Stranger things have happened...
TALANTA XL-XLI (2008-2009), 151-172
AN ‘ETEOCRETAN’ INSCRIPTION FROM PRAISOS AND THE HOMELAND OF THE SEA PEOPLES
Luuk de Ligt
The whereabouts of the homeland or homelands of the so-called Sea Peoples have been endlessly debated. This article re-examines this problem by looking at one of the ‘Eteocretan’ inscriptions from the town of Praisos. It is argued that this text is written in an Indo-European language belonging to the OscanUmbrian branch of the Italic language family. Based on this finding it is suggested that this language must have arrived in eastern Crete during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula. When the Mycenaean state system collapsed around 1200 BC, some of these groups moved to the northern Aegean, to Cyprus and to the coastal districts of the Levant. It is also suggested that this reconstruction explains the presence of an Etruscan-speaking community in sixth-century-BC Lemnos. An interesting corollary of this theory is that the Sea Peoples were present in the Mycenaean world some considerable time before its collapse in the early twelfth century
Link (pdf)
49 comments:
Very interesting, but they hard part will be concensus
"Based on this finding it is suggested that this language must have arrived in eastern Crete during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula"
..or, Italic originated as one of the various languages in Greece.
Where does he argue that this language is different from Linear A? He also makes dozens of decisions I can't begin to break down. And I don't know why people would call themselves "original Cretans" if they were the people who ruined Cretan civilization. Not to say he's wrong about what the language is. In fact I'm pulling for him! I just think he's wrong to say it's the Sea People's language.
Also: we have strange DNA on Crete that apparently arrived shortly after the Bronze Age Collapse. From Mycenaean Greece. Pretty much EVERYONE was migrating EVERYWHERE after the catastrophe.
As for myself, I'm bumping along just fine with the Minoan/Latin connection. Zeus comes from Crete, and if the name Zeus is also Cretan, then we've got ourselves another fine Indo-European word. They apparently called Mount Ida... Mount Ida. Which means they're probably using "dea" for "goddess." A fine Roman noun. We even see IDA MATA. Mother Goddess? Since this was a syllabary, the "r" might have been "understood." Or undeveloped. I don't know. I'm not a linguist and I don't speak Latin. I'm just sniffing stuff out. I know enough to do that.
The burnished ware probably did come from Italy; where we had trade relations with plenty of Stone Age people. The people living in the Apennine Mountains were probably getting their metal hardware and housewares from us. The stuff is unified in design and execution and can be found all up and down their territory. Their descendants are alive and well today all over Central Italy. Including the lowlands. As the Romans we got along with them well, and had integrated their pastoral economy with our agricultural economy centuries before Rome was even a formal city. Looks like we got along with them well even before the Collapse.
Why I followed up on Zeus:
I found out Zeus was often called Diktaios on Crete. Referring to Mount Ditka. About 16:30 into Part III of my series on the Phaistos Disc, I compare elements of Side B to the Minoan Libation Formula. I noted that the word I identified as "God" - DITI; a *beautiful* Latin word - shows up in the part of the fragment that aligns with the "toponym" section of the Libation Formula. In this case: jadikitu. Mount Ditka. I suggested Ditka might mean "Mountain of God" or something. Now I know that the Cretans often referred to their gods indirectly (and discretely) by referencing their MOUNTAIN. This therefore confirms my reading of DITI (and its various incarnations).
http://youtu.be/iURSSYG9bys
Since ancient times, the Roman/Italian word for "plunderer" or unschooled ruffian has been "cretino." It's where English gets the word, "cretin."
This seems incredibly well-researched and well-reasoned. Wow. All I can say is wow!
He seems to be very reasonable too. I agree with his conclusion:
"even though some of my readings and interpretations are consciously speculative, the linguistic similarities between the Praisian language and the language of the Oscan-Umbrian language group are so numerous that they are unlikely to be purely coincidental."
I like the paper. It explains why there is a lot of U152 in Lasithi Prefecture in Crete and the Peloponnese--more than in Western Crete. Also Duhoux argues that Linear A is prefixing and reduplicating while Eteo-Cretan is suffixing, more like IE languages or Etruscan and may be a different language.
"An interesting corollary of this theory is that the Sea Peoples were present in the Mycenaean world some considerable time before its collapse in the early twelfth century"
I have long assumed that to be the case.
Pneumatikon,
"And I don't know why people would call themselves "original Cretans" if they were the people who ruined Cretan civilization"
Well the English call themselves British, after they stamped out what was left of British society.
The motivation to usurp the name of the people whose land you took seems pretty obvious to me.
Did the "Sea Peoples" come from Italy?
Who knows me knows the battles I've done on many arguments, practically against all or the most parts of the amateurs who write on the fora. Two of them, the origin of the Etruscans and of the "Sea Peoples", could be solved by the tentative of deciphering of an "Eteocretan" document which seems to be an Italic language of the Osco-Umbrian stock.
The theory of this Dutch scholar is that from that derives that the "Sea Peoples", all, not only the most evident Siculs, Sardinians and Etruscans, were Italian mercenaries at the service of the Mycenean rulers. That could explain not only the presence of the Etruscan language at Lemnos, but, from a genetic point of view, the link of the R-M269 with the mutations PF7566 and PF7569 in my acquired cousin Fabrizio Federighi from Tuscany and in a Greek so far and the presence of many of these "Italian" haplogroups (I considered the hg. R, but of course I have spoken also about many other Jewish hgs which found a link in Italy and the oldest I have always said that might be introgressed before the diaspora) in the Jewish pool if also the Philistines came from Italy.
Of course also what I said about the Pelasgians and the same origin of Athens finds a new light, and also what Publius Vergilius Maro wrote in his Aeneis: "antiquam exquirite matrem".
I have no idea how to judge the likelihood of this theory. Does anyone?
I don't think the English called themselves "British" before the union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England (which had already swallowed up Wales). After that, subjects of the United Kingdom could use "British" as a general term, without conflating the different nationalities.
I doubt the early English would have called themselves "Britons" - maybe in the later Middle Ages after listening to too many King Arthur stories.
@ Roy King
"It explains why there is a lot of U152 in Lasithi Prefecture in Crete and the Peloponnese--more than in Western Crete".
Very likely it isn't easy to say what came from the "Sea Peoples" and what from Venetians later, and only a deep SNP test could say somethimg more careful.
From the last "YFull tree" would seem to me that also U152 was born from the expansion of the Bell Beakers from Iberia (of course I think that hg. R1b1-L389 and subclades arrived in Iberia with the Italian Cardials), but the link with Cretans could be interesting to say who arrived in Italy from Central Europe or directly from Bell Beakers via sea, for instance above all the mostly Sardinian and Central Italian R-U152/Z192.
More reliable I think the link of my cousin and a Greek with the SNPs PF7566 and PF7569 (hg. R-M269) which seem found only in Sardinia and Italy so far.
@ capra internetensis
"I have no idea how to judge the likelihood of this theory. Does anyone?"
I did, already when the book of another Dutch scholar was published about the "Sea Peoples": Woudhuizen, The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples.
"I don't think the English called themselves "British" before the union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England (which had already swallowed up Wales). After that, subjects of the United Kingdom could use "British" as a general term, without conflating the different nationalities.
I doubt the early English would have called themselves "Britons" - maybe in the later Middle Ages after listening to too many King Arthur stories".
If you don't like Italians, call them Italics!
Pneumatikon
"And I don't know why people would call themselves "original Cretans" if they were the people who ruined Cretan civilization."
Briton, Britain, British come from the Romans so once the elite got to the point where they were being educated in the classics the Roman label might be seen to have higher status.
Maybe the same in Crete if the invaders couldn't build palaces as cool as the original population?
Pneumatikon said...
I personally would look into ancestor worship for those type of Sea people . because Zeus may have been a name Others called someone elses ancestor or just a place referred to which was not his real name.
