May 03, 2012

Bell Beakers from Germany: Y-haplogroup R1b

Just in time with my recent speculations about post-Neolithic events affecting Europe, we now have a paper of a Bell Beaker sample from Germany. Like with earlier Neolithic samples there are two camps in trying to explain the Bell Beaker phenomenon: one of them saw only a cultural phenomenon epitomized by burials with the eponymous Bell Beaker pottery; the other saw a true invading population. This is how Carleton Coon described them:
The Dinaric type, with which the Rhenish Bell beakers are associated, is one which entered the western Mediterranean by sea from the east, and eventually moved, by some route yet to be determined in an accurate manner, to the north, and eventually to central Europe.
As such, the Bell Beaker phenomenon is a test case for the pots-not-people paradigm. There is ample physical anthropological evidence that the people of Beaker burials had a distinctive physical type which contrasted with the long-headed type typical of the era, so I have always been on the "people" side of the conflict.

I will update this entry when I read the paper.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22074

Emerging genetic patterns of the european neolithic: Perspectives from a late neolithic bell beaker burial site in Germany†

Esther J. Lee et al.

Abstract

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in Europe is associated with demographic changes that may have shifted the human gene pool of the region as a result of an influx of Neolithic farmers from the Near East. However, the genetic composition of populations after the earliest Neolithic, when a diverse mosaic of societies that had been fully engaged in agriculture for some time appeared in central Europe, is poorly known. At this period during the Late Neolithic (ca. 2,800–2,000 BC), regionally distinctive burial patterns associated with two different cultural groups emerge, Bell Beaker and Corded Ware, and may reflect differences in how these societies were organized. Ancient DNA analyses of human remains from the Late Neolithic Bell Beaker site of Kromsdorf, Germany showed distinct mitochondrial haplotypes for six individuals, which were classified under the haplogroups I1, K1, T1, U2, U5, and W5, and two males were identified as belonging to the Y haplogroup R1b. In contrast to other Late Neolithic societies in Europe emphasizing maintenance of biological relatedness in mortuary contexts, the diversity of maternal haplotypes evident at Kromsdorf suggests that burial practices of Bell Beaker communities operated outside of social norms based on shared maternal lineages. Furthermore, our data, along with those from previous studies, indicate that modern U5-lineages may have received little, if any, contribution from the Mesolithic or Neolithic mitochondrial gene pool.

Link

131 comments:

Slumbery said...

Now, finally we have DNA from the Atlantic folk of the Neolithic, and both Y are Rb1. I am so not surprised.

I hope they can extract aDNA too.

The idea that the mixed mtDNA suggests patriarchal society is interesting. I never thought of this use of the DNA samples before.

princenuadha said...

> Furthermore, our data, along with those from previous studies, indicate that modern U5-lineages may have received little, if any, contribution from the Mesolithic or Neolithic mitochondrial gene pool.

Are they saying that post neolithic migrations, like bell beaker, carried much the U5 that still exists in Europe?

mooreisbetter said...

We finally have 5000 year old YC dna in Western Europe of R1b...

Wonder if it parachuted in from Anatolia. Or was from an empire bigger than anything every seen (but without writing). :-)

My guess is we'll find more R1b in Western Europe, and older.

Dienekes said...

We finally have 5000 year old YC dna in Western Europe of R1b...

From an archaeological culture without precedent in either burial style or physical type...

Wonder if it parachuted in from Anatolia. Or was from an empire bigger than anything every seen (but without writing). :-)

We've just seen a Neolithic Swedish farmer who resembled Southern Europeans. I won't be at all surprised if Beaker samples turn up substantially "West Asian" in autosomal ancestry, both because of the ultimate origin of R1b and their distinctive physical type that has its closest parallels to the highlands of West Asia.

Unknown said...

I think these patterns of one male haplogroup and multiple female haplogroups probably do represent patriarchal society. Mainly as there also seems to be evidence of patrilicality in some studies.

But let us not forget that that is not the only explanation. Life was always hard for boys, far fewer young males made it to adulthood than girls. If they made it they lasted a long time and the women popped off in childbirth. So you would expect there to be a tendency for a more limited gene pool for males leading to the dominance of one or a few haplotypes.

And then there is the tradition of the Summer King recorded in literature. A favoured male with the potential to impregnate the entire community of women at the optimum time for bearing a child. Before sacrifice. His children would have a huge advantage, and would be over represented in future generations of potential sacrifices.

Effects like these could account for this pattern also, with no patriarchy.

Fanty said...

In all cheering about the presents of R1b, nobody mentioned "again no H" yet. ;-)

newtoboard said...

Dienekes regarding R1b and West Asia do you know how old R1b is in N/NW Iran and if it is native to that Iranians? Or is it some sort of Assyrian/Armenian/Hurrian/Urartian/Azerbaijani admixture? has admixture inflated the frequencies or actually decreased the R1b frequency in N. iran (via R1as taking over)? Would you say it maybe even originated there? If not what weave (and mtdna) would you associate with R1b moving into Iran?



What physical type do you speak of? And what language did the first R1bs speak?

And what about Central/South Asian M269? And M73 which is its brother clade? What is its origin?

(also is it looking like Z93+ was born on the steepe where M73 might have existed before?)

princenuadha said...

Just noticed after reading the link; the story of the bell beakers is pretty complicated.

There may have been a few main types of bell beaker. It first started in iberia. And there was an interesting mix of bell beaker and coffee where in central Europe. "Lower Rhine... The arrival of the Maritime Bell Beaker from the west a century or two later initiated a period of borrowing and experimentation in what has been called the Primary Bell Beaker/Corded Ware contact zone and cultural traits developed here" (Wikipedia, "bell beaker"). Lastly out of many bell beaker sites the only areas that retained continuity were northern Spain and Cz.

truth said...

How is that populations like Irish and Basque with such high levels of R1b have 0% west-asian ??

Davidski said...

"Wonder if it parachuted in from Anatolia."

Parachutes weren't around back then, but boats were.

eurologist said...

princenuadha, (on the suggested lack of U5 continuity):

That statement by the authors is not even supported by their own data. In fact, three of the agricultural and five of the Mesolithic U5 samples are nodes with modern samples downstream. Sure, many are at the tips - but that would be expected over such a long time. Most haplogroups are expected to not have children, eventually. And, many of the nodes are still alive in (actually, sampled from) extant populations. This simply means we have by far not sufficient ancient samples to draw any conclusions, here, except everything is consistent with continuity.

This Bell Beaker locality is at the extreme NE edge of its distribution, and surrounded by contemporaneous Corded Ware. Definitely interesting to see R1b M269 so far NE this early.

Dienekes, AFAIK the "special" skull shapes of Bell Beaker are from just a few samples and not at all representative. Also, part of the burial practices are almost identical to Corded Ware (e.g., same general polar male/female position, except 90 degrees rotated).

Anonymous said...

You know, some claims from the "continuity" crowd floating around are really hard to understand. Sorry to say that, but I can only ascribe them to some sort of unconscious regional bias, because there is no other rational explanation.
-
Why is it that prevalence of R1b in Western Europe is significant, but prevalence of R1b in Bashkirs, Uyghurs, Chadians and Bedouins is not?
Why is it that dominating Western Europe is a problem, but dominating South Siberia, Xinjiang and the Sahel is not?
Looks like plain eurocentrism to me...
A migration to East, West and South from a central position that was partially depopulated (perhaps due to geo events, etc.) still makes a lot more sense. Especially considering the diversity levels of what remains of R1b in that area.
And 5.000 ybp is still far from being "stone age stuff". So, no, no Idyllic Vasconcic hunter-gatherers roaming the Atlantic area just yet. Sure, they may turn up, but the present rationale for that seems flawed to me.

Nirjhar007 said...

Dienekes what about the R1b1a1 M-73 which lacks in Central Eurasia but peaks in the areas around South Central Asia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_(Y-DNA)#R1b1a1_.28R-M73.29

mooreisbetter said...

"I won't be at all surprised if Beaker samples turn up substantially "West Asian" in autosomal ancestry, both because of the ultimate origin of R1b and their distinctive physical type that has its closest parallels to the highlands of West Asia.

I'm sorry, but no. The farther a theory gets away from common sense, the more it stretches credulity, the less I buy it.

There is well-established, well-studied, universally accepted evidence that Beaker culture started in the Iberian peninsula and spread east. Indeed, beakers are just not found east of central europe. There is just no trail of a potential spread from west asia: nothing.

The archaelogical record is much more consistent with a small R1b population that existed in Iberia after the LGM expanding at some point in its existence, likely in the early neolithic. There is not enough ancient dna harvested yet to rule this out.

A small R1b pop in Iberia that weathered the LGM there then later seeing a dramatic expansion after picking up pastoralism via Morocco is consistent with the archaeological record and mainstream DNA theory for most of the last decade.

Davidski said...

eurologist,

There was a world of difference between Bell Beaker and Corded Ware, in terms of culture, anthropology, and now we know that also in terms of genetics (R1b vs. R1a).

"The Bell Beaker domestic ware of Southern Germany shows neither genetic relation to the Late Copper Age Corded Ware, nor to other pottery groups. Therefore, Corded Ware and Bell Beakers might have had less to do with each other than indicated by the dialectic of their burial rites."

http://www.bris.ac.uk/archanth/staff/heyd/Bell2.pdf

So, from West Asia to Portugal by boat, and then onto Germany.

What a story!

Anonymous said...

Well the chickens are coming home to roost. No R1b except in some Neolithic farmers using bell beakers, no mt U5 of Mesolithic origin contributing to the Bell Beaker folks. Looks like my hypothesis that modern Europeans derive from Neolithic (including those Swedish hunters/fishers) movement of peoples from the east of Europe, and post Neolithic movements baring the Finno-Ugrian and Indo-European languages along with the ability to drink raw milk, withstand the Plague (and HIV infections) and light pigmentation is coming true. Those that laugh last laugh best.

There is fraud and hard to shift paradigms in science but eventually the evidence makes the truth show though.

eurologist said...

Why is it that prevalence of R1b in Western Europe is significant, but prevalence of R1b in Bashkirs, Uyghurs, Chadians and Bedouins is not?

