Sea). As I have explained the Maykop people were probably trading by sea over the Black Sea and might have been the ones who founded Troy.

2) Northeast European/Pontic-Caspian R1a, as indicated by loanwords in PIE from Uralic languages. The R1a branch originated in the Steppe and remained nomadic much longer than the R1b branch.

The merger of the R1a and R1b languages would have happened in the North Caucasus and the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, probably through a long blending process stretching over the 5th and 4th millennia BC. The two languages might have already shared similarities since they were both descended from a common ancestral R1 language. There might not have been much left in common beyond grammar and syntax after many millennia since the split of R1a and R1b. However the tiny population size of the Late Palaeolithic would have considerably slowed down the evolution of branch languages until the beginning of the Neolithic.

As Nicholas Ostler explains in his book Empires of the Word (which I highly recommend), blending populations who speak languages too different from each others rarely acquire each others languages. Arabic easily took root in North Africa after the Islamic conquest because Egyptian and Berber were also Afro-Asiatic languages. Latin became quickly spoken by conquered Italic and Celtic people, but was never adopted by the overall population in Greece and the Near East. This is why I believe that R1a and R1b languages started diverging after their geographic split from one another, but when the two populations met again in the Pontic Steppe they managed to blend their two languages over time, or at least borrow heavily from each others. I have envisaged that the Centum-Satem split never actually occurred since there might never have been a perfect cohesion between the R1a and R1b groups, and therefore never a single unified Proto-Indo-European language. The way I see it is that the R1a and R1b populations living side by side in the Pontic Steppe (R1a to the north, R1b to the south) kept speaking the new PIE lingua franca with their own pronunciation and keeping their own dialectical words, just like English and Scottish English. They could understand each others but always kept differences as pronunciation and vocabulary. When the two groups split again, with R1b migrating to the Balkans then to Western Europe and Anatolia, they kept that original divide in pronunciation between the two groups, which can now be classified as Centum and Satem. Some languages, like Armenian got influenced by both R1a and R1b people over time, and although it was originally R1b and Centum, eventually became Satemised.

Overall, if Beaker men weren't R1b, then you are faced with a European invasion of Amazonian (H1, H3) women in the chalcolithic, because the Beaker males were not racially typical for Neolithic Europeans. There doesn't seem to be a feasible solution for how these haplogroups become dominant in Western Europe.

H1 and H3 have been all over Western Europe since the Mesolithic re-expansion. Why would you believe that they arrived with the Beaker people ? Ancient DNA tests have found H1 and/or H3 samples in Mesolithic Portugal, Neolithic Spain and France (Cardium Pottery and Megalithic).

Most of all, how do you account for the genetic landscape of Ireland?

R1b replaced most of the original male lineages. Female lineages are mixed pre-IE and IE. Beaker people were not as technologically advanced as later Indo-Europeans, so how could they have replaced all the male lineages of similar Neolithic/Chalcolithic populations ?

 

[Maciamo]

Just as a general question, which I alluded to in my post up thread...doesn't the wide spread, and, more importantly, the speed with which R1a and R1b came to dominate Europe pre-suppose a relatively mass movement or folk movement of people, regardless of the direction or origin of the group? What evidence is there in the archaeology for such a movement into western Europe from the kurgans in the Hungarian plain? Or a movement from the Balkans into central Europe that isn't associated with the early Neolithic, or from anywhere into Portugal at this relevant time period?

Certainly, there were upheavals with the collapse of the Bronze Age, but is there evidence of folk movement during that period into Iberia or western Europe?

It's not always easy to distinguish changes in cultures and technologies from folk movement. In the case of R1b it may prove all the more difficult that R1b carriers were not genetically or physically the same in the Pontic Steppe c. 3500 BCE, in Central Europe circa 2500 BCE and in Western Europe circa 2000-1500 BCE - simply because R1b hybridised heavily along the way during this 2000 year time frame. So much is evident from the ancient mtDNA record and modern mtDNA distribution. Some Steppe mtDNA made it all the way to Western Europe, but the proportion goes down as one moves west.

