Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog

This is not rich-farmer versus poor-farmer. Thi...

2012-05-31T14:15:31.266+03:00
This is not rich-farmer versus poor-farmer. This is born-a-farmer (high Sr) versus not-born-a-farmer (low Sr).

Annie, I largely agree.

I'd say annie mouse just cleared the bases.

2012-05-31T12:54:01.017+03:00
I'd say annie mouse just cleared the bases.

If you look at Germany, it is exactly what you wou...

2012-05-31T12:17:19.146+03:00
If you look at Germany, it is exactly what you would expect from it's location and diffusion, and you can actually clearly see all of this when you travel it. Many far northern Germans look like Danes and Swedes, NW Germans like the adjacent Dutch (they even speak a mutually intelligible language). There is a hole with Belgium (boarder Germans look nothing like them - as also evident here), but of course continuation in the Alsace region and then in the general Alemann areas, and further into Austria.