Ezr,

Because no one in this context here really means R1b, but specific subclades of R1b-M269 (or specific subclades of R1b1a2 in 2011 notion).

Yes, at one point R1b-M269 got into Europe (via the Balkans, as it looks), and it also got elsewhere into Eurasia. The question is when. Now, the subclades of interest in most of Europe are several nodes downstream (Specifically, L23 --> L150 --> L51/M412, and of that, specifically P130) --- and those appear by all observations to have spread from West to East, not the other way around.

Dienekes said...

Looks like my hypothesis that modern Europeans derive from Neolithic (including those Swedish hunters/fishers) movement of peoples from the east of Europe, and post Neolithic movements baring the Finno-Ugrian and Indo-European languages along with the ability to drink raw milk, withstand the Plague (and HIV infections) and light pigmentation is coming true.

There is no evidence that Bell Beakers "the ability to drink raw milk" to Europe.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/01/lactase-persistence-in-neolithic-iberia.html
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2148-10-89.pdf

Nor is there any evidence that they introduced "light pigmentation" to Europe, or, indeed what their pigmentation was.

princenuadha said...

> We've just seen a Neolithic Swedish farmer who resembled Southern Europeans. I won't be at all surprised if Beaker samples turn up substantially "West Asian" in autosomal ancestry

The fact that the farmer was so distinct creates an interesting dynamic. If the trb farmers were distinct from their neighbouring hunter gathers then how did the modern Swedes end up so different from the trb farmers? Did the two eventually mix? But wouldn't the trb outbreed the local hunter gathers to much to create modern Swedes? Or could there have been a later migration to Sweden which brought more meso European, shifting the population away from the trb type?

Similarly, how did northern Italy shift away from otzi like individuals and move, genetically, to the northeast.

I suspect that the bell beakers carrying r1b were an expansion of people, who were mostly meso European, which is why western Europeans aren't as "southern" as the original farmers. I also think this meso group came from eastern Europe.

> Parachutes weren't around back then, but boats were.

The mutations on r1b in Europe don't follow a Mediterranean path from the middle east.

Davidski said...

princenuadha,

R1b is a West Asian marker that came to Europe via the Mediterranean.

But obviously the Bell Beakers made it to Central Europe at a fairly early stage, so there was time for them to acquire North European influence, largely b swapping women with neighboring Corded Ware groups.

This has actually been proven by studying the teeth of Bell Beakers and Corded Ware groups.

These mixed groups then expanded during the metal ages, moving back west and south. There were further migrations from the north during the early middle ages.

Hence, the Oetzis survived only on Sardinia, Southern Europeans acquired Northeast European genes, and R1b ended up looking like a marker from the north, even though we now know it came to Europe with the Bell Beakers.

So let's just move on from this nonsense of steppe origins of R1b, and start discussing the reality, which is much more interesting. There's an R1b vs. R1a division within Europe, which can basically be called the Bell Beaker vs. Corded Ware division.

It looks like they carved up the realm during the late Neolithic, and things have stayed that way ever since.

That's awesome enough. Why do we need to dabble in science fiction?

Matt said...

How is that populations like Irish and Basque with such high levels of R1b have 0% west-asian ??

Why is it that dominating Western Europe is a problem, but dominating South Siberia, Xinjiang and the Sahel is not?

Well, whether or not it is a "problem", it is difficult to associate this y-chromosomal haplogroup with a component (West Asian) which is absent in one of its groups of highest frequency. It makes a mockery of the whole process of association.

I may be misremembering, but in the past I think there were attempts to reconcile this phenomenon (R1b expansion having some sort of link to the East) by saying "Well, the Basques are sort of some other minor group from the East who were just carried along, but didn't expand as much". But that seems false in the light of the current analysis (which seems to suggest they dervive from an earlier Neolithic wave).

How is R1b being a signal of a later wave expansion, yet it being massively present in people who supposedly lack the autosomal correlate of that same wave expansion, how is that at all viable?

eurologist said...

no mt U5 of Mesolithic origin contributing to the Bell Beaker folks

Ponto, not according to Figs. 2 and 3 of the paper we are discussing - quite the opposite.

If the trb farmers were distinct from their neighbouring hunter gathers then how did the modern Swedes end up so different from the trb farmers? Did the two eventually mix? But wouldn't the trb outbreed the local hunter gathers to much to create modern Swedes?

princenuadha,

I am pretty sure the TRB women analyzed was a recent Megalithism immigrant and not at all representative of TRB, which at that time (and even 500 years before then) probably looked like LBK highly admixed with the local (northern German/ southern Scandinavian) population.

Fanty said...

"which is absent in one of its groups of highest frequency. It makes a mockery of the whole process of association."

Except if Western European R1b frequencies dont actually represent real population flow but are the result of drift.

Drift should be extremely lower in autosomal DNA if not absolutely none-existant in compararation to gender based DNA, because it bases on millions of markers instead of one single one.

Dienekes said...

Well, whether or not it is a "problem", it is difficult to associate this y-chromosomal haplogroup with a component (West Asian) which is absent in one of its groups of highest frequency. It makes a mockery of the whole process of association.

The Irish have about ~10% of West_Asian component

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArAJcY18g2GadHZ6SHpiLTNTa3lsUmZJY2pQblVRR2c#gid=0

This is about the same as other British Isles populations.

wagg said...

Davidski : "Parachutes weren't around back then, but boats were"

AFAIK, the oldest R1b clades in Europe are found mostly in the Balkans (and actually older than most of the most frequent old R1b clades of west Asia, -> Myres et al. 2010). No need for boats.

Slumbery said...

Dienekes

Maybe the West_Asian component and the R1b were brought in West Europe by two different groups. Both of these populations could have been part of the Megalithic culture and became highly intermixed in most of the Megalithic area, but not everywhere. Irish is an intermixed part of the population (multiple way by now), Basques represents one of the two elements in realively pure form.

Bell Beaker is not necessarily a new immigration from outside Europe, it can be an indigenius culture risen from a local Megalithic subgroup. There was no earlier or contemporal archeological culture with similar attributes anywhere in the east as far as I know.

Really, we need DNA from Megalithic and Bell Beaker sites of the British Isles. That would be telling. Is there any ongoing research in this direction?

Slumbery said...

wagg

"AFAIK, the oldest R1b clades in Europe are found mostly in the Balkans (and actually older than most of the most frequent old R1b clades of west Asia, -> Myres et al. 2010). No need for boats."

You still can go from the Balkan by boat, its not like they had GPS and targeted a spcific preset destination.

But more importantly: the fact that there are old R1b lineages on the Balkan does not mean that these Balkan lineages have anything to do with the West Euopean R1b. They can be a completely different story. (And very probably they are.)

eurologist said...

There's an R1b vs. R1a division within Europe, which can basically be called the Bell Beaker vs. Corded Ware division.

OK, we have a couple of data points, we should not get carried away, quite yet. Corded ware existed all the way west to the Rhine, where R1b heavily dominates. Conversely, Bell Beakers left huge gaps in regions that still, today, are heavily dominated by R1b.

To me, it makes more sense that the R1a/R1b division predates Corded Ware/ Bell Beakers in Europe, although both certainly had their fare share of shaping things. For example, on previously TRB grounds, Corded Ware is not intrusive, and R1b there may have much older origins from the West (Megalithism or even diffusion from the LBK/La Hoguette mixing region).

We need way more data points in space and time to be certain of things.

newtoboard said...

Seems like people will never give up on the idea of R1b being European. It is West Asian. Deal with it. There is no movement from Europe to West Asia which would have made R1b so prevalent there. Groups like Assyrians don't have Northern European admixture but Europeans do have West Asian admixture. People need to get over it.

Nirjhar007 said...

R1b is also found among some african populations i think its probably mutation named V88, do those populations have any eurasian specific components?

Amanda S said...

The cultural means by which a novel y haplogroup could become dominant without greatly affecting the pre-existing overall make-up of a population is if a foreign population carrying the y haplogroup are able to establish themselves as the chiefly class and practise extensive polygamy generation after generation. If you look at the behaviour of Gaelic chiefs in Ireland even after conversion to Christianity you see a pattern of them serially marrying and divorcing many wives and also fathering children by other women and that all their male heirs, legitimate and illegitimate, compete with each other for recognition as their father's successor. In other words it looks as though the chiefly families pre-Christian forebears were out and out polygamists.

There are some interesting parallels in the cultural practices and social structure of some other cattle owning, iron age societies, those in Southern Africa.

John said...

The west origin argument is not helped by this statement in the Wiki article about Vucedol culture: Marija Gimbutas characterized the Bell Beaker culture complex as an amalgam of Vucedol and Yamna culture traditions formed after the incursion of the Yamna people into the milieu of the Vučedol culture, which evolved in the course of the three or four centuries after 3000/2900 BC.

a said...

There are not many Hunter Gatherers with blood type "B" allele. Indeed the Saami lack it[90+/-%A], so do the West Asians[Caucasus, predominantly A or O] and all aboriginal people in the Americas[perhaps indicating "B" as a recent mutation 5k+/-, not migrating over the Bering Strait 15000+/- ago. The original Bell Beaker's were also either blood type A or O as well as having R1b, and low or no Afro-Asiatic "B" evident among the Irish and Basque.
However blood type "B" allele is found in the North Eastern European- Mesolithic & Corded Ware, Hunter Gatherers of the Baltic regions in excess of 25%-30%. It is also found in high concentrations among Gypsies,Indians,Buryats,pockets in Africa.

So why is not the "B" allele not found with any significant numbers in Western Europe[R1b] or the Saami, if it was part of a much older substratum, as evidence in the Baltic Hunter Gatherers?

http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm

apostateimpressions said...

If R1b was West Asian in origin, then how could R1b - but not the West Asian component - come to dominate western Europe?

Maybe settled R1b males outsourced their females for a few generations, perhaps as an sign of dominant status or as a way of cementing co-existence. That way, they became diluted but their culture nevertheless outbred competitors, leading to high R1b but low WA autosomal.