So far the best evidence for a swift conquest of Western Europe by R1b people is the quick diffusion of Bronze technologies, horse-drawn carriages, stratified societies and single elite burials.

 

[epoch]

And yet, this did happen precisely (or likely) from the Balkans with the later Sea Peoples (likely R1b) and also with the even later Northmen (heavily R1b). The Sea People invasion was so catastrophic over a period of several hundred years that it effectively collapsed nearly every Bronze Age society in the Mediterranean.

But why then is only Iberia target of these hypothetical neolithic seafaring invasions? Shouldn't we see far more of the Iberian type R1b on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. And also shouldn't we see more Bell Beaker sites or similar cultural evidence across the Mediterranean shores? The Sea People showed up everywhere. So should our hypothetical neolithic migrants, I would think.

 

[kamani]

I don't believe that there has been a significant number of new haplogroups since 1500 BC; new groups are not born that fast. This leaves very little room for R1b to have spread in Europe in the Bronze Age. I put the events of spreading and branching of R1b in Europe at least in the Neolithic. The spread of Bronze technology was a cultural one, just like the iPhone...The opposite would make the spread of Bronze Age similar to a North-American extermination of the Indians event..

 

[matbir]

I strongly believe that PIE was born as a hybrid language from two sources:

1) East Anatolian/Caucasian/Mesopotamian R1b (possibly accompanied by some G2a3b1, J2b and T), as indicated by the distant similarities of PIE with Hurrian and even a little bit with Semitic and Northwest Caucasian languages. This branch inherited the vocabulary of advanced Middle Eastern societies and all words related to deserts, mountains and the sea (thanks to the Black Sea). As I have explained the Maykop people were probably trading by sea over the Black Sea and might have been the ones who founded Troy.

2) Northeast European/Pontic-Caspian R1a, as indicated by loanwords in PIE from Uralic languages. The R1a branch originated in the Steppe and remained nomadic much longer than the R1b branch.

I do not believe in this at all. I think that you need to realize that people in Pontic steppe were farmers and/or herders and that their habitat was only in river valleys (where they could find water), and that the surrounding grass areas were uninhabited, before horse became domesticated. Those circumstances provide cultural isolation which I believe produced many language families even in the same river valley. So, if there was any migration from Caucasus I doubt that it had left any recognizable linguistic traces.(Compare it with written history of Native Americans) Then one tribe domesticated horse and everything changed, they could live outside the valley by supplying the tribe in water by riding a horse to river valley. Migration became easier, and new habitat was open to horse riders.
That one tribe entered the steppe, population grew, their language become dominant over the rest of tribes. That is how I thing that early-Indoeuropean language aroused. And that is how R1a1a1b (S224) made such big founder effect to reach frequencies between 30%-65% of lineages in Central and Eastern Europe.

 

[MOESAN]

It would be interesting to find out if there was a mass migration, and particularly from where. I'm inclined towards an east to west movement, rather than south to north. As I've said before, R1b was found in the Tarim Basin, it's also found in western Europe in large proportions. We're still waiting on an answer for the birth place of R1b.

TOYOMOTOR don't worry - I answer here because I could not do in an other way - partially I answer to the question of mass migration

Concerning Y-R1b, I am sure of nothing, but I did not think the typical Bell Beakers were the first bearers of this HG. At this stage I am not more avanced – Maciamo cited some good points and was contradicted by someones – but here come some others:

some «facts»:

• 'dinaric' phenotypes appeared about the 3000 BC in western Mediterranea, as from nowhere – at the same times, were found 'dinaric' types too between Denmark and northern Germany – the remote date and place of origin of the type and its phyletic origin is still unknown even if someones proposed an evolution around the Balkans of a type not too different from 'brünn' and 'corded' (we have to be cautious when trying to link it to 'borreby' type which is an not too reliable term for partly brachycephalized archaïc types where 'cromagnoid' and 'brünnoid' trends have to be distinguished one from another even if they merged in some places – I think there were some rare possible 'dinaric' influences among late neolithical people of SOM culture of N-E France and Wallonia – this 'dinarics' were found in metals mines regions of SW Iberia, the same in other western european regions, they were also in southern France at Calcholithic, and tend to disppear everywhere in South after some times: gone away or genetically assimilated?
  