In north America one of the sea people tribes never speak of a dead person name really few tribes every have.. . but use other names or dance around a name with statements like
"to the one we all miss". speaking of their tribe or clan or time is more likely what will happen.
speaking the name of the dead ancestor is not really done back then because of fear it would wake them before they should wake or cause them some kind of turmoil in their rest/sleep ..
not counting what digging up their tombs and graves does to them. but traditionally you do not even speak their name out loud much less dig them up..
so my guess is DITI really means just a spirit of a dead ancestor which lives at that place and is buried at a certain mountain/ or really " high place " maybe at just a mountain called Zeus. but doubtful it is the real ancestors name and the only the word they are allowed to say for that ancestor which the ancestor himself would not know ..
really I would Guess Noah who also had three sons., who were by the way probably giants and since they were probably in the created or pre-flood form.
and also one of the Son's the sons which ruled both the SEA and Hell.
and One of the Son's people lands were devastated and everyone thought those peoples main land had sunk to the bottom of the sea in cataclysm involving a cosmic dragon and sea serpents or something like that .. Those Lands which was like heaven was sent to hell.. but it was thought that when it died a horrible death at the bottom of the sea. but it didn't really sink it just was moved. ... .. I sure would go there.
to think we all thought you guys sunk and were gone forever....... Surprise, Surprise Surprise .
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deity?s=t
what if in their nature they were still in "God's Image"! AKA
" son of GOD" thus divine in their formation. they died so obviously not divine in their spirit.
towards the end of the Book of Enoch is the story of Noah birth.. now that is interesting eyewitness and very well recorded history.
"towards the end of the Book of Enoch is the story of Noah birth.. now that is interesting eyewitness and very well recorded history".
If you're taking all that mythology seriously I don't know what you are doing here.
Works like this are hard to evaluate for non-specialists lacking practical experience with historical linguistic thinking, including myself. It would be interesting to see some independent expert opinions on this theory. I guess most would be rather sceptical or dismissive, as was the case with Koch's theory of a Celtic identity of the Tartessian language. Well, I used to learn some Latin, and I know most of the grammatical terms, so I struggled through the analysis. To me it looks a bit too far-fetched and ad hoc.
The text the article deals with can also be found here, together with some conflicting opinions on a few points:
http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Eteocretan/Praisos2.html
The author of the above site thinks that gaps at the end of lines 2, 4 and 5 suggest that at these points we can safely assume word division, and I think that makes sense. De Ligt on the other hand connects the end of line 2 with the beginning of line 3, reading αι[-]ρεσ, and he speculatively interprets this as αι[ρε]ρεσ. Likewise, he connects the end of line 5 with the beginning of line 6, inspite of the gap inbetween, reading λυνγυτατ[—]σα which he interprets as λυνγυτατ[οι]σ-α.
Another problem imho is the inconsistency in the interpretation of φ. In one instance he compares ιτσφα with Oscan eitiuvam and eitiuvad, where the Italic equivalent to Eteocretan φ is a fricative – while in other instances he compares it with Italic words where the equivalent is p, and in other cases he interprets it as an aspirated p, like in Phraisos. While in Greek and Romance aspirated p really did change to f, I'm not sure if the supposedly original Italic eituua could change into itsp(h)a in Eteocretan. That would be a change into the opposite direction.
A further problem is that he looks for similarities quite freely, sometimes picking from Oscan and Umbrian, sometimes from Sicel, sometimes from Latin, but in cases where this really doesn't work he also seeks for parallels in Greek, Germanic and other IE languages. It doesn't look like a clearly Oscan-Umbrian dialect.
Also if you just read some examples from Oscan and Umbrian here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscan_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguvine_Tablets
I have the feeling that the relationship with Latin and with Gaulish is more obvious in these examples than in the Praisos text under discussion. To me the Praisos text reminds me somewhat of Eteocypriot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eteocypriot_language
See the morpheme -ose for instance.
(continued)
To me it looks most likely that Oscan-Umbrian wasn't even present in Italy before the Bronze Age collapse. Oscan-Umbrian shares the kw > p innovation with Gaulish, unlike Latin-Faliscan. This suggests that Latin and Faliscan entered Italy at an earlier date. Compare with the q-Celtic variants in Iberia and Ireland. These had spread there at an early date, too, hence they preserved kw (q). Moreover Germanic seems to be slightly closer to Italic than to Celtic, suggesting a rather northern presence of at least some Italic tribes during the Bronze Age. Eurologist has often argued in favour of a Celtic-Italic continuum, and that would have been in central Europe. Furthermore we have haplogroup R1b-U152, which is present at non-negligible levels throughout Italy, also in the south, and which is predominant in populations descended from Gaulish Celts. A northern origin of Oscans and Umbrians becomes even more likely if we consider the distribution of light hair colour in Italy (according to Biasutti). A particularly light pigmented nucleus is located right in the heartland of the Umbri, on both sides of the upper Tiber. (Hence this nucleus is shared with Etruscans who were located on the western side of the Tiber. But according to some, Perusia was founded by Umbri. Another light haired nucleus is located in ancient Samnium. Finally, if both Etruscans and Oscan-Umbrians were already present in middle Bronze Age Italy, as de Ligt maintains, then what did the Protovillanova wave bring along? In modern archeology accepted evidence of invasions is so scarce that we have to make use of every good evidence for an incursion by foreign populations, otherwise we will run into problems. Seen that way the Protovillanova wave, with its strongest parallels in Urnfield groups from Bavaria and Upper Austria, had to introduce a new population element. And it's well known that the Protovillanova wave extended southwards to the southernmost tip of Italy.
Gioiello, R1b1-L389? Doesn't exist according to the ISOGG site. Also it's unlikely that R1b-U152 originated in Iberia with Bell Beakers, because (among other markers) it also has L23 and P297, and these were found in Yamnaya, but not in Iberian farmers. If they arose in Iberia and we simply haven't found them yet, then how did they end up in Yamnaya people in far eastern Europe before Iberian Bell Beaker had even reached central Europe?
'A further problem is that he looks for similarities quite freely, sometimes picking from Oscan and Umbrian, sometimes from Sicel, sometimes from Latin, but in cases where this really doesn't work he also seeks for parallels in Greek, Germanic and other IE languages. It doesn't look like a clearly Oscan-Umbrian dialect.'
I don't think anybody should expect a known dialect. The text was inscribed in Greek characters of the fourth century BC, what implies an independent development from a common Italic source of at least 800 years. This common source was clearly closer to Oscan-Umbrian, though very likely shared retentions with other Indo-European languages. However, I have the impression the writer favors a dialect closer to eastern Siculian, albeit vitually unknown. His identifacion of the 'Prst', the supposed Filistines, with the Palaistênoi of North-East Sicily is especially telling.
Actually, I don't understand your dismissal, does it have anything to do with your extinct Yamnaya heros? I don't think Italians derive from Yamnaya's at all.
@ Simon W
Simon W, I answer your genetic questions. Next I'll try to answer your linguistic questions too. You say that R-L389* doesn't exist. Of course no old subclade exists. You won't find any L23*, any L21* etc., because the person who had that mutation died and already his sons had some other mutation, even though very likely 1 mutation happened every 3 generations, but the lines survived lived hundreds or thousands years after their ancestor. But we understand for R-L389* those haplotypes which have that mutation and not the next in the haplotree, i.e. so far P297*. It is clear that all these are paragroups, and i think having demonstrated that amongst the samples known Italy has the highest variance. It needed many years that FTDNA recognized that DeMao and Mangino belonged to this haplogroup, and many other samples I collected from Italy. You may see those samples in the "R1b1 FTDNA Project", and what I wrote recently on Facebook, ISOGG group, gained me the last banishment, but you may read my post on eng.molgen.
It is an open question if the Caucasian R1b1-s are L389+ or L389- as the Indian and Central Asian ones, that I tested (or invited the owners to test). I have a sample of an Italian with the R1b1 of the Caucasian type under process at Yseq.
About the expansion of the haplogroups with Bell Beakers of course I think the other way around as to all my opponents, i.e. that Bell Beakers expanded from Iberia and not from Central Europe, and of course I think that the R1b subclades developed in Iberia from ancestors come from Italy 7500 years ago as Zilhao demonstrated. From the YFull tree seems that all the subclades expanded at the same time about 4700/4500 years ago, and if what my opponents think were true, that L51 arrived from Yamnaya, very likely it would have lacked the time that all the subclades were born, and Eastern Europe lacks all the intermediate haplogroups.