Perhaps the invaders slaughtered the local men and kept the women as trophies and as females for breeding. They continued that pattern over generations. Perhaps Corded Ware retaliated in kind, capturing Beaker women. Perhaps CW and BB men were already into that before they came into contact, commonly driven by the basic competitive sexual instinct to procreate with as many women as possible and against the success of other males. I would imagine that history presents many examples of victorious armies seizing the women of conquered parts. Bolsheviks raping German women after WWII come to mind.

The relative variety of mt haplos in the present study perhaps suggests some such scenario.

Dienekes said...

If R1b was West Asian in origin, then how could R1b - but not the West Asian component - come to dominate western Europe?

For the same reason that R1b is the dominant haplogroup in Mestizos who have a majority Amerindian autosomal ancestry: male-biased gene flow.

R1b is associated with different autosomal components even if we discount West Asia altogether: Italians and Germans are both R1b dominant populations in which different autosomal components predominate.

So, there is no real mystery: the original R-M269 people probably originated in West Asia, and a subset thereof moved east and north, and their descendants would have picked up additional components in Europe (Southern/Atlantic_Baltic).

Fanty said...

Something on "Drift":

There was a simple computer experiment with populations that start with 2 haplogroups. Both beeing 50%. Sons or doughters had been set to random. And always it ended up with one haplogroup becoming 100% in the end. So higher the population size, so longer it took. Millions of generations. But finaly it always happend.

As an example of how fast this goes:

In a isolated population of 100 males with 2 equally strong (50%) haplogroups, its possibly that one haplogroup reaches 100% after 5 generations.

In the past, extreme excess of one haplogroup like R1b in Basques or Irish etc was explained by this effect "Drift" (theory: all other haplogroups in that populations simply vannished over the milenia)

So faster a population grows, so more dramatical can the drift effect be. And so more isolated from migration a place is, so more dramatical aswell.

Of course the idea of "drift" is not liked much. Its not allowed to exist, because if it exists, its impossible to say anything about haplogroup frequencies of the past, based on haplogroup frequencies of today. And the only way of knowing the haplogroup frequencies of the past would be ancient DNA.

Jim said...

Amanda,

" If you look at the behaviour of Gaelic chiefs in Ireland even after conversion to Christianity you see a pattern of them serially marrying and divorcing many wives and also fathering children by other women and that all their male heirs, legitimate and illegitimate, compete with each other for recognition as their father's successor. In other words it looks as though the chiefly families pre-Christian forebears were out and out polygamists."

Not just look like, and not just pre-Christian. The Breathamh laws encode a specifically ploygamous situation, with gradations of inheritance for offspring based on class of the parents.

Oh, and those laws apply to women having serial and several husbands too. And side dalliances appear to have been part of the picture. If she had property to pass on the paternity of her children obviously would be immaterial.

That's the legal situation, both pre-Christian and after. Apparently the Church caught hell trying to suppress polygamy. It was probably hard enough to get the clergy to stick to one wife.

Charlotte said...

The Corded Ware / Bell Beaker division roughly parallels the R1a /R1b division, but also the centum / satem division of Indo-European languages, which is a curious thing.

jeanlohizun said...

Dienekes said:

For the same reason that R1b is the dominant haplogroup in Mestizos who have a majority Amerindian autosomal ancestry: male-biased gene flow.

Well per the latest study published by Manichaiku et al(2012) at K=3 Mexicans are 47% Caucasian, and 48% Native American. That is not what I would call majority Amerindian autosomal ancestry. Moreover R1b was found at 43.8% in a sample of Hispanic Americans (n=479), while Q was the second most frequent haplogroup with a frequency of 11.7%.

http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/hammerfsiinpress.pdf

Dienekes said:

R1b is associated with different autosomal components even if we discount West Asia altogether: Italians and Germans are both R1b dominant populations in which different autosomal components predominate.

Germans have R1b at a frequency of 44%, which varies from 48.5% in South Germany to 36% in Northern and Eastern Germany, that isn’t dominance in my book. Italians have R1b at a frequency of 49%, going from 55% in North Italy to 22% in Sardinia, 29% in Southern Italy and 30% in Sicily, that certainly isn’t being R1b dominated. The Germans and the Italians differ in the remaining haplogroups: Germans are much more R1a, I1&I2 than Italians, and Italians are much more J2 and E1b1b than Germans. Therefore their different autosomal components can be easily explained by that.

Mark D said...

Slumbery -

I recall reading that the Amesbury Archer, dating to 2300 BC had five bell beaker pots buried with him. I'm not familiar with any research on his DNA, but someon else on the blog may know.

John said...

Can the individual mtdna groups be associated with localities in any way that might suggest a migration path (albeit without a known direction)?

GailT said...

"(on the suggested lack of U5 continuity): That statement by the authors is not even supported by their own data. In fact, three of the agricultural and five of the Mesolithic U5 samples are nodes with modern samples downstream."

Exactly. Any evidence for that claim is lacking in the paper, and if they do have data or a theory to support the claim, it is poorly explained.

I expected that when we finally found R1b we would also fin mtDNA H with it (based on the theory that both R1b and H expanded together from a near east/Anatolian origin. It is too small a sample to start drawing any conclusions, but if it turns out mtDNA H arrived after R1b, it seems difficult to explain a large scale migration of H to Europe without some migration of y-DNA at the same time.

I've assumed that y-DNA could expand in a population more rapidly that mtDNA.

It is possible that there could have been multiple waves of R1b and H arrived with later waves.

It is also possible that U5 could have been present in the Near East/Anatolia and that some U5 found in Europe today is a result of neolithic expansion, and U5a1 seems a possible candidate for a neolithic migrant. But we really need FMS test for ancient DNA to reach any conclusions about continuity or migrations of U5 during and after the neolithic.

Nice to see so much activity here, especially now that genealogy-dna-list is being heavily censored.

Nirjhar007 said...

Talking about mtdna here is our new topic with more debate: http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(12)00204-2

GailT said...

"Can the individual mtdna groups be associated with localities in any way that might suggest a migration path (albeit without a known direction)?"

Usually not based only on control region results, e.g., U5a1 has an age estimate of 17000 years. We need a more refined and younger haplogroup identified to look at current distributions among haplogroups.

cris said...

Dear Dienekes and other readers, we have a couple of facts
1/mt-DNA H is European and paleolithic
2/y-DNA R1b is Middleastern and neolithic
3/Bell-beaker culture is Iberian in origin and Neolithic
4/no mt-DNA H in german bell-beaker site
Only 1 paradigm could solve this puzzle=>Bell-beaker culture was brought to Iberia by R1b males and future archeological studies will find the forefathers of that culture, however the possibility that bell beaker is an European innovation by westasian migrant males could stand as well (and very well)
YOU SURELY KNOW THAT RAP IS AN AMERICAN INNOVATION HOWEVER WE ALL KNOW THAT IT WAS "INVENTED" BY AFRICAN MIGRANTS (YET IN THE US SOIL)
@mooreisbetter
Not necessarily and as a perfect counter-example please see the distribution pattern of Arabian J1 (There is more J1 in Algeria than next-to-arabia Iran) in both cases (Arab and IE) we did have paternalisitic polygamist invaders/migrants

eurologist said...

Seems like people will never give up on the idea of R1b being European. It is West Asian. Deal with it.

newtoboard,
No one in their right mind would say R1b is not Asian. In fact, virtually all haplogroups in Europe are Asian (if they are not West, then Central/East/South/Southeast Asian or African). That's a trivial statement. As I pointed out above, the question is at what subclade it entered Europe (which seems to be secured as R1b-M269), and at what time - which is basically unknown, at this point. That's the non-trivial part.

The Corded Ware / Bell Beaker division roughly parallels the R1a /R1b division, but also the centum / satem division of Indo-European languages, which is a curious thing.

Charlotte,
Curious, but mostly accidental, as we know pretty much for certain. We know from ancient DNA that the R1b/R1a gradient existed in Central Germany from Corded Ware to Urnfield (3,000 ya) - the latter of which most of the neighboring Baltics and Poland were either Germanic or Uralic, long before the Slavic expansion.

Clearly, R1a are the people who eventually outnumbered LBK heritage in the East, and R1b the ones from the West. IMO this most likely happened when we see LBK fall apart, and most likely, people with these two haplogroups were around all along.

princenuadha said...

> R1b is a West Asian marker that came to Europe via the Mediterranean.

>But obviously the Bell Beakers made it to Central Europe at a fairly early stage, so there was time for them to acquire North European influence, largely b swapping women with neighboring Corded Ware groups.

-Davidski

Id agree that r1b initially came to European from the middle east. We also both agree that the r1b line picked up a good deal of meso European, which made western Europe more meso as a whole.

But you think the r1b forebears picked up meso European in central Europe while I think it happened in eastern Europe. I see no genetic or archeological evidence supporting the idea that r1b cane to western Europe from the middle east via the Mediterranean (and where exactly did it enter European?).

I do see genetic evidence in favor of an east to west migration of r1b in Europe, implying that r1b came north of the black sea.

http://racehist.blogspot.com/2011/08/variance-of-r-p312-lineages-highest-in.html?m=1

I have seen archeological evidence which strongly suggests a "northern route", at least not as strong as the genetic, but I haven't seen any archeological evidence in face of a southern route.

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
princenuadha said...

I haven't* seen archeological evidence which strongly suggests a "northern route", at least not as strong as the genetic, but I haven't seen any archeological evidence in face of a southern route.

Corrected

eurologist said...

And the western European sub-clades of R1b are 'downstream' to those in W Asia, hence 'younger'; whatever Busby or others might say about the STR diversity

Dr Rob,
The point is, they are not downstream of those predominant in Anatolia. Both the Western European and the Anatolian branches show extreme star-like, concurrent growth, but are separate and downstream of a - eventually - Balkan population. Anyone looking at this pattern, knowing that it must pre-date the late neolithic, should be critically thinking about what distinct two time frames and distinct cultures would have given these three populations - somewhere around the Balkans or north of it, in Western Europe, and in Anatolia - the opportunity to blossom and be extremely successful.