  
• This weakness of the phenotype in the duration in Bell Beakers zones seems indicating a not too numerous population, maybe rather on the male side: we can suppose they took very often females in place and the Desideri surveys and others too seem confirming that.
  
• &: on the cultural plan some regions show only isolated artefacts (I red this opinion too in other fora or blogs) – and also the sepultures are heterogenous – often enough the BB sepultures seem intrusive, in low numbers – the domestic pottery when different is considered by some scholars as regional developements of BB – why this diversity is not found among the mortuary pottery? Is not this diversity the manifestation of a colonization of local partly accultured populations by a small number with the typical BB? I confess I have no certitude – but all that proves BBs had more or less cultural and surely demic imput according to the sites (generalizing maps are mistaking) -
  
• the propagation of the 'bowl furnaces' system for copper from Near Eastern to Caucasus (and Maikop) and to Creta (4000-3000 BC) according to N. Amzallag attained southern Iberia (Rio Tinto) about the 3000/2700 BC (roughly) and was a copper core prospection leading fast and far at first – only after (with the supposedly identified BBs in W-Europe) the propagation took the form of a peripheric progressive extension with no more the mines prospections as first goal – if it is true it is important: what we call Bell Beakers are already the following people, acculturated and applying an other system of colonization or territorial holding -
  

• no more «facts» beneath:
  
• &: on the demic aspect I think the BB phenomenom has been largely exagerated; I still think the «Beakers people» phenomenon started before the well identified pottery (it was not born in middle of nowhere) and that the south-center Portugal and south-western Spain areas has been at first more a target area than a genuine cradle – the definite BB first forms born from this colonization of the south Peninsula (3000 BC at least) spred after in all western Europe, with a male elite that was not already erased genetically (there are skeletons), seemingly by Atlantic, Mediterranea and Rhône valley – wherever these ones were coming from and at what stage of crossings, some BBs came in touch with Corded Ware people in central-northern Germania giving birth to a new accultured and genetically partly crossed population (well studied by J-C. Coon) that colonized the north Rhine valley and the northern plain of western Germany and the Netherlands, taking foot in Britain (-2500?) more densely in South and East, even until Eastern Scotland - this last «mixture», phenotypically so genetically already mixed, push their predecessors among whom Long Barrows were the numerous and running class into more inland regions before later mixings (as occurs almost everytime in History) – by the way, we can imagine BBs men were sailors because if they had needed the 'Long Barrows' people help, they would not have pushed them into less good lands BUT caution: here I speak of 2500 BC BBs of NORTHERN EUROPE –
  
  
• The skills of this previously small enough population concerning metals working is evident; we could say they were good sailors too – I am tempted to think so - but are we sure of that? Is a technologically dominant group obliged to be maritime if it can use the maritime local skills of preceding coastal people? Answer just above... and if they came quickly from East Mediterranea but are we sure???
  
  
• The seemingly fast propagation of the BB (the ceremonial pottery) all over Western Europe, coming apparently from S-W Iberia, is more complicated that we thought at first sight – some male elite or professional caste seems linked to it at least at the first stage OR early enough after this first stage – everywhere, and not only in the supposed «cradle» region of Iberia, we find them near metals rich regions – some studies, contradictory for the details, seem proving nevertheless that females were involved in the moves (what speed?) - I suppose subsequent more or less limited migrations of mixed populations after «BB education» by the former male elite – are the regions where bronze centers were born in Occident very different from the regions where Beakers seem having founded colonies, spotty at the beginning and broader spred later ? I confess I don't know in details – the answer could be interesting...
  the N. Amzallag survey offers us an other insight: a foreign group of prospectors landed in southern Iberia as in other places – in Occident surely in Iberia at first; there it created a relatively new style of pottery and in a short enough time expanded in several directions, boosting by technical progress the local cultures – around the Rhône-Rhine Valleys it entered in touch with what could have been Proto-Celts (?) or Proto-Ligurians, around the Atlantic shores with late neolithical megalithic people, among whom the Proto-Basques – almost all the later slower cultural expansion are the facts of accultured people where the weight of previous BBs was progressively fading out – they send the technics, but did not passed their language, only the metal terms in Iberia (explanation of the metals words in basque? What about the iberian?) - the central europeans had yet a metallurgy but the new 'furnaces' system of BBs was adopted as a better one? - as they seem not a too agressive people (but able to defend themselves if needed) and possessing avantageous skills we can suppose they were rather demanded-coopted than submitted (the rapports were maybe not always the same ones according to number and level of culture) -
  conclusion: the later «BBs» development (as in Britain) were no more the result of pure original and independant BBs activity