Of course I am waiting that the aDNA demonstrstes who is right and who is wrong.
The origin of R-L389* is more than 15000 years ago etc. thus what you say about the presence of Z2103 in Yamnaya has no meaning: I am Z2110* and find the closest cousins in one Basque and an Englishman, i.e. only in Western Europe.
Rokus, no my dismissal has nothing to do with the kurgan theory. I read carefully through his analysis of the text and I tried to decide if it made sense. Bearing in mind that theories of alleged translations of unknown languages are quite often published, but much less often accepted by the academic community. So it's certainly a healthy attitude to be sceptical. The fact that he is a countryman of yours may make his claims more believable to you, but not to the rest of the world. I just mentioned a few observations that reinforced my doubts, it wasn't meant to be a conclusive enumeration.
I think what de Ligt made is certainly possible, and he seems to be a respectable scholar. But in cases like this, where there is no certainty about word division for instance, and where there are many hiatuses in the text, a judgement cannot be easily made. As I mentioned, the case of Tartessian is very similar. John Koch is a respectable scholar too, he has taught at Harvard University, among others. Yet his theory of Tartessian as Celtic didn't become the mainstream view. Personally I think what is needed in cases like these is intuition. You can construct translations with intimate linguistic knowledge, but if these are plausible or far-fetched has to be decided by intuition.
So you don't think Italians have Yamnaya ancestry? According to Figure 3 in the latest Haak et al. preprint they have quite a bit of it.
Gioiello, I had just wanted to say that there is no R-L389 in the ISOGG tree, which is why I didn't even know what you were talking about. But in the meantime I found R-L389 on http://www.yfull.com/tree/R1b/ and now I understand what it's supposed to be, a step inbetween R1b1 and R1b1a.
You missed the point. I didn't say anything about Z2103. I said L23 and P297 were present in far eastern Europe, at a time before Iberian Bell Beakers had even reached central Europe. So how did they get there?
We might consider that L23 originated somewhere in the Balkans and migrated from there to Iberia with the Cardium people, and eventually from the Balkans to the steppe. However, according to the above site, the TMRCA for R-L23 is 4300 BC. The Cardium people had left the Balkans and set foot on Italy at about 6000 BC, and in Iberia at 5500 BC. So this theory doesn't work either, L23 cannot have arrived with Cardium people.
L51 was formed about 4300 BC, so it may have been present in Yamnaya. But given the scarcity of this clade in eastern Europe and the fact that they didn't find it in the (quite limited) Yamnaya sample, it may have been still an unimportant rare lineage at that time. And this shouldn't surprise us. The guys who multiplied it later were just some lucky dudes out of many. It was quite random.
L151 was formed about 3600 BC, so it may have been present at a low level in Yamnaya, too. The TMRCA for all modern L151 is about 3000 BC. That was about the time when Yamnaya was present in the Carpathian Basin. So the MRCA may have lived exactly there. And from L151 all the common central/west European clades are derived. The TMRCA of S116 is about 2700 BC, and of U106 about 3000 BC. These may have originated in the Carpathian Basin.
Imho some, maybe even most elements of the Bell Beaker cultural package originated in Iberia. But not all the Bell Beaker people, that's obvious from the autosomal DNA of German Bell Beaker people. The thinking in categories of fixed cultural blocks may hide some actual migrations. But Vucedol influence, originating in the Carpathian Basin, has been noted in German Bell Beaker people by several authors.
Simon_W, what you say to Rokus and to me is plausible. I wrote that in replying you, but I didn't send that to Dienekes, just because the doubts you pose were also mine:
"I thank Rokus for his defence of a possible origin of this test from "Italic" with good arguments from a linguistic point of view. Of course I should write a book for answering Simon W. Anyway the book of Woudhuizen I quoted above (The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples) should be an unsuppressable start point, and Woudhuizen didn't recognize as "Italic" peoples amongst them that the Shardana, the Siculs and the Teresh/Etruscans (who of course didn't speak an Italic language).
I'd want to say only one thing, that the possible explications of "itspha" from an Italic "eitiuva", in the meaning of "movable property" (from the IE root *i/ei-" = to go) seems having developed in contact with a Lycian language, with a palatalization of "t" due to the "i" and p/b from "w" like in Lydian "dbi" (if I remember well) from IE *dwi-".
I read again the pages of Woudhuizen in "The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples" and the possible link between Etruscan and Lydian (thus the possible origin of the Etruscans from the Aegean Sea) actually merits to be deepen (I know this hypothesis from at least 45 years, when I read the paper of Georgev about that in the "Biblioteca Nazionale" of Florence), but one should write a paper or a book about that and not only a post.
About the genetic point of view I could say that, even though I appreciate the YFull team work and I sent them also my Full Genome and use daily their site (but they didn't recognize a SNP to me I have: I am YF2873 under R-Z2110 in the YFull tree), I esteem their dates underestimated for 1000/1500 years as to L51. I wrote a lot about the hypothesis which links Tuscan L51/CTS6889- with Iberia and Ireland due to the migration of 7500 years ago, and the L51/CTS6889+ with an expansion from Italy to Central Europe.
Of course your hypothesis is also that of all the Anthrogenicians who banned me and I am waiting like them for the aDNA response. What I appreciate of you is that we may discuss and wait for the scientific proofs without banning anyone. I have written a lot also about my R/L23/Z2110 with 92 private SNPs and the link I found so far with a Basque and an Englishman, all in Western Europe, and also about the fact that my acquired cousin Fabrizio Federighi (R-M269/PF7566/PF7569) from Tuscany has a MRCA with me at least 9300 years ago. Of course it is possible that our ancestors came from elsewhere and our lines live at a few kms from hundreds or thousands of years.
'So it's certainly a healthy attitude to be sceptical.'
Unless the scepsis is a result of confirmation bias. Italic Sea People imply earlier dates than those advertising a steppe origin are comfortable with. These people must have been well established in Italy at 1200 BC, ie. pre-Villanovan and thus unrelated with and probably even preceding the continental Urnfield culture.
'As I mentioned, the case of Tartessian is very similar. John Koch is a respectable scholar too, he has taught at Harvard University, among others. Yet his theory of Tartessian as Celtic didn't become the mainstream view.'
It is misleading to speak of any mainstream view for a subject with so few
active researchers. The only valid falsification criterium for such results, that this same trick may be performed by any other random language like Chinese or Swahili as a matrix, has never been met. Non-linguistic arguments prevail. Indeed, an Indo-European Tartessian language as a sibling of (q-) Celtiberian remains unacceptable to those that simply deny Bell Beaker as most likely Indo-European. Kurganism still thrives on plain denials of the sort. Koch (2014): 'The reviews also argue forcefully that it is unlikely that the Celtic language family first emerged from Proto-Indo-European in the Atlantic region, or specifically the Iberian Peninsula.' Even to the extend that linguistic evidence in general is openly met "with the greatest of scepticism" as soon it doesn't agree with Kurganism. Of course, this kind of Kurganist fundamentalism undermines the value of their own would-be multi-disciplinary approach, now reduced to cherry-picking and an appalling violation of Popperian criterions of true science.
'So you don't think Italians have Yamnaya ancestry? According to Figure 3 in the latest Haak et al. preprint they have quite a bit of it.'
Yamnaya ancestry rather than relatedness is just an ill-supported assumption. Not so long ago the prediction of Yamnaya YDNA R1a was the best approximation for a scientifific falsification criterium that Kurganism was ever ready to accept, and instead they found R1b1a2a2. Migrations linking the steppe to the early Indo-European Balkans and Anatolia, where this subclade is still current, are dated earlier than Yamnaya. Evidence of Yamnaya ancestry thus remains flimsy and unsupported by the evidence. Haak et al.:
'We caution that the sampled Yamnaya individuals from Samara might not be directly ancestral to Corded Ware individuals from Germany. It is possible that a more western Yamnaya population, or an earlier (pre-Yamnaya) steppe population may have migrated into central Europe, and future work may uncover more missing links in the chain of transmission of steppe ancestry.