The thing is, in both Europe and in Anatolia, after introduction of agriculture, the time of fast and furious growth from tiny numbers had passed. Only preexisting haplogroups waiting their turn at the immediate fringe or already integrated could move in with substantial numbers and take advantage of climate changes and/or diseases, etc. To me, the local origin of that is therefor clearly pre-neolithic.

eurologist said...

Talking about mtdna here is our new topic with more debate: http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(12)00204-2

Nirjhar007,
Thanks for the link - very refreshing and illuminating, hopefully Dienekes may find the time to post a separate thread.

One slight critique: from the data, J1c, J2a1, T2b, T2e, and T2f may be much earlier, i.e., pre-LGM / Gravettian in Europe.

Matt said...

The Irish have about ~10% of West_Asian component

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArAJcY18g2GadHZ6SHpiLTNTa3lsUmZJY2pQblVRR2c#gid=0

This is about the same as other British Isles populations.


Well, Dienekes, I'm talking about the Basques.

I doesn't look to me like there is any correlation between R1b frequency and level of West Asian component in your linked spreadsheet. The West Asian component has highest frequency in Europeans in the Southeast (Balkans and Greece to Italy) followed by the Northeast (Polish, Russians Lithuanians and Slavs, not Finns) followed by Northwest and followed by Southwest, with the European minima, 0, in Basques (and Sardinians).

There could be some dynamic where differential male fertility by R1b holders of initially West Asian provenance could lead to the component being highest frequency in places where the component has its minima, but I don't think this is particularly compelling evidence for that that would make an association between the West Asian component and R1b likely.

jeanlohizun said...

Dr.Rob said:
And the western European sub-clades of R1b are ‘downstream’ to those in W Asia, hence ‘younger’; whatever Busby or others might say about the STR diversity.

No this is a clear example of a misunderstanding, West Asian R1b-L23x(L51) aren’t upstream of European clades, they simply do not have the L51 mutation, it doesn’t mean that they do not have any other downstream SNP that might be sibling to the L51 mutation. This is the same scenario as the African R-V88, before the discovery of the V88 SNP, all African R1b were being ascribed as R1b1*, and presumed to be ancestral to both R-M269 and R-M73. Moreover, if one looks at Myres et al(2010) L23(xL51) shows a frequency of 27.3% in Switzerland(Upper Rhone Valley) (n=33), 11.4% in Kosovo (n=114), the highest frequency of R-L23(xL51) is found in Bagvalals, (Northeast Caucasus) (n=28) with a frequency of 67.9%. In all of Western Europe(n=2065) it is found at a frequency of 1.55%, in all of North-Central Eastern Europe(n=3095) at a frequency of 2.62%, in the Circum-Uralic region (n=937) at a frequency of 15.15%, in the Southeast Europe (n=1680) at a frequency of 4.29%, in the Caucasus(n=1370) at a frequency of 6.06%, and in Near and Middle East(n=1032) at a frequency of 8.04%.

Kurti said...

>>How is that populations like Irish and Basque with such high levels of R1b have 0% west-asian ??


I think Dienekes made it already clear and all of us should know, that the "West European" component is closer to Caucasus/Gedrosia (West Asian) as East European is. It almost seems like West European is a "mixture" of West Asian (original Bell Bakers) and East European(Corded Ware) just tending more towards East European.

bmdriver said...

Three migrations from India. Three seperate waves into Europe via west and central asia. First wave reached southern central europe, second migration went straight to north europe and third migration from iran and south asia into southern europe, with further migration into north europe. The Indian ARYA migration.

bmdriver said...

www.rdmag.com/uploadedImages/RD/News/2011/11/Genographic1.jpg

This map best illustrates the migration.

GailT said...

"No one in their right mind would say R1b is not Asian."

There are many people who are absolutely certain of the "fact" that R1b and mtDNA H are Paleolithic European in origin based simply on the fact that they are found at high frequencies in Europe today, so the point does need to be made over and over that there is little, if any, evidence supporting that theory.

Dienekes said...

I doesn't look to me like there is any correlation between R1b frequency and level of West Asian component in your linked spreadsheet.

I don't expect to be any such correlation.

For at least two reasons:

1. R1b is not the only haplogroup that may have transmitted the "West_Asian" component into Europe; for example, J2 is a much more likely agent for it in Greece and Italy.

2. R1b folk intermarried with locals so R1b frequency got decoupled from autosomal genetic components.

Lank said...

I expect R1b to be associated with the "Southern" component, rather than "West Asian". For example, Swedes are 20% R1b and 6.9% "Southern", whereas their Finnish neighbors have very little R1b, and no "Southern".

Furthermore, R1b exists in Africa, and the only Eurasian affinity of significance there is "Southern" (excluding groups closest to West Asia, such as Egyptians).

truth said...

@ Kurti

Atlanto-Mediterranid which peaks in Basques is not closer to West-Asian than the Balto-Slavic component. They are in fact equally distant.

Mark D said...

Has anyone considered the Gallic invasions of the Balkans, Greece and finally settling in Anatolia to have had an impact on R1b in those locations?

princenuadha said...

> I don't expect to be any such correlation.

> R1b is not the only haplogroup that may have transmitted the "West_Asian" component into Europe;

You say r1b transmitted (non insignificant) amounts of west sawing to Europe but that you don't expect to find any correlation of west Asian to r1b. That is pretty much a contradiction, or very unlikely to say the least.

a said...

http://isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpR.html

As of today the R1b-tree-ISOGG 2012:
R-M269> L23> L150...
All three of these markers have a presence in the area in and around Kromsdorf.[ysearch_ U98VT_ Skeleton HB02 Podlazice, Ceskoslovensko] about 1180 ad. and 500+/-km East of Kromsdorf.

Of interest, which is odd.
K12b-

French Basques[High R1b]
9.8-% Gedrosia
0.0%-Caucasus

Lithuanian_D
0.0%-Gedrosia
10.1%-Caucasus

Armenians_D-
16.8%-Gedrosia
55.8%-Caucasus

Armenians from Karabakh and Syunik as well as Talysh have some very high R1b levels 25%-40%, the region in general has pockets of of R-M269.

It would be reasonable to conclude the Caucasus component could be found in the French Basque populations with elevated R1b but it is not, either it was never there to begin with or has been totally flushed out. Odd.

newtoboard said...

Plenty of people seem to be thinking that at least M269 is European. It is not. The fact is West Asians and European groups have M269. There are M269 groups without European admix but the vice versa is not true. I am tired of hearing of the Basques. They are a highly inbred population.



The same applies to mtdna H.

Can anyone confirm if M269 and mtdna H are indgenous to NW/N Iran or are they the result of Armenian, Arab, levantine, Assyrian, Anatolian, Caucasus admixture there? I have heard the theory of west iranians being iranifed armenias/assyrians or having admix before. Is it true?

And is H5a really related to R1a?

Dienekes said...

Here's a challenge to those who think the migration that brought R-M269 to Western Europe is not related to the arrival of the "West_Asian" autosomal component to Western Europe.

What is responsible for that component, if not R-M269.

You can't pin it on:

I: native European
E: rare in Caucasus/Anatolia
G: related apparently to early Neolithic and all pre-Beaker autosomal data points lack "West_Asian"

The only other candidate is J2, which occurs at trace elements in the British Isles and Scandinavia.

So, let's summarize:

- R-M269 came to Europe from the east.
- In all existing autosomal samples from Europe up to 5,000 BC R-M269 is lacking in Europe, and so is the "West_Asian" autosomal component
- Modern Europeans have R-M269 and "West_Asian" autosomal component. The latter occurs at ~10% in populations that have almost no other lineages of West Asian origin other than R-M269

The writing is on the wall.

a said...

Modern Europeans also have mtDNA U5[indigenous to Europe 40k-60k+/-] + West Asian[Franco-Cantabrian-[R1b-Caucasus 0.0% k12b] -mtdnaU5 & Italian/Greek_ Glacial Refugium_]. Yet there are elevated levels of Gedrosia in Pakistan and elevated levels of mtDNA U5. How can this be, if mtdna U5 is not indigenous to the area?
Again why is there no K12b "Caucasus" component in Franco-Cantabrian region with known elevated levels of R1b and U5?

We are only talking about a recent migration? 200 generations at 25 years is 5000 years in a secluded mountainous region, you think there would be some trace of the Caucasus component?

truth said...

West-Asian is not present in Basques, and is too low in Western Europe to be related with R1b, except in Italians or Greeks, but that's more related with J and it's not Atlantic Europe. So In my opinion the R1b is related to Mediterranean, the Western kind which is high in Basques and all the Atlantic countries.

jeanlohizun said...

Dienekes said
Here's a challenge to those who think the migration that brought R-M269 to Western Europe is not related to the arrival of the "West_Asian" autosomal component to Western Europe.

What is responsible for that component, if not R-M269.

You can't pin it on:

I: native European
E: rare in Caucasus/Anatolia
G: related apparently to early Neolithic and all pre-Beaker autosomal data points lack "West_Asian"

The only other candidate is J2, which occurs at trace elements in the British Isles and Scandinavia.


We know nothing if y-DNA G lacks West_Asian because the only person that is known to be haplogroup G and has been tested is Oetzi, yet while he lacks the “West_Asian” component in your K7b analysis, he has quite some Caucasus component in your K12b analysis. You like to build huge assumptions on very scarce data when it is of your convenience, yet you are the first one to express skepticism when you consider not enough data is provided. To add more to the clear double standard you are displaying, wasn’t you who said that modern haplogroups frequencies found in populations say nothing about ancient haplogroups. Is West Asian some sort of special pleading scenario, that in the case of Caucasus/Anatolia their haplogroups have been static and haven’t changed in time since the Neolithic.


So, let's summarize:

- R-M269 came to Europe from the east.
- In all existing autosomal samples from Europe up to 5,000 BC R-M269 is lacking in Europe, and so is the "West_Asian" autosomal component
- Modern Europeans have R-M269 and "West_Asian" autosomal component. The latter occurs at ~10% in populations that have almost no other lineages of West Asian origin other than R-M269


-So let’s summarize, you are still in the exact same position you were back in 2009, when you were still arguing for the same thing even though you didn’t have evidence. R-M269 came to Europe from the same place I-M170 came, from outside, the question is: When did it come to Europe?