addenda:can this really help?
&: I have some difficulties to admit a general break between copper and bronze: the skills seem coming from East or South-East – some elites could have replaced other ones but in some places - nothing urges us to think bronze did not come from roughly the same cultures as copper – and I recall some scientists (Czechs) supposed prototypes of the BB pottery of Bohemia-Moravia had their prototypes in the ancient Vucedol center (what culture then? Post Baden??? all the way, late neolithical culture, and I suppose, already a 'dinarics' center, pure or not), others even spoke of Moldovia region (former Cucuteni-Tripolje province, and some 'dianrics' here too), but I don't know how serious this can be taken as, except the fact that these two regions were situated closer to the metals first centers than SW-Iberia –



good supper - I enjoy my glass of white wine from Alsace!

 

[MOESAN]

concerning mass migration, we have to keep in mind archeology does not provide us everytime a good evidence - and an ethny can stay in tiny number a certain time before to know a spectacular increase (material progress, plague end after selection, better climate) - the only thing we can see then is a densification of settlements, not always an amazing change in the matérial culture or a trail showing the travel -
the physical anthropology (recent) show the intrusion of new people in the carpathian Bassin at bronze Age but in a lot of place it seems the newcomers were absorbed, either by departure or by crossing - all the way, more than a move was seen at that period but almost never was completely replaced a population: cultures lived often enough side by side -
the BB held a lot of interesting (economically) places in Europe but never covered the whole Occident (without speaking about the densities of settlements and depth of colonization) - I shall read again the Desideri study but yet I can say: we lack a period by period (precise datations) analysis of the BB phenomenon in every place, concerning anthropology: so I do here only bets (but it is amusing, when we know there will be no more game) -
I think for the moment Y-R1b was in W-Europe before Bronze Age, and could have been divided in I-E speaking populationS and non-I-E speaking ones for a time, before complete assimilation by the former (but later arrived in West?) - the later growing of its clades (firstable isolated enough) could be linked to the diverse advantages of metals (even for deforesting!) and horses -

 

[adamo]

i find the spread of bell beaker to be oddly in synch with the spread of r1b although i may be wrong;

 

[Maciamo]

i find the spread of bell beaker to be oddly in synch with the spread of r1b although i may be wrong;

The easy explanation is not always the right one. Looking at the modern map of R1b, most people used to think that R1b represented the paternal lineage of Cro-Magnon... The maps of Megalithic and Bell Beaker cultures are illusions of the same kind.

 

[adamo]

Where the men of I the cro-magnon's?

 

[MOESAN]

Where the men of I the cro-magnon's?

'cro-magnon' was not the only population that inhabited Europe after the LGM - let's leave the naming "cro-magnon" concerning cultural stage and let's keep this name for only a physical well determined type - other populations (types) were there about the 14000 BC - so linking 'cro-magnon' to Y-I or the reverse is too soon for me -

 

[matbir]

Bell-Beaker culture probably isn't source of R1b in Western Europe, because R1b was there before it emerged. According to Myres et al.(2010) M269 emerged 10270+-1680 YBP, M412/L51 8870+-1708 YBP, S116 8630+-1529 YBP, U106 8742+-1551 YBP. That time points to LBK culture and Neolithic origin of R1b. The most probable explanation of wide spread of R1b in whole Europe and very high frequency in West Europe is due to their farming culture which provided more food for children then hunter-gatherers cultures.
Map of diffusion of agriculture in Europe clearly correlate with spread of R1b:

the same correlation is reviled by autosomal "Gedrosian" and to lesser extent "Mediterranean" components in Western Europe.