You should realize that such an earlier, pre-Yamnaya ancestral population per definition does not share the specific steppe-culture associated with Yamnaya. Moreover, there is no archeological objection to the Yamnaya steppe-culture being just a subset of IE(-ized) cultures, since the wheel already existed in Funnel Beaker. Even the domesticated horse doesn't link genetically to Eurasia, being closer to the paleolithic Western European variety. On the contrary, global IE ancestry limited to Yamnaya continue to meet a host of archeological, linguistic and genetic inconsistencies. Indeed, the Kurganist-type of 'multi-disciplinary approach' rapidly declines to an excellent example of just another bunch of highly unscientific confirmation bias.
'We caution that the sampled Yamnaya individuals from Samara might not be directly ancestral to Corded Ware individuals from Germany. It is possible that a more western Yamnaya population, or an earlier (pre-Yamnaya) steppe population may have migrated into central Europe, and future work may uncover more missing links in the chain of transmission of steppe ancestry [Haak 2015]'.
You should realize that such an earlier, pre-Yamnaya ancestral population per definition does not share the specific steppe-culture associated with Yamnaya [Rokus].
What these kurganists don't take into account is that the other way around may have happened, that these R-L23 may have migrated Eastward from Western Europe. We all think (so far) that hg. R*, R1*, R2* formed in southern Siberia or Central Asia, but I said many times that Asia has only R1b1-L389- and not R1b1-L389+ (the ancestor of all the subclades) and am waiting for a test of an Italian R1b1* of the Caucasian type (which may also be of Eastern origin, but it isn't said so far) for knowing if R1b1-L389+ is amongst the Caucasian or Iranian samples. I discussed a lot with one of these kurganists, one of the smartest, Michal Milewski, about the fact that also R1a (at least M420* and M459*) points to a Western European origin, not having been found them in India or Central Asia, and now we have found an R1a-M459* in the aDNA from Karelia, so that he said recently that wehether he had money he would test with a deep SNP test one of these samples, and I wrote a lot about the paper of Underhill and all his bias... the unique thing these kurganists have at this point is to ban me. It is very likely at this point that both R1a* and R1b* wintered in the Western European Refugia and that expanded Eastward with a Northern and a Southern route.
Of course these people went many times Westward and Eastward for thousands of years and to pretend that they went only from East to West is just the kurganists fallacia that "Ex Oriente lux" and only believers may trust it.
No Rokus, I can assure you that my scepsis is not the result of dull confirmation bias. I'm probably one of the most unbiased commenters here. And do you know why? Because I don't have any wishes how prehistory ought to have been like. In that sense I really don't care who the PIE were, I just want to know the truth. Neither have I any preference for Northern or Southern or West Asian people, nor any idiotic belief about inherent (warlike and whatnot) supremacy of any of these groups. The fact that my ancestry is a mix of northwestern, northeastern, central and southern Europeans may help in being objective. If you have read my comments regularly, you may have noticed that I've changed my opinion rather often, and that I was also sometimes agnostic. You on the other hand seem to entertain the local patriotic belief that the Swifterband culture was somehow central for the spread of IE language and you seem to have the deep wish to demarcate yourself from southern and eastern Europe and from the Near East. You seem to have made your opinion long ago, and now you interpret every new evidence in light of your old beliefs. But just look at yourself and your history, you don't look like a pure hunter-gatherer to me - the early farmer legacy is still very visible.
Seriously, the presence of Oscan-Umbrian people on Crete in the 4th century BC, if it was true, has no bearing on the origin of the PIE perhaps 4000 years earlier. That this has to be explained by Italic sea people is just a theory. Not a very compelling one at that! And moreover I never believed that all Italic languages in Italy go back to the Protovillanovan in the final Bronze Age. I repeatedly said that there are at least to layers, an old, q-Italic layer and a younger p-Italic one.
Yes, it's not really apt to speak of a mainstream view in subjects with few active researchers. But still, all of them are experts, and the fact that Koch didn't manage to convince his colleagues should at least be reason for scepticism, or agnosticism - as long as one doesn't have the time, will and expertise to make a well informed judgement based on linguistic reasons. That said I really have no strong opinion on whether Tartessian was Celtic or not. It's not even that important for the question of Celtic origins, because it is late attested too. Even if Tartessian was Celtic, this surely wouldn't prove that Celtic originated more than 2000 years earlier in southern Iberia. According to Koch it would at least prove that the Celts arrived in Iberia before the Iron Age. And this I'm very ready to buy, because in Spain the main admixture with the North European autosomal component seems to have happened around 1600 BC +/- 400 years:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/09/estimating-admixture-proportions-and.html
You suggest an experiment where a random language like Chinese or Swahili as a matrix should be translated. I don't agree that this would be a useful exercise. I'd rather suggest a placebo experiment, where an expert is given a non-existent fantasy language, and then tries to translate it. But it has to be performed in a way that he or she believes that it is a real ancient language.
In my opinion Bell Beaker wasn't ethnically homogenous. The early Bell Beakers of Iberia were non-IE, the later Bell Beakers of Germany were IE, imho. The spread of the Celts to western Europe was quite obviously associated with the arrival of the North European and Gedrosia components and R1b1a2a1a2.
continued, @ Rokus
You're constantly speaking of Kurganist fundamentalism, although I'm not even a Kurganist. Imho the PIE homeland was in West Asia. Yet I'm of the opinion that most IE languages expanded from the steppe. You see, it's not a contradiction. The Kurgan theory was partly right, and partly wrong. The latest Haak et al. paper provided great evidence for the steppe as a source of at least some IE languages in Europe. Just look at the eastern shift in the PCA and study the f-stats. What do you think where this EHG ancestry came from? From Swifterband? That would be a crazy idea, given the fact that they were geographically close to Loschbour and possibly have admixture from SHG. So most likely they were somewhere intermediate between Loschbour (WHG) and SHG and far from being a sufficient source for the observed EHG admixture. Not to speak of the new, different type of West Asian admixture that also pops up with Corded people. Your claim that the presumed presence of R1a in Yamnaya used to be a falsification criterium for the Kurgan theory sounds nonsensical. Even if R1a had been found in Yamnaya, how would this prove that theory right? Rather, that idea was based on the modern distribution of R1a and the presence of R1a in Bronze Age Siberians etc. And at the same time many people had been arguing for years that Yamnaya is the source of European R1b, and they based their claims mostly on the Kurgan theory.
The Kurgan theory doesn't explain everything with Yamnaya. Already Gimbutas theorized about several earlier waves of steppe people. And Anthony also holds that there was a pre-Yamnaya wave into the Balkans. So I can't see how expansions of steppe people into the Balkans are in conflict with the Kurgan theory. To the contrary, they are exactly what the main proponents of this theory suggest.
In my opinion the West Asian input expanded from the eastern Transcaucasus to the steppe. The Yamnaya in Samara shows slightly more of this influence than the ancestors of the German Corded people seem to have had. (The German Corded people themselves are already 25% middle Neolithic farmer admixed, likely from the locals.) Also, in Samara Yamnaya all males have R1b, while the Corded people so far didn't have R1b, but most often R1a. So of course they differed, but it's still obvious that autosomally the unmixed ancestors of the German Corded people were very similar to the Yamnaya people from Samara. In Hungary on the other hand, there seems to have been quite a different type of Yamnaya or steppe population. Much less West Asian, and more western on the WHG-EHG scale. That's all quite obvious now, yet these finer details don't change the big picture of massive steppe influence in Europe. I don't see any problem. These differences are natural and make sense, considering geography and temporal differences. Yes, pre-Yamnaya cultures differed from Yamnaya, that's a truism. But it doesn't logically follow that they had completely unrelated languages.
Yes, the wheel existed in the TRB. But this doesn't prove that the TRB was IE. There is no evidence that the wheel was invented by IEs. Also given the massive replacement of middle Neolithic people in late Neolithic central and northern Europe it's unlikely that their language prevailed.