-In two localized Neolithic samples G2a appears to be a dominant haplogroup, yet we have no data from any other place in the same time period. May I remind you that until a few weeks ago all of pre-Neolithic European mt-DNA was U, and then a couple of H appeared in Magdalenian Cantabria. So, let’s not jump to conclusion in data that is very scarce. Oetzi again was 22.3% Caucasus, you seem to ignore that, when it is convenient.

-Basques have R-M269 and lack the West Asian component.

a said...

Okay let's recap. k7b- R1b/West Asian-Western Europe relation.

1]West-Asian and R1b in Western Refugium. 0% West-Asian in Basque 80%+/- of the population R1b.[recent migrants by boat]

2]West-Asian and R1b. in Lithuania and Finland around around 6%-10% West Asian, and about 5+/- guys combined in the region with R1b.

That rates as legendary in terms of success in spreading West-Asian component, in the Baltic region.

But a big fat goose egg of West Asian [0%] in the most Western portion, of Europe.

Landing in the Refugium by boat, and then spreading into Central Europe; but the original starting point has no West Asian.


Maybe it was that long journey by boat that did it.

Dienekes said...

Basques are a tiny portion of West Europe, and a small portion even of Iberia.

As mentioned before, their lack of West Asian contrasts with their Indo-European neighbors who possess it.

It is not impossible for a particular lineage to come to be associated with different autosomal components, with Y-haplogroup E being the most pertinent example.

Those who say "Basques don't have West Asian, so how can R-M269 have come from West Asia" can just as well say "Armenians don't have North_European, so how can R-M269 have come from Western Europe?"

If we followed that type of "logic", we would conclude that both an east-to-west and a west-to-east movement of R-M269 is impossible and couldn't have happened. But, it clearly did.

In any case, we now have five autosomal data points in Europe from ~5kya with no "West_Asian"; we know that R-M269 was present in Europe during the following millennium and we'll sooner or later test either Beaker or post-Beaker individuals from Europe. If my theory is correct, then these will have a "West_Asian" component that was lacking in the earlier samples.

Dienekes said...

Landing in the Refugium by boat, and then spreading into Central Europe; but the original starting point has no West Asian.

Basques are not "the original starting point" of the Bell Beaker phenomenon.

Dienekes said...

Oetzi again was 22.3% Caucasus, you seem to ignore that, when it is convenient.

Oetzi is ~0% West_Asian. It was explained in a different thread that K12b "Caucasus" eats up all of the K7b "Southern". So the "Caucasus" in Oetzi is related to the "Southern" in Oetzi and not to the (non-existent) "West_Asian".

But you seem to ignore what's not convenient in your Iberian continuity la-la-land.

newtoboard said...

Is I consdidred nativew European? i get the feeling it is Anatolian. The I in central asia might be able to be explained by indo-iranians (not sure) but what about the I in west asia? In Kurds? is that from armenians so originally the balkans?

But I might have also brought some Wets Asian.

princenuadha said...

> What is responsible for that component, if not R-M269.

* LBK (no adna yet)

* Plain diffusion and historical movements

* maybe it was in some European meso h/g, but I doubt that explains the current prevalence.

Are just a few. I actually think that r1b west asians mixed with meso Ukrainians, then moved west.

jeanlohizun said...

Dienekes said:

Oetzi is ~0% West_Asian. It was explained in a different thread that K12b "Caucasus" eats up all of the K7b "Southern". So the "Caucasus" in Oetzi is related to the "Southern" in Oetzi and not to the (non-existent) "West_Asian".

Really!!! Then do you mind explaining why French Basques that score 26.8% Southern on K7b, get 0% Caucasus in K12b? The Caucasus component peaks in Abhkasians_Y at 70% in the K12b, the West Asian component in Abhkasians_Y is 61.3% in the K7b. Let us stop with the special pleading fallacies.

But you seem to ignore what’s not convenient in your Iberian continuity la-la-land.

Is that the best you can throw at me? A poorly written Ad Hominem?

First of all, have I ever said anything about Iberian continuity, second of all, if showing my skepticism to your rather huge theories which are often built from very small evidence is a crime, then I’m guilty. Finally, perhaps you ought to take into account that you are forcing Oetzi’s genome to be split into 7 presumed ancestral components, and then into 12 presumed ancestral components. Oetzi showing 0% West Asian just means that the most likely fit for Oetzi genome given those specific 7 ancestral populations was that, then when more flexibility was added(i.e. in the K12b run) the genome probably was able to show some of the Caucasian affinity that was lacking previously.

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
YeomanDroid said...

I was going to blame the SW Asian component in Western Europe on the Neanderthals; however, my ancestors are to blame. So why is it so important to be indigenous to Europe for everybody? There are plenty of other regions that have better climates, scenery, history, etc. Personally, I have always desired to be called a son of Troia.

Dienekes said...

Really!!! Then do you mind explaining why French Basques that score 26.8% Southern on K7b, get 0% Caucasus in K12b? The Caucasus component peaks in Abhkasians_Y at 70% in the K12b, the West Asian component in Abhkasians_Y is 61.3% in the K7b. Let us stop with the special pleading fallacies.

This is no "special pleading", it is a rational explanation for the observed data.

The observed data is (http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/03/first-look-at-genome-of-tyrolean-iceman.html) that Oetzi is 1.4% West_Asian (K=7) and 22.3% Caucasus (K=12).

The Caucasus component is not equivalent to the West_Asian one.

Looking at the Oetzi spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArJDEoCgzRKedHo3UWw0M0Y2dWFBeFI3bGZEdTNROEE#gid=1), we see, that populations from the Caucasus have almost no Atlantic_Med but a good deal of Southern.

So their Southern component is not absorbed by the (non-existent) Atlantic_Med component but by the Caucasus component.

This explains why Oetzi can be both 22.3% Caucasus and 1.4% West_Asian. The explanation is not, of course, that he both had ancestry from that part of the world and that he didn't.

Rather, by examining what is common between Oetzi and Caucasus populations, we understand that it is:

(1) Not the Atlantic_Med (which Caucasus populations lack)
(2) Not the West_Asian (which Oetzi lacks)
(3) Not the North_European (which Oetzi lacks)

By a simple intersection, we see that the common element between Oetzi and the Caucasus is the K=7 "Southern" component.

Slumbery said...

Dienekes

For your challenge.

The West Asian component of the K7 admixture so widespread in the whole Europe (except the odd Basques) that there is no point to connect it to any particular Y-Hg. Given that most of the Neolithic immigration waves ultimately came from somewhere around West Asia, probably most of them brought some West Asian elements.

Maybe not Y-Hg G (since Sardinia does not have West Asian), but this does not make my point invalid.

Well, I pretty much contradicted my earlier opinion with this. I admit, it seems very unlikely that the original bringer population of R1b had no West Asian component. But original R1b population having WA does not mean they were the sole or even the main spreader of it.

Note: the entire Megalithic is still a huge white spot on the ancient genetic maps. We can't possibly know if R1b was particularly Bell Beaker.

Andrew Lancaster said...

Perhaps this remark might help. I am one of the people who thinks the "cline" in the most basal types of European R1b is definitely showing SE Europe to be older.

However, west of the Rhine and the Alps is not only younger, but a whole different world of R1b. It is one young branch. And I do not think the age clines are clear yet within this region.

I think SE Europe R1b is the older part of the bush, but from the Eastern Med to Western Europe there are many possible dispersal paths.

This one result hints at all sorts of possibilities, but it is not the type of result which requires us to ignore all previous evidence.

Dienekes said...

Dienekes

For your challenge.


The challenge was:

"What is responsible for that component, if not R-M269."

You did not answer the challenge.

Slumbery said...

Dienekes

I did answer the challenge. The answer is shorter from: there is no Y Hg solely responsible for the West Asian component. It came from multiple sources.

jeanlohizun said...

Dienekes said:
Those who say "Basques don't have West Asian, so how can R-M269 have come from West Asia" can just as well say "Armenians don't have North_European, so how can R-M269 have come from Western Europe?"

Basques show R-M269 with frequencies in excess of 80% in almost all studies. Armenians(n=413) per the Herrera et al(2011) study show R-M269(Which is wholly R1b-L23-, so they don’t have any known derived clades) at a frequency of 27.84%. So what is it more likely that Basques’ autosomal West Asian got drifted away, or that Armenians’ autosomal European component got drifted away? Autosomal components aren’t like SNPs, they a whole lot more mutations to drift away there. Also for those who are considering genetic drift, if Basques were drifting in their Y-DNA Haplogroups, then one would expect the frequency of R1b-M269 to have increased or decreased significantly in the last 1500 years, given the rapid population growth. Modern day frequency of R1b-M269+ in Alava(n=51) is 72.54%, modern day frequency of I-M170+ clades in Alava(n=51) is 13.73%. Aldaieta Cementery dating back to the VI and VII Century AD in Alava(n=27) shows frequencies of R1b(xR1a1) and R-M153 at 77.77%, I-M170+ at frequency of 14.81%. More interesting R-M153 in modern day samples in Alava 3.92%, in ancient samples 7.41%. So in 56-60 generations the haplogroup frequencies have changed little, granted in the modern day sample we see the addition of haplogroups such as E3, J, etc, but the frequencies of the major haplogroups(R1b and I) haven’t changed much; not exactly what one would expect from a population undergoing genetic drift.

Dienekes said...

I did answer the challenge. The answer is shorter from: there is no Y Hg solely responsible for the West Asian component. It came from multiple sources.

The challenge explicitly questioned that it could have become ~10% in the British Isles and Scandinavia from any source other than R-M269.

So, I repeat, if not R-M269 then what? Saying "multiple sources" is to say that it came with any of the haplogroups mentioned in my comments, and with which it cannot have come, for the reasons I mentioned: J2 is too rare, G is associated with early Neolithic that appears West_Asian-deficient, I is European-centered and rare in West Asia.

So, I repeat, if not R-M269, then what?

Dienekes said...

So what is it more likely that Basques’ autosomal West Asian got drifted away, or that Armenians’ autosomal European component got drifted away? Autosomal components aren’t like SNPs, they a whole lot more mutations to drift away there.

Autosomal components don't get "drifted away" except in your fantasy-land as an excuse for explaining away what cannot be easily explained.

Even if drift was an issue -which it is not- Armenians are much more genetically diverse than Basques and do not particularly differ in that respect from their immediate neighbors.

not exactly what one would expect from a population undergoing genetic drift.

Your "genetic drift" argument is a strawman argument, since you've provided no evidence that drift "ate away" the North_European in Armenians, and kindly obliged to show that it did not seriously affect Basques during the historical period. So, do let's forget about the hypothetical "drift".

jeanlohizun said...

Dienekes said:
Autosomal components don't get "drifted away" except in your fantasy-land as an excuse for explaining away what cannot be easily explained.

Even if drift was an issue -which it is not- Armenians are much more genetically diverse than Basques and do not particularly differ in that respect from their immediate neighbors.


Ok, let me rephrase it then, what is it more likely:

That the European component that might have come from a haplogroup that represents ~28% of Armenians could have disappeared by male-biased gene flow, or that the West Asian component that might have come from a haplogroup that represents more than 80% in Basques disappeared because of male-biased flow. If you are thinking about bringing up the Mestizo argument, may I remind you that R1b is not more than 50% in them, and that the European autosomal component is still more than 40%. Moreover the only one that is constantly living in fantasy land, ignoring data when it is convenient, and still pushing the exact same beliefs as you did back in 2009 is you sir, not me. You have repeatedly built massive theories based on few data.


Dienekes said:

Your "genetic drift" argument is a strawman argument, since you've provided no evidence that drift "ate away" the North_European in Armenians, and kindly obliged to show that it did not seriously affect Basques during the historical period. So, do let's forget about the hypothetical "drift".

That argument wasn’t in response to you, but to others who brought up genetic drift. Nonetheless, let us not forget about drift in people from Alava (not Basques in general because we have no Y-DNA data from Guipuzcoa or Vizcaya dating back to the VI or VII century ). Let me reiterate this again, the earliest record of the population of Alava in 1530 was 50093, I have no way of telling what the population was going to be in the 500-600 AD, but I can say it would be smaller than 50000. The modern day population of Alava is above 300,000 that represent an increment of 6 folds in 500 years, if that isn’t rapid growth then I don’t know what it is.

princenuadha said...

> This is no "special pleading", it is a rational explanation for the observed data.

The special pleading is in ignoring k12 and focusing on k7 in order to find some "missing" element. Maybe the west Asian got eaten up by something else and maybe its not even real...

Dienekes said...

The special pleading is in ignoring k12 and focusing on k7 in order to find some "missing" element. Maybe the west Asian got eaten up by something else and maybe its not even real...

That is not "special pleading", that is finding an explanation that is consistent with the totality of the available evidence.

That the European component that might have come from a haplogroup that represents ~28% of Armenians could have disappeared by male-biased gene flow, or that the West Asian component that might have come from a haplogroup that represents more than 80% in Basques disappeared because of male-biased flow.

There was no "male-biased gene flow" from populations harboring high levels of "North_European" into Armenians, because Armenian R-M269 lacks the downstream mutations that dominate European R-M269.

As for Basques, I've already explained that they are a small part of Iberians and an even smaller part of West Europeans, and it is much more likely that the R-M269 Basque founders lacked the West_Asian component or it was diluted heavily, than for all the other 99% of West Europeans to have acquired West_Asian from a yet-to-be-identified-despite-my-challenge source.

a said...

There is a paradox in k12b/k7b that becomes very evident when comparing the Basques.

k7b

Basque have 20% "Southern", which peaks in Yemeni Jews 63%[Arabia Felix/Levant] and 0% West Asian.Arabia Felix and Yemeni Jews traditionally very rich in ydna J not the Basque R1b which is "West Asian" or Caucasus.It is hard to believe that the French Basque originated from Yemeni Jews, given there differences in Ydna and language.

k12b

Basque have 9.8% "Gedrosia", which peak in Baloch-Iranian Plateau region, which would be associated with Iranian tribes. O% Caucasus.

Both runs, K12b and K7b, the Basque do not pick up any "Caucasus" or "West Asian" region which have pockets of R1b.

So to recap

K7b-0% "West Asian"-20% "Southern"
K12b-0% "Caucasus"-9.8%"Gedrosia"

If "West Asian" and "Caucaus" are synonamous why do the Basques have 0%.

So in future you have to set a proper marker to compare R1b's in Europe, will it be "Southern" or "West Asian"?

Matt said...

As mentioned before, their lack of West Asian contrasts with their Indo-European neighbors who possess it.

It is not impossible for a particular lineage to come to be associated with different autosomal components, with Y-haplogroup E being the most pertinent example.


OK, but the dissassocation is complete. There is no present day association.

The present day distribution of this haplogroup has no association and the centre of Bell Beaker expansion doesn't seem to have a clear West Asian archaeological link, as far as I am aware.

The only other candidate is J2, which occurs at trace elements in the British Isles and Scandinavia.

Respectfully, the case for J2 association doesn't really seem less strong to me.

J2 is not perfectly correlated with West Asian, having a higher frequency in the West than the size of the West Asian component and a lower frequency in the North than the size of the West Asian component.

But I am not convinced that lower levels of West Asian at the heights of R1b-R-M269 (the West) - and it seems like an inverse correlation between the West Asian component and R1b frequency! - is no problem for an association with R1b with West Asian (dissocations happen!), while the above dissociations between J2 and West Asian are a deal breaker.

I'm probably less sound on the archaeological information than you. The Bell Beaker culture seems like a plausible agent for the spread of R1b-R-M269, but I am just more of the line of thought of (I think) Davidski, who seems to see R1b as having spread to Portugal (from whence Wikipedia, which may be a flawed source, says the Bell Beaker culture originates) from some other eastern origin Oetzi/Sardinian/Basque type. I don't see any reason that migration from the east by people of Oetzi/Sardinian/Basque autosomal makeup (we are still assuming that is the case, right?) would ever have to stop, or that R1b would have to come from the East with a West Asian component.

As for Basques, I've already explained that they are a small part of Iberians and an even smaller part of West Europeans

Historically are they really such a small population? They are marginal at present, but wasn't the spread of Vasconic/Aquitanian (and Iberian?) languages formerly quite large in Southwest Europe, even to recent prehistorical times?

a said...

Irrespective of differing opinions and ideas many forum moderators would have not allowed such questions to be allowed. I'm sure many here feel the same way so in short,

Thank-you Dienekes, for keeping the discussion open and allowing open debate.

eurologist said...

The conundrum I see with the K12b Gedrosia component is that it is high in comparison to Caucasian (perhaps better termed Anatolian/Iranian/Caucasian) only at the Atlantic and in Western Scandinavia, and especially there where neolithic components (Caucasian and SW Asian) are very low. There is no intermediate place in Europe or West Asia that has such characteristics, and there is no history of movements from Pakistan or thereabouts into Western Europe, only (can't be Roma, because this signature doesn't occur in countries with a large number of Roma, and Scandinavia isn't exactly known for them).

Of course, this signature could be easily explained if it is simply left over from the earliest migrations from the subcontinent/Pakistan into Europe, before a Caucasian component had time to distill.

a said...

A few anomalies I find of interest,if you really prune the snp's to just a few very basic blood groupings.

The Americas do not have the "B" allele blood grouping, and have RH antigens. If we go by R1-m173* and mtDNAx, these mutations[B/rh-] must have occured after the Bering Sea migration of the two clades into the Americas.Perhaps these mutations are only 5k?

Known "B" allele frequency;

"It is consistent with the accepted patterns of early population movements and varying prevalent blood types in different parts of the world: for instance, B is very common in populations of Asian descent, but rare in ones of Western European descent."

In the K7b run, Saudi Arabia/Yemeni Jews have elevated "Southern" component 60%+/-. However, this region also has roughly 25% "B" allele.

The other mutation "rh negative"
is elevated among the Basque, and many Bell Beaker regions.

Known RH negative frequency-

African descent-less 1%
Asian descent-less 1%
Basque people- 21%-36%

The Basque who have 20% "Southern" are very low "B" allele frequency, however very high in rh negative antigen frequency.If K7b "Southern" results are solid we should also see this pattern with Yemeni Jews who have 60% "Southern" since these are relatively new, and uncommon mutations.

apostateimpressions said...

"Random drift" sounds an anachronistic egalitarian liberal fantasy. According to this view, people are all the same, they are equal. There is no _reason_ why anyone should breed with someone more than with anyone else. Race, ethnicity, class, status, intelligence, strength, good looks, marital competence, cultural capacity: all these are nothing or can be acquired by anyone. Liberals dont like the idea that human progress was driven by invasions, conquest, ethnic dominance, group loyalty and cultural superiority. "Random drift" allows them to pretend that none of that happened and that humans were politically correct in prehistory. Liberals are just as delusional about prehistory as they are about present human reality. We know that in the real world the way that people act is not random, it is influenced by definite factors. Otherwise we would never have evolved at all without the action of selective principles. That remains true even in the most PC countries like the US and the UK: even here people do not marry in the "random" way that liberals would like. Anthropologists have always understood this and "random drift" is a subversive PC concept that has no place in the interpretation of prehistory. The random belongs in the realms of pure mathematics not concrete human science. Applied to humans, abstract equality is nihilistic, contrary to Nature and to all evolutionary progress. Nietzsche wrote of the liberals and egalitarians: "All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?" Progress relies on the action of selective principles, on the acknowledgement of _difference_. The denial of difference is regressive, decadent. That is our choice: we either acknowledge human differences in social policies or else we regress physically and culturally.

cris said...