@ Gioiello
Well, is Etruscan related to Lydian? That would make Etruscan an IE language. And I don't think it was an IE language. One piece of evidence against an association with IE are the Etruscan numerals, they don't look obviously IE.
As for the yDNA questions, my opinion is: We know for sure that R1b1 was present in Neolithic Spain and in hunter-gatherers of far eastern Europe. So far we don't have any ancient yDNA from West Asia, so we can't know for sure if it was present there at the same time or not. Modern distribution patterns (phylogeography, variance, frequency) would however suggest that R1b1 was in West Asia at the time, too. So we see a very wide distribution of R1b1, and it's an idle question where this originated. The interesting question is, where did R1b1a originate? We know that it was present in Yamnaya, but did it get there with the 50% West Asian influence or was it from the EHG? I'd say modern distribution patterns would favour a West Asian origin. An origin in western Europe is unlikely, as the Yamnaya people of Samara had no evidence for West European admixture, see Haak et al. 2015. So I would say R1b1*-L389+ should be present in the Caucasus and/or Iran. In particular I would look in Lezgins, Tabassarans, Azeris and northern Iranians.
The problem with rare old paragroups like R1a*-M420 is that they are only found if large numbers of people get tested at sufficiently deep resolution. And I think there is a bias in numbers favouring Western Europe, as the largest number of yDNA tests was certainly ordered by people of Western European descent.
Small bands of hunter-gatherers may have moved eastwards and westwards many times, but still there is a completely different quality to the shift documented in Haak et al. 2015 in that it affected the autosomal DNA strongly. This is something that can't be denied, it's about mass migration and considerable admixture, so that the population changed strongly. And the same can be said about the yDNA. Prior to this eastern shift, R1a and R1b haplotypes were rare in western and central Europe, so rare that they had been found in aDNA only once, so far. And afterwards R1a and R1b became the most common haplogroups of Europe. And this happened at the same time as the eastern autosomal shift. So maybe ex oriente not lux, but many people.
@ Simon W
I have written a lot about R1b1, both on Anthrogenica and eng.molgen, and before on other forums. Now we know (because I made them test) that India and central Asia has only R1b1-L389-. I said that Caucasus might have both the haplotypes R1b1, even though they have only haplotypes with YCAII=23-23, and we didn't know if they were L389+ or +, because not tested for that SNPs. But also Western Europe has R1b1 haplotypes with YCAII=23-23 (also Cruciani 2010 found 3 R1b1 in Italy (1 with YCAII=18-22, the Italian haplotype, and two with YCAII=23-23) and only 1 in Western Asia.
Now I have an Italian haplotype from Sicily, whose origin are incertain, of the Caucasian type. I tested him with Yseq, and he is L388+ (i.e. also L389+), thus, as I supposed, Caucasus has both the haplotypes.
Why I continue to think to the "Italian Refugium"? Because Western Europe has both the haplotypes, and Caucasus only one. The R1b1-L389* subclades certainly derive form YCAII= 18-23 or 18-22, having for modal 19-23 and not from the YCAII=23-23. Beyond this YCAII=23-23 derives from YCAII=18-23 tthrough a RecLOH and not the other way around.
I think that all my theories will be demonstrated from the aDNA. Don't consider the Jewish haplotypes, which are largely introgressed from European people, as has been largely demonstrated for the mt.
'If you have read my comments regularly, you may have noticed that I've changed my opinion rather often, and that I was also sometimes agnostic.'
I agree that Kurganism makes a poor reference. I've explained many times why Kurganism isn't a scientific hypothesis. It's because it can't be falsified, and instead repeatedly changed the rules of the game to arrive at the same dogma.
'the local patriotic belief that the Swifterband culture was somehow central'
It certainly was. Another subject with very few active researchers. And still their pottery was pre-Beaker and their Mesolithic way of life made the transition to agriculture. Somehow I consider Kurganist researchers that don't even know how to spell Swifterbant unapt to the job. The same applies to Kurganists that are unable to deal with Bell Beaker except by ignoring its existence, or by putting them far away in Iberia. Instead, BB was a very international culture that perfectly fits within a wider European horizon.
'I never believed that all Italic languages in Italy go back to the Protovillanovan in the final Bronze Age. I repeatedly said that there are at least to layers, an old, q-Italic layer and a younger p-Italic one.'
Ah, here the confirmation bias comes along! BTW, it was the 'younger' p-Italic being deciphered and linked to the 1200 BC Sea People.
'According to Koch it would at least prove that the Celts arrived in Iberia before the Iron Age. And this I'm very ready to buy, because in Spain the main admixture with the North European autosomal component seems to have happened around 1600 BC +/- 400 years'
What is your point here? Bronze Age Western Europe derive about 100% from Bell Beaker, what means that you agree that Italic and Iberian Celtic/Tartessian derive from local Late Neolithic cultures.
'I'd rather suggest a placebo experiment, where an expert is given a non-existent fantasy language, and then tries to translate it. But it has to be performed in a way that he or she believes that it is a real ancient language.'
Do you really think Koch is an imbecil? Many ancient and forgotten languages previously considered undecipherable have already been deciphered by very able men: Akkadian, Sumeric, Egyptian. Of many others we still don't have a clue: Minoan, Elamite, Harrappan. Of the latter category don't even exist credible attempts.
'The early Bell Beakers of Iberia were non-IE, the later Bell Beakers of Germany were IE, imho.'
The early Bell Beakers of Iberia may have developed their distinguished cultural Bell Beaker package there, though share too many elements with the Corded Ware horizon to be coincidental. In my point of view this stage was preceded by mesolithic Atlantic contacts, that lingered up to the appearance of AOC (found at rock bottom at an early site in Portugal). This may explain the older undecorated beakers that were so similar to Swifterbant and in a way even Funnel Beaker. However, it seems to be consistently less rewarding to pay attention to the items of a more simple stage of cultural expression that was clearly of a much wider identity.
Probably the wrong place for this discussion...
'What do you think where this EHG ancestry came from? From Swifterband? That would be a crazy idea, given the fact that they were geographically close to Loschbour and possibly have admixture from SHG.'
SHG is intermediate between WHG and EHG, so maybe it would be a better to consider the origin of this admixture? The Motala ceremonial depositions in a former lake for sure belong to the Celto-Germanic hemisphere. For a start, Swifterbant is not related to Loschbour, but rather to Vedbaek and Skateholm in Denmark and Skane in southern Sweden. This may be the direction from where EHG entered, or where WHG left. Karlian EHG corresponds to 38-40% ANE and 60-62% WHG ancestry. It always surprises me how they manage to hide the WHG element. Yamnaya has 30% WHG, and EEF has up to 80% WHG, both conspiciously hybrid, but instead 'Yamnaya' and 'EEF' are referred at as if these were indivisable components of pure entities.
'Your claim that the presumed presence of R1a in Yamnaya used to be a falsification criterium for the Kurgan theory sounds nonsensical. Even if R1a had been found in Yamnaya, how would this prove that theory right? Rather, that idea was based on the modern distribution of R1a and the presence of R1a in Bronze Age Siberians etc. And at the same time many people had been arguing for years that Yamnaya is the source of European R1b, and they based their claims mostly on the Kurgan theory.'
No, I said it should have been a falsification criterium for Kurganism. But Kurganism doesn't accept any. Likewise, it doesn't seem to bother you that Yamnaya R1b was not ancestral to eg. Bell Beaker/Western European R1b either.
'Already Gimbutas theorized about several earlier waves of steppe people. And Anthony also holds that there was a pre-Yamnaya wave into the Balkans. So I can't see how expansions of steppe people into the Balkans are in conflict with the Kurgan theory.'
True steppe culture started with Yamnaya. Pre-Yamnaya cultures simply lack all the distinctive characteristics of a steppe culture. This becomes problematic for the main adagium that links IE to the wheel and riding horses, even to kurgans. What doesn't exclude that Yamnaya riders followed up on their pre-Yamnaya predecessors in the Balkans. However, it does exclude that Corded Ware was 75% Yamnaya rather than being 75% related to Yamnaya.