The dear blog readers here seem to be unaware that 90% R1b high Tchadians and Northcameroonians have 0% eurasian

The facts we have are:
1/Westasian component is deeply connected with the Northeuropean component
2/Westasian component seems to be of a late neolithic development

So Basques could be very high in R1b yet lacking the westasian component because Basques are the result of an earlier migration before the breakup of the westasian component and its "brother" the northeuropean one, so their R1b is portrayed by their Northeuropean score, still drift theory still stands very well to explain that a folk high in X Y-DNA (with this X Y-DNA usually connected with A autosomal component) could be deficious in A autosomal component if we remember that 95%R1b-high Cameroonians not only lack the westasian (or even its brother northeuropean component) component but they even lack any eurasian component at all

Unknown said...

The most curious thing about this group to me is its complete lack of H. This is very, very late neolithic. At least 3,000 years into the European neolithic. The copper age was well ensconced. Even a remote place like Britain was having its Bronze age by 2000 BC,

(1) Odd skulls
(2) Polygamous when most other family sites seem to be predominantly a single mitochondrial lineage.
(3) Northern paleolithic mitochondrial lineages but no H or V despite how very deep into the neolithic they are.
(4) R1b.
(5) A culture (Bell Beaker) that is thought to originate in Portugal.

I dont know what to make of these guys. Genetically to me they look like they came recently from the north, not Portugal. A trading group selling pots and carrying their exotic cultural habits with them maybe? Are we wrong about the origin of the Bell Beaker culture?

eurologist said...

Annie,

The only connection to Portugal is that's where the copper they used originally came from (later it was also sourced from Central Europe). I've tried to follow wikipedia references that mention carbon dating as establishing an origin in Portugal, but those links are fake and don't support it.

However, if someone has a reference to a study that concludes a Portuguese origin based on evidence, I'd certainly take a look at it.

Amanda S said...

The tooth enamel analysis done on the Amesbury Archer (Bell Beaker) burial in Southern England suggests that he grew up in the Alps. Obviously this doesn't establish a place of origin for the Bell Beaker culture but it does suggest that the individuals belonging to it had the potential to move long distances, east-west as well as north-south using inland riverine routes as well as coastal routes.

Annie Mouse, I had the impression that they were selling the metallurgy skills and that the beakers represented their own beer cult not objects that they sold to others.

pconroy said...

I left this comment over at the Harappa Project, on the new DIYHarappaWorld:

I just ran my data - I'm 100% Irish from Ireland, and here's what I got:
0.00% S-Indian
11.10% Baloch
5.81% Caucasian
50.58% NE-Euro
0.08% SE-Asian
0.03% Siberian
0.00% NE-Asian
0.00% Papuan
0.61% American
0.00% Beringian
31.64% Mediterranean
0.02% SW-Asian
0.11% San
0.02% E-African
0.00% Pygmy
0.00% W-African
I'm mtDNA T1a1 and I've been looking into this haplogroup for a while, and note that:
Top 10 locations for T1 by highest frequency:
1. Romania - 8.51%
2. Parsis (Pakistan) - 6.80%
3. Bulgaria - 6.38%
4. Portugal (Northern) - 6.38%
5. Azerbaijan - 6.25%
6. Armenia - 5.76%
7. Brahui (SW Pakistan) - 5.30%
8. Mazandarian (N Iran) - 4.8%
9. Macedonia - 4.5%
10. Pathan (NW Pakistan) - 4.5%
Here's what Doug McDonald predicted:
Most likely fit is 97.5% (+- 0.5%) Europe (all Western Europe)
and 2.5% (+- 0.5%) S. Asia (various subcontinents)
The following are possible population sets and their fractions,
most likely at the top
Basque= 0.205 Irish= 0.765 Sindhi= 0.031
Basque= 0.207 Irish= 0.758 Pathan= 0.035
Basque= 0.201 Irish= 0.775 N_India= 0.025
Basque= 0.198 Irish= 0.781 S_India= 0.021
Basque= 0.080 English= 0.901 S_India= 0.019
Basque= 0.084 English= 0.895 N_India= 0.021
Basque= 0.088 English= 0.891 Sindhi= 0.021
So here's my prediction, that mtDNA T1 is somehow involved in the spread of the Baloch component, as it is found in a path starting in Mehrgarh - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh - and going into Southern Afghanistan, across Northern Iran, and into the Caucasus, and from there to Europe. IMO it spread both into South East Europe by land mostly, but also by boat to South West Iberia, and then kicked off the Bell Beaker revolution. I now wonder if R1b also followed this path?!

dok101 said...

@pconroy

For comparison, my (Assyrian) K=16 values:

Caucasian 49.6%
Baloch 20.9%
SW Asian 18.6%
Mediterranean 8.1%
NE Euro 1.2%
NE Asian 0.6%
All other components < 0.5%

Also, adjusting the T1 frequency list a bit, to include Assyrians (N=64):

1. Romania - 8.51%
2. Assyrian - 7.81% (FTDNA, 23andMe, SMGF)
3. Parsis (Pakistan) - 6.80%

Interesting to see Pakistani populations so well represented. India and Pakistan also have a relative abundance of U7. In Assyrians, U7 is also a significant mtDNA haplogroup.

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

"The Corded Ware / Bell Beaker division roughly parallels the R1a /R1b division, but also the centum / satem division of Indo-European languages, which is a curious thing."

There are at least seven historic divisions of Europe along these lines (and I'm sure I've missed some):

Also Western v. Eastern Neanderthal
Also LBK v. Cardial Pottery
Also Vinca v. Megalithic
(Corded Ware v. Bell Beaker)
(Indo-European Satem v. Centum)
Also Orthodox v. Western Christian
Also Capitalist v. Communist

There is a natural geographic West-East divide in Europe that naturally produces these kinds of divisions. It has recurred multiple times with some degree of independence of causation from previous lines of division. What is Western and Eastern in Europe is the culmination of multiple West-East divides in Europe.

The hard part is figuring out which layer of history provides a source for current population genetic patterns.

eurologist said...

Pconroy,

You should read Maria Pala's paper Dienekes just posted - you need to know your mtDNA at much, much higher resolution to draw any conclusions. T1a1 appears to be ~15ky old (with the usual reservations), and even just the root of subclade T1a1a1 is widely distributed from Scandinavia and Russia to Anatolia and Morocco, with daughters spread to Central Asia and India (which is why I think the calculated date of 7ky for this one is likely underestimated). Also, there seems to be a bit of a tendency of a northeastern entry into Europe - not a Mediterranean one.

eurologist said...

Andrew,

No disrespect - but I think it's all an illusion. People move easily and at comfort east <-> west at similar latitude - over many thousands of kilometers. Then there are "boundary conditions" at either end --- and the "ends" must be reasonably large to achieve meaningful cultural characteristics. What you see is simply a more or less steep gradient roughly somewhere in the middle, where "middle" may mean something as varied as west of the Rhine or east of Poland.

For example, Corded ware and Bell beaker had a 600+ kilometer overlap. Poland had no Bell beaker to speak of, but is Roman Catholic - not Orthodox. East Germany and Poland became Communist because of Russian occupation.

Then, it's LBK vs. La Hoguette (rather than Cardium) - now west of the Rhine instead of east of Poland. I already disputed the Satem/Centum - instead it is PIE vs. Uralic (boundary east of Poland this time, again). Etc.

pconroy said...

@Eurologist,

I have done Full Genome Sequencing of my mtDNA T1a1 at FTDNA, and consulted with David Pike, an expert on mtDNA T, and he concluded that my haplotype was 27,000 yo.

T1 reaches some of its highest frequencies locally in some coastal areas of Northern Morocco, where it reaches 30% of all mtDNA.

Mark D said...

Is it possible then that R1b came up from North Africa up the coast of Iberia and then across the Bay of Biscay, and not directly from the East? Or at least from the East along the African littoral?

eurologist said...

I have done Full Genome Sequencing of my mtDNA T1a1

Pconroy,

Well, then you should definitely take a look at Maria Pala's paper (and supplement). There are huge geographic differences between the various T1a1 subgroups. Also, perhaps you can figure out which subgroup you belong to, since there is now a ton more information.

A date of ~27,000 ya for T1a1 would mean roughly a doubling of Pala's dates, and make JT close to 120,000 years old, if applied linearly. That seems a bit excessive...

Andrew Lancaster said...

Question:
"Is it possible then that R1b came up from North Africa up the coast of Iberia and then across the Bay of Biscay, and not directly from the East? Or at least from the East along the African littoral?"

Consider the Cyprus article Dienekes has just posted about, and also the well-known example of the Cardial Culture.

Short answer: yes.

Boats good enough for serious mobility of communities was available already thousands of years before.

cris said...

@Mark D
Yes , looking deeper at the whole picture R1b entering Europe by a North-African route (out of westasian origin) seems to be the best fitting possibility, especially with regards to the African R1b V88
Also dont forget that it's in Iberia where we apparently have the greatest Celtic branch diversity and not elswhere in Europe (there is even a book entitled "celtic from west")

Anonymous said...

Now that you mentioned, it's also in southern Italy that we find the greatest diversity in Italic (branch-wise, not in number of languages), and it's also in the Aegean that we find the greatest diversity in Greek (again, branch-wise). So a Centum-like group coming through the Mediterranean and even parts of North Africa (some of which = Sea peoples?) is certainly a possibility.
That would explain the unusually high diversity of R1b in Western Sardinia, the overwhelming presence of R1b in much of North Africa and the Dead Sea area and maybe even the high incidence of mtDNA T and H in Morocco. Who knows, the Mediterranean route might be a good alternative to the Anatolian-Balkan one. IF (that's a big if) we assume this scenario, it may yet turn out that hgs J and E are the real "Anatolian" ones and spread later in Europe. I'm not convinced yet, but that's an intriguing possibility.

wagg said...

MarkD : "Is it possible then that R1b came up from North Africa up the coast of Iberia and then across the Bay of Biscay, and not directly from the East? Or at least from the East along the African littoral?"

Short answer: no.

Apparently given the distribution of ancestral clades they arrived by the Balkans.

R1b substructure. Map made from Myres et al 2010

Mark D said...

Thanks for your opinions on my question. I see there will be differences on this until we have many hundreds of aDNA samples, particularly from North Africa.

The "Celtic from the West", which I've read is edited by Barry Cunliffe and John Koch, who also wrote on the Celtic Tartessians who resided near what is now Cadiz in southern Spain. Also interesting reading for those who seek the full picture on the Celts, who still appear to be the dominant R1b group.

Unknown said...

To be fair.

The whole of North Africa is missing from Myres map. And the case for ancestral R1b in the Balkans was based on STRs and which have been completely discredited as a valid source of data for this kind of study.

IMO there were several waves of R1b at different times and talking about them as one is probably just confusing matters. We should rename the downstream branches and not group them any more.

eurologist said...

The whole of North Africa is missing from Myres map. And the case for ancestral R1b in the Balkans was based on STRs and which have been completely discredited as a valid source of data for this kind of study.

Annie,
STRs have by many people been subject of deep concern and by now have been pretty much discredited for one thing: trying to establish a molecular clock based upon them. Their usage in short-term pedigree still stands.
But, more importantly, by now SNPs support the European/Anatolian dichotomy and a (currently) Balkan population that at one point (close by) was their progenitor.

a said...

R1b-R M269 migration, Bell Beaker isolate French Basque comparison.

"Southern" component in comparison to "West Asian" has netted two entirely different results, by region and group isolates.

k12b versus k7b

"Southern"-"South West Asian" components, conflicting results.

"k7b" "Southern/Saudi" component;

1]Finnish_D-[0.0%]

2]French Basque-[26.8%]

3]Yemeni Jews/Saudi -[63.4%-64.8%]


"k12b" "Southwest Asian" component;

1]Finnish_D-[2.6%]

2]French Basque-[0.0%]

3]Yemeni Jews/Saudi-[53.8%-67.7%]

a said...

pconroy/ and R-M269

Interesting ideas. I'm in the model T Ford of the R1b clan[Eastern European-Silesia] with Dys @ 393-12.

I usually score lower on the "Southwest Asian" component-k12b[0.0% versus 2.3%] and relatively higher in the Ged than the average Pole[o.5% versus 5.4%]...


Heads up I'll pm you.

Unknown said...

I agree that they are fine (even good) for recent kinship studies.

But my reading of the literature is that STRs are largely misleading in trying to work out ancestral roots and branches. For genographic studies exactly like the origins of the R1bs. And the further back you get the more misleading they become. Personally I dont yet have a strong opinion on the source/s and path/s of R1b and would love to know. The Balkans study I dont believe. I am waiting for good
SNP and ancient dna data. Like this paper.

eurologist said...

The Balkans study I dont believe. I am waiting for good
SNP and ancient dna data.


Annie,

Strange (biased?) objection since it's been done and the study you don't believe has been confirmed by SNP data analysis.

Derek said...

I've found all these references to the Beaker Folk's distinct skull type extremely interesting and am trying to educate myself on the subject. A lot of the relevant academic papers seem to cite a 1953 book by Kurt Gerhardt (Die Glockenbecherleute in Mittel-und Westdeutschland) in which the author made a detailed study of 130 BB skulls. I haven't been able to find the book, but found an old review of it on JSTOR:

"The Bell-Beaker pottery and a type of skull called by Gerhardt Plano-Occipital Steilkopf appear together in late Neolithic times in Central Europe; and Gerhardt gives us a study of 130 skulls, with sketches of 73 of them, where possible three sketches of each being shown. The Plano-Occipital Steilkopf with the back of the head almost a vertical plane is the chief, the most numerous and the most marked type among the skulls showing strong brows and jaws and other features with a considerable range of variation. ........

Gerhardt emphasizes the anatomical relation of the chief type of Beaker Men to an Anatolian-Armenian breed in a proportion of the men in which one finds that steep rise of the hinder plane of the skull, but admits that there is as yet too little evidence from Armenia of the Beaker period. His view is that the type spread west in the Mediterranean."

Here's the link if you have access to JSTOR:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2795139

Grey said...

"But what is the cause of this divide? Why are western and eastern Europeans so distinct from each other?"

Tortoise and the hare?

Orange tortoise moving slowly up the Danube and along the southern med coast expanding roughly east to west.

Blue hare sails around the Atlantic coast, introduces cattle to the foragers creating Atlantic cowboys who expand roughly west to east.

Meet somewhere in the middle.

Grey said...

"The fact that the farmer was so distinct creates an interesting dynamic. If the trb farmers were distinct from their neighbouring hunter gathers then how did the modern Swedes end up so different from the trb farmers? Did the two eventually mix? But wouldn't the trb outbreed the local hunter gathers to much to create modern Swedes?"

Say foragers had a population density of 1 and early farmers in suitable terrain and climate had a population density of 5 but too far north their crops were less productive so they developed a forager-cattle-crops hybrid with a population density of only 2 initially then maybe 3 later as they improved their cattle and crops.

In the SE the neo and meso might create a hybrid population in the ratio 5:1 neo to meso whereas along the atlantic coast the proportions might have been 2:1 or less.

eurologist said...

Grey,

Y-DNA doesn't give us a good picture of autosomal admixture. mtDNA shows that farmers picked up local women along the way everywhere they went (and modern migrations show the same pattern). When agriculture reached the very north of Germany, the HG autosomal component likely was already dominant in the farmers - with additional admixture later on in Scandinavia. Your question again highlights that the TRB sample likely was an outlier - a recent megalithic newcomer.

andrew said...

"if someone has a reference to a study that concludes a Portuguese origin based on evidence, I'd certainly take a look at it."

The argument for this is based on the oldest Bell Beaker sites being from Portugal. Northern Iberian Bell Beaker, for example, is quite a bit later and could have orgins from either the south or the north at that point in time.

princenuadha said...

> well, i’d rather not say on the innerwebs. there is a slight chance that someone might work out my real identity

And interestingly, also a woman. So there were farming women, similar the S. Europeans, in Sweden.

Grey said...

eurologist
"When agriculture reached the very north of Germany, the HG autosomal component likely was already dominant in the farmers"

Yes if they'd come by land. I was suggesting if they'd come by sea along the atlantic coast and their agricultural package was much less productive than it was further south then their population density might be much lower than it was in the south also. So

"But wouldn't the trb outbreed the local hunter gathers to much to create modern Swedes"

wouldn't neccessarily apply (in logical terms).

Average Joe said...

Dienekes:

Have you had a chance to see this new paper from Anatole A. Klyosov on R1b?

http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=19567

Average Joe said...

Any one had a chance to read this paper:

http://maxwellsci.com/print/crjbs/v2-294-299.pdf

StoneLord said...

Just a comment regarding the shape of Beaker skulls. There has been an ongoing study of Beaker isotopes in Britain, and along with this there have been new examination of ancient skulls. It would seem that there is some evidence that people may have been using some kind of head binding, sothey may not have naturally had such round skulls as once thought. This possibly could explain why, if the beakers were the dominant group in Britain c2400-2000 BC (perhaps spreading R1b widely)that this distinct head type seemed to quickly vanish in subsequent generations, reverting to seemingly more 'native' long skulls.
There seems to have been two areas of dispersal of beaker culture into Britain--from Germany/Holland and from Brittany. The Amesbury Archer had an Alpine origin, but like many beaker folk, seemed to have been a wide traveller--his daggers were Spanish and French. A lesser known beaker burial from only 20 mi away (found in the 80's) had similar gravegoods, including gold hair tresses, and his metalwork was also from the same areas. Sadly, when found, there was no such thing as isotope testing. Another group found on Boscombe Down (nr Stonehenge) came up with readings that could either be from Wales or Brittany.
Not enough has been done as yet regarding dna in very ancient British populations, unfortunately.

Unknown said...

Hi all,
I'm new to this topic and wanted to try to clarify something that is not only confusing me but confusing a few of my friends that are also trying to follow this larger story.
In reading about the habitation of Europe in the distant past my understanding, which I thought was essentially point-blank, black and white in the material I've been reading, was that it appears as though a population was genetically bottlenecked somewhere in Iberia for some time. When that bottleneck broke a very long time ago this population suddenly began basically colonizing the rest of the near world, its haplogroup R1b1 showing in proportion to distance, which seems to make sense as the size of the colonies would likely diminish with distance.
But then I began reading that the academic consensus seems to be that "cultural influences" migrated with the R1b1 population from east to west, exactly the opposite. I've googled and looked everywhere I can and can find no intelligible reason why this is believed to be the case. Can someone explain this?
There are numerous reasons for my implicit reading but one thing that sticks in my mind is how would a bottlenecked region receive an influx of "people" from the east? Also, why would a gradual increase in the proportions of R1b1 representation from east to west indicate anything by itself?
My email is kirkomrik@gmail.com if you'd like to answer there. I appreciate your time in responding.
- kk

Unknown said...

Apologies to all, apparently I should have typed Rb1, not R1b1, and also, part of my implicit reading came from reading the Bell Beaker hypothesis/pattern, which seemed to almost be an explicit description of west to east colonization. Thanks again,
- kk

Bear101 said...

Question. I get the distinct feeling that people think that there could only have been one person in the beginning with a specific mutation in their DNA.

Could a man and woman have more than one offspring with mostly the same Genes and could that Genes be able to bring forth the same mutations when interbreeding with another Genetically homogeneous group ?

Could M269 have entered Western Europe from multiple directions entering Europe from Turkey, Ukraine and by Sea all along the coastal areas ?

And by means of their different routes also have picked up different genetic sequences ?

I have read about some interesting cultures that might show the migration path of R1b. The Yangelskaya Culture of the Southern Urals apparently have some links to the Earlier Southern Caspian (Azerbaijan) area roundabout 14000 BP and the later Maykop Culture of the Northern Caucuses might be linked to them. Some beaker influence from the lake Baikal area is also evident....
The Maykop Culture could be linked to some Danubian Cultures and Celts of the Alps later on. Interesting enough is that there is a statuette of a bull or cow with long forward and upward sweeping horns in the Maykop findings which looks quite similar to the Barrosa cattle breed of Portugal. Is this just a coincidence ?

Unknown said...

Didn't the Atlantic folk reach Scandinavia? Last i read they did so i am not surprised that neolithic Swedish farmer would resemble southern european.