'In my opinion the West Asian input expanded from the eastern Transcaucasus to the steppe.'
Yamnaya conserved much of the genetic package of early Neolithic farmers, what can also be visualized by comparing Mathieson et al. (2015) fiure 2A and B. Apparently the eastern and western early Neolithic farmer components were much alike. It wouldn't surprise me if the ultimate genetic origin of LBK was mesolithic north(-west) Caucasian rather than neolithic Anatolian or even Balkanic, what would then explain this close genetic but still apparently pre-Neolithic affiliation of Yamnaya. Indeed, the first LBK had quite interesting Mesolithic characteristics of as for now unknown origin. But Yamnaya was also part of the broader Mesolithic landscape of the northern and eastern plains, what becomes apparent by the massive influx of the EHG composite genetic elements. IMO this makes Yamnaya a poor candidate for the ultimate source of a homogenous culture that could expand far outside its own cultural and genetic limits.
@ Rokus
Yes, it's the wrong place. But I don't think anybody cares about this.
Well, what's the meaning of Kurganism? It's about the kurgan theory. Taken literally, this refers to the concept of a kurgan culture. It has been criticized by some archeologists that there never was such a thing like a kurgan culture, just several discrete cultures having tumulus or kurgan graves. Consequently the concept of kurgan culture would be comparable to the concept of a megalithic culture. There wasn't a megalithic culture either. Yet the Atlantic megalithism seems to have spread from a common starting point, so at least there were contacts between people. But however, Gimbutas used a wider concept of kurgan culture with a wide array of attributes like patriarchalic, warlike, etc, which didn't even presuppose the presence of kurgans. And some of her kurganized cultures, like the Baden culture, have recently turned out to be essentially from Sardinian-like farmers. Anthony rightly focuses more on concrete archeological cultures and their spread, especially the Yamnaya culture. But, as we've determined, he also considers pre-Yamnaya migrations. In IE linguistics it's pretty clear-cut what is meant by kurgan theory: The theory that the PIE lived on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, after the invention of wheel, wagon and the like. So there is quite a mess of definitions, vaguely revolving around a common idea. But ancient DNA research doesn't need a clear-cut definition of kurgan theory. It can work with samples from various uncontroversial archeological cultures and it can trace migrations of people and changes of populations. It's results are important evidence and not as ambiguous as many archeological considerations. It's uncontroversial that the Yamnaya culture and the Corded Ware had kurgans, and possibly this custom had spread from the Transcaucasus to the steppe, together with the West Asian autosomal admixture. If true, this would be an important finding. Yet, I also acknowledge that kurgan like graves in central Europe partly predated the Corded Ware.
Swifterbant, sorry. The Haak et al. paper clearly confirms that there was a middle Neolithic resurgence of WHG ancestry. Swifterbant indubitably was part of this development, it's no special case that has been overlooked. Yet the authors make also clear that this process had nothing to do with the later Neolithic increase in MA-1 relatedness. We are dealing here with two very different processes that both contributed to the genetic makeup of modern Europeans. It's all made clear in the paper, you just have to read the statistics. Swifterbant was part of the middle Neolithic WHG resurgence which on the whole was quite modest. And in the late Neolithic there was an increase of EHG and West Asian admixture. As for Bell Beaker, I already said myself that it wasn't ethnically homogenous, hence it was international, if you prefer.
Rokus said:
Ah, here the confirmation bias comes along! BTW, it was the 'younger' p-Italic being deciphered and linked to the 1200 BC Sea People.
What confirmation bias? I had merely replied to your allegation that I'd derive all Italic in Italy from the Protovillanovan, a thing that I certainly don't.
Yes, it would be p-Italic, if that thing in Crete really was Oscan-Umbrian, if! But what makes you so sure that this must have migrated to Crete from Italy and not from the Balkans?
continued: Your claim that Bronze Age Western Europe derives 100% from Bell Beaker may well be true, but is empty, because Bell Beaker wasn't ethnically homogenous. In my opinion Bell Beaker descended people from central Europe migrated westwards in the Bronze Age. Considerable changes can be seen in the beginning of the middle Bronze Age in Britain, with the return to agriculture, and other changes which make an immigration of continental people likely. But already in the Bell Beaker period itself people from the lower Rhine area had moved over to Britain. And in Iberia there is this Bronze Age admixture date inferred by geneticists which points to the advent of new, northern population elements.
As for your question if I consider Koch as an imbecile, no, I don't. And i can return the question back to you: Do you really think that Koch's critics are imbeciles?
Yes, Akkadian, Sumerian and Egyptian have been deciphered long ago. Minoan remains a problem, most of all because it's an isolate as far as we can tell, and there are no bilinguals. In the case of Harappan it's even controversial if they had a writing system at all. But note that Elamite is no longer considered undeciphered: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elamite_language
What's still controversial is it's relationship to other languages.
Haak et al. wrote that they are not sure if EHG is a mix of WHG and ANE. It's possible, but there are other models which don't consider EHG to be such a mix. What matters is the geographical distribution of WHG, SHG and EHG samples, and the samples of each group cluster together, as demonstrated by PCA and f-stats, so these are valid categories. And even if Swifterbant was 100% SHG (possible, if they didn't mix with WHG neighbours), it still wouldn't be a reasonable explanation for the eastern shift in the Late Neolithic. It would be not eastern enough and too WHG. In my opinion there was some SHG influence in central German Bell Beakers, but the eastern shift is from the Corded people. As for EEF, in the new paper they rather speak of the Early Neolithic farmers, exemplified by LBK_EN, not as an unmixed entity, but as a base line for the following developments. It's a reasonable approach as long as we don't know exactly what earlier farmers in southeastern Europe and the Near East were like.
Clearly it's strange of you to demand that the presence of R1a should have been a falsification criterium for the kurgan theory, as long as there were kurganists who firmly believed that Yamnaya had R1b. And it's even stranger to demand this after these people had been proven right. You claim that Yamnaya R1b was not ancestral to Bell Beaker / Western European R1b. Clearly, their R1b1a2a2 wasn't, but note that they also had R1b1a2a. This may be considered ancestral. Also you don't seem to realize that we've only got 7 yDNAs from Yamnaya, all from roughly the same place. But the geographical extent of this culture was much bigger, and presumably they didn't have everywhere just R1b1a2a2 ad infinitum.
Imo it's not at all a necessity to assume that the PIE rode horses and built kurgans. There is no linguistic evidence that could prove this. And migrations are also possible without horseback riding. Especially if they are proven by ancient DNA.
The Corded people, before they had acquired their 25% Neolithic farmer admixture, were very similar to Yamnaya. More precisely, they must have been also a mix of EHG and an Armenian-like population. The latter apparently spread across the steppe, as a result there arose Yamnaya, and somewhat later, and more to the north, the Corded Ware. That's at least the most plausible scenario I can envision atm.
continued:
In my opinion the West Asian component in Yamnaya is very dissimilar to LBK farmers. Of course both shared basal Eurasian ancestry rooting in West Asia. But the population that mixed with EHG to produce Yamnaya also had a strong relationship with MA-1, otherwise this would have been much more diluted in Yamnaya. To me this is clear sign that this West Asian population originated after the arrival of haplogroup R carriers in West Asia, and that they presumably even carried R1b of some sort. Also note that Yamnaya had >27% of the Gedrosia component. The Karelian EHG had just >8%. Apparently, the EHG mixed with a population that carried a lot of Gedrosia. LBK had 0% btw.
And an origin of LBK in the Balkanic cultures like Starcevo, Körös and Cris is at least the mainstream view. There are obvious similarities in the pottery. An origin in the Northern Caucasus sounds adventurous. And the oldest evidence is in Hungary, far from the Caucasus.
Addendum:
I remember some years ago having come across someone claiming the decipherment of North Picene, and that it is evidently a Greek dialect. That person also presented a detailed word for word analysis and a proposed translation, with a meaning that seemingly was sensible. Now, to my shame my knowledge of old Greek is rudimentary, but I asked a former professor of mine, a specialist for IE linguistics about that translation, and he said that it is clearly bogus and far-fetched. So it all has to be scrutinized thoroughly, even if it looks sensible to the layman, that doesn't mean that it is true.
'Yet, I also acknowledge that kurgan like graves in central Europe partly predated the Corded Ware.'
Between the Caucasus and the Atlantic the Sredny Stog predecessors of Yamnaya were about the only ones that didn't know tumuli. The only sure fact about Kurgans is these were a derived feature.
'middle Neolithic resurgence of WHG ancestry. Swifterbant indubitably was part of this development'
Actually, by then the Swifterbant flag had already passed to the TRB West Group and Atlantic Michelsberg-like cultures. It was continuous to similar cultures in Scandinavia. Funnel Beaker is often wrongly pictured as another descendent of Europe's Early Neolithic, but it wasn't just Middle Neolithic. It expanded as far as western Ukraine and some consider it even continuous to Comb Ware pottery of Finland. Indeed, Karelian EHG may have had strong Funnel Beaker precedents.
'But what makes you so sure that [p-Italic] must have migrated to Crete from Italy and not from the Balkans?'
No, they didn't migrate to Crete. Their presence in the east was explained by the Mycenaean demand for western mercenaries.
'Your claim that Bronze Age Western Europe derives 100% from Bell Beaker may well be true, but is empty, because Bell Beaker wasn't ethnically homogenous.'
This allegation reminds to the issue of Corded Ware, that instead turned out to be genetically quite homogeneous. Marked typological differences with pre-Beaker inhabitants have been described in many studies and boil down to the well known "Beaker Problem". Actually, many specimen represent a whole new (brachycephal) phenotype that can't be derived from existing populations, not even in the Carpatian Basin where the dinaric type it reminds most to didn't even exist (Zsuzsanna K. Zoffmann, 2000). Evolution? Climate? Don't miss the discussion. Genetically, their Y-DNA is typified by R1b1a2a1 (M420), whose current distribution still concurs with the geographical limits of the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Bell Beaker culture. The genome of the I0806 sample from the Bell Beaker culture in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany (2296–2206 BC) is equidistant from current NW European and Iberian populations, what of course means ancestral and not anachronistically admixed as still too often presumed by autistic commenters. Recognition of sound concepts and facts apparently depends on how it suits preconceived ideas.
'Do you really think that Koch's critics are imbeciles?'
In a way they are, because their arguments are not designed to refute the results of Koch on Tartessian, and De Ligt on Eteocretan for that matter. Or rather, it's a certain condition of the mind that is quite common in stubborn people, even scientists. It's like opposing the observed precession of Mercury's perihelion because this feature violates Newton's laws. It requires a real scientist to accept such a challenge, and an Einstein to solve it. Those that refuse this challenge probably aren't plain ibecils per fefinintion, they just qualify as lesser or obstructive scientists. Likewise, Koch's critics argue that his results are impossible because they don't agree with their preconceived ideas, 'according to which Celtic emerged in west-central Europe during the Early Iron Age and spread from there together with the Hallstatt and La Tène meterial cultures' (Koch 2014 on Eska's review). Something similar is argued for Italic languages. Eg. Cunliffe nowadays embraces an Atlantic origin of Celtic that goes back to Bell Beaker. Italic is closely related to Celtic and would thus go back to the same origin.
'that they are not sure if EHG is a mix of WHG and ANE. It's possible, but there are other models which don't consider EHG to be such a mix. [...] not as an unmixed entity, but as a base line for the following developments.'
You can mix a bag of suger with a bag of salt and get the same results no matter you do the mixing in Italy or China, but here the mixed boxes ae imagined to be restricted to Jamaica. It's the same with ANE and WHG components. These aren't even the components considered a problem for a probably Russian origin of Corded Ware: only the 'eastern' Neolithic component is. I'm very intrigued about its ultimate origin, but stil unconvinced this component was decisive of PIE. The Armenian reference for the eastern Neolithic component is far from being resolved as truly 'eastern', given its 'western' typology compared to most other current Near Eastern populations. According to Haber (2015) the Near Eastern element of Armenians is due to their likeness to Lebanese, Jews, Druze and Cypriots, ie. of regions and ethnicities that were traditionally most in contact with Europe. How much WHG and even EEF would be hidden here behind the facade of 'East Neolithic'?
Moreover, what exactly of this component was so indicatived to the origin of all IE? The dominant modern occurrences of Y-DNA and even mtDNA can't be derived from this element. This component dwindled after its first appearance in Europe with Corded Ware, to the extend that we should reconsider the Middle-Neolithic revival subsequent to the arrival of eastern Corded Ware influences, eg. as embodied in Bell Beaker-like groupings. IMO, indicative to continuity and the notion that IE languages in Western Europe may indeed be older than Corded Ware intrusions. This may represent rather a 'backflow', while Yamnaya was derived of northern groups that were themselves closely linked and continuous 'between the Funnel Beaker pottery of Sweden, the Comb Ware pottery of Finland and the Battle Axe pottery in Sweden and Finland' (Bagenhom 1995). Hence IMO Corded Ware may have been ancestral to Balto-Slavic but not to Italo-Celtic, while even Don Ringe had to admit that the status of Germanic could not be resolved in his Kurganist tree. At least in the Netherlands it is impossible to make the distinction between Corded Ware and Bell Beaker, it's just all generic Beaker there. The reason may have been revealed by now with true Corded Ware being actually a more eastern phenomenon.
'as long as there were kurganists who firmly believed that Yamnaya had R1b'
I hope you don't refer to fora and private assertions. Instead, the dominant 'scientific' view since 2001 had always been that of Spencer Wells, and never included R1b - as much the 'official' view still doesn't include Bell Beaker with IE.
'. But the population that mixed with EHG to produce Yamnaya also had a strong relationship with MA-1, otherwise this would have been much more diluted in Yamnaya. To me this is clear sign that [...]'
Maybe, but up to now we don't have much of a clue. Anyway, 50% EHG would still suggest 25% WHG in Yamnaya. Less EHG would suggest more of the WHG component in Yamnaya.
Rokus,
The spread of the Corded Ware culture undoubtedly contributed to the success of the single burials under tumuli-model. Before that spread there was much more variety in burial customs, at least for a while, during the transitional period.
So far we have only ancient autosomal DNA from the TRB North group, more precisely from its Swedish part. As you should know by now these were typical Middle Neolithic farmers, and still closest to modern Sardinians, on the whole. One of them, Gok2, had quite a lot of HG admixture, of the WHG kind, not SHG. Thus he apparently had that from central or western European ancestors. But still, they were close to other Middle Neolithic farmers and much closer to Early Neolithic farmers than to WHG or SHG.
So if farmers from the Swedish TRB admixed into Karelian EHG, this would have contributed a Mediterranenean-like admixture to the EHG. Definitely it would not have contributed anything ANE-like, that would be fantasy. And at least the Karelian EHG analyzed in Haak et al. has no farmer admixture. I'm open to the idea that the TRB people were not exactly the same in all areas, there may have been areas with somewhat more HG admixture and areas with less. I don't believe that any TRB subgroup was close to pure HG. And as I said, the genomes from the Swedish TRB are similar to other Middle Neolithic farmers, from Hungary, Germany and Spain, from all over Europe, that is.
Many people have speculated about more continental, central European turmoils causing the Bronze Age clash and the Sea People storm. It's speculative, but so is the idea that Myceneans recruited mercenaries in Italy.
I know the problem about the Bell Beaker brachycephals. After having seen their genotypes analyzed in Haak et al., and after having done my own analyses, I'm now quite sure that their cranial type is related to the Danish Neolithic brachycephals and the so called Borreby type. Which in turn may be related to the short- and rather high skulled people in parts of northeastern Europe. Indeed, this brachycephalic type is quite typical for many Bell Beaker groups, but not for all. In Bohemia and Poland they were less brachycephalic, and at Tököl in Hungary, in a series of ten crania, not a single one was brachycephalic. In Spain and Portugal they were typically of a tall, longheaded Mediterranean type. In short: There was variety, not homogenity. And anyway, I was speaking of ethnolinguistic heterogenity, and unless you assume Basques and Iberians to be late intruders you also have to agree that the Bell Beaker area was home to several completely unrelated languages, if you believe that some of them spoke Celtic.
What, Bell Beaker I0806 is equidistant to modern Northwest Europeans and Iberians? How so? According to Eurogenes K15 analysis he is closest to modern North Germans, also if we allow a two population mix to approximate him, he is closest to 50% North Germans + 50% North Germans. And I'm speaking of autosomal DNA here.
Of course I agree that Celtic and Italic had a common origin. And the recent paper by Chang et al., which dates their split to shortly after 2000 BC, with the preceding split from Germanic dated to 2200 BC, makes me think that Germanic, Celtic and Italic had their roots in the eastern part of the Bell Beaker area, where there was a Corded Ware substrate. Bell Beaker movements from this area westwards may well have taken earliest branches of Celtoid languages westwards, and thus I see no reason why all Celtic must originate in Hallstatt and Latène.
As for your complaint that, using your allegory, the mixed bag of sugar and salt is restricted to Jamaica, so to say: Again, it's not even certain that the EHG are a mix of WHG and ANE, possibly they are just intermediate on some kind of continuum, without a big admixture event of formerly pure populations. It doesn't matter; what matters is: We know already quite well where WHG lived, where SHG lived and where EHG lived. And we can see how the EHG ancestry arrived in central Europe in the Late Neolithic, how it persisted in the Bronze Age, and how it is distributed in modern Europeans.
In the ADMIXTURE analysis of Haak et al. the Armenians indeed do have quite a bit of the orange EEF component, but what they have in common with the Yamnaya samples is the teal component which is more or less the same as Dienekes' West Asian aka Caucasus_Gedrosia component. It's a highland West Asian component that apparently also includes some ANE ancestry. And which is nowadays strong in the Jews, Druze and Cypriots you mention, but which didn't enter Europe with the EEF. Well, whether that component is the IE marker, I'm not sure either. At the moment I'd even say rather not, for linguistic reasons (relationship of Uralic and PIE).
It's clear that the West Asian mtDNA in central Europe is only one component among others. As it happens, I do have a West Asian type of mtDNA, but I know well that it's not the most common haplogroup (K2b).
And as regards yDNA, I'm not sure about the origin of R1b1a, possibly it might be West Asian, or maybe not.
However, autosomally, the West Asian teal component is the one that ties all IE populations together: All IEs have it in non-negligible amounts, and the non-IE Basques and the merely Romanized Sardinians have the lowest percentages of it. Whereas the blue HG component is notably weak in IE Armenians. But this doesn't really prove that the PIE were a predominantly teal population either.
The eastern Bell Beaker people, at least those we've got genomes from, were predominantly of Corded Ware descent. I wouldn't even rule out that R1b1a2a1 was from the Corded Ware.
These theories about a northern origin of PIE are quite obsolete now. I know the one by Carl-Heinz Boettcher. According to him, northern HG (SHG as we call them now) assimilated the intrusive Near Eastern EEF and thus the TRB came into being, as one of the earliest (partly he also called it THE earliest) IE culture(s). He was self-contradictory about the origin of Yamnaya. On the one hand, he wanted to derive it from the TRB, which is quite a fanciful theory, on the other hand he stressed the common roots of the Dnepr Donets EHG with the northern SHG.
But as ancient DNA evidence has shown: The TRB wasn't the strongly SHG admixed culture Boettcher believed it to be. It was still predominantly EEF and nothing like modern Scandinavians. The real change that made people all of a sudden close to modern northern/central/western Europeans was the arrival of the Corded Ware. The Corded people themselves were still unlike all modern Europeans, they didn't even resemble Balts and Slavs, but after mixing with the locals, that is, after the eastern Bell Beaker people came into being, we basically have modern northern/central/western Europeans. The decisive factor was the advent of the Corded people, not the flimsy comeback of WHG during the Middle Neolithic, which by far wasn't sufficient.
As for R1b in Yamnaya, yes I was referring to hobbyist kurganists and genetic genealogists, not to academic kurganists. Doesn't matter imho, these hobbyists were just as ardent kurganists as any other.
And as for your suggestion of a Caucasus origin of the LBK, I would also remind you of the PCA in Haak et al.: The LBK (LBKT_EN, Stuttgart, LBK_EN, one of the HungaryGamba_EN) is much closer to the Starcevo_EN sample than to modern Caucasus populations.
And regarding the theory of an early spread of IE with Mesolithic HG, there is the problem that the reconstructed PIE vocabulary includes items belonging to a Chalcolithic level of culture. That these words spread across a very wide area at a later date seems still somewhat possible at least, but not that they were incorporated into the various IE languages with the same sound changes as if they had been old cognates instead of recent loans. Hence a first IE spread in the Chalcolithic is much more credible.
It's by the way interesting to note that there are two bilingual inscriptions in Eteocretan and Greek. They are from Dreros, and luckily they even have marks for word division!
One of the fragments says in Eteocretan:
--.rmaw|et|isalabre|̣komn
--.d|men|inai|isaluria|lmo (vac)
The Greek text goes:
--..tonturonmēa.oaoiewad
eturo...ṃuna.oa.enẹ̄--
--matritaia--
Van Effenterre has pointed out the similarity of isalabre and isaluria and that they seem to be two forms of the same root; he suggested they might even be two cases of the same noun. There is a corresponding repetition in the Greek text: τυρὸν (line 3) and τυρο- (line 4) "cheese". The element isal- is reminiscent of a non-IE pre-Greek element found in the word attested in the various Greek dialects as: ἰξάλη, ἰξαλῆ, ἰζάλη, ἰζάνη, ἰσάλη, ἰσσέλα, ἰτέλα, ἰσθλῆ, ἰσσέλη = "goatskin", being a specialized use of the feminine of the adjective ἴξαλος etc. The latter was used as an epithet of the ibex; its meaning is obscure, ancient authorities variously explaining it as "perfect, accomplished", "bounding, leaping" or "castrated". All we can say is that these are words of non-Greek origin with "goatish" meanings. It is, tempting, therefore to see the Eteocretan isalabre and isaluria as words for "goat's cheese".
If the identification of isalabre and isaluria with the Greek τυρὸν and τυρο is correct, then, as Van Effenterre also suggested, et may well be the definite article, et isalabre corresponding to the Greek τὸν τυρὸν "the cheese". This is not implausible as dental plosives are commonly used in forming demonstratives in many different, unrelated languages, e.g. Finnish tuo "that", tämä "this"; Malay itu "that"; Tamil itu [ɪðu] "this", atu [aðu] "that".
If all these suggestions are, indeed, correct, then inai may well, as Van Effenterre, also suggested, correspond to the Greek ἔϝαδε "it was decided". Certainly we would surely expect a correspondence in the Eteocretan text of this verb which is so typical of the Greek texts from the Delphinion. Interestingly, in one of the Praisos inscriptions we have phraisoi inai, and it has been suggested that this means "it pleased the Praisians" (ἔϜαδε Πραισίοις).
Needless to say that all of this has nothing to do with Italic.
@ Simon W
"Needless to say that all of this has nothing to do with Italic".
1) de Ligt didn't say that all the Cretan inscriptions were linked with Italic, but only that that he examined, and that his interpretation is wrong should be demonstrated about that and not about others.
2) That the inscription examined by Simon W is not IE, or that at least are not IE these two words (isalabre, isaluria) isn't discounted. If the interpretation given by Van Effeterre may be shared, i.e. that they have something to do with the word for "goat", we may think that at the origin is the IE *h(a)eigys (Mallory&Adams, 2006, p 141). Of course the different forms of these words in Greek presuppose a foreign origin, but they may derive from some Anatolian languages linked to Lydian or similar. The root *h(a)eigys could have had a development from the primitive form before the thematic conjugation. Difficult to separate this form from the other: *h(a)egyòs. The laryngeal *h(a) seems not having a witness both in Albanian and Anatolian.
From a linguistic point of view see Greek Odusseùs, Latin Ulixes, Etruscan Utusthe/Uthuste/Uthuze/Utuze/.
Post a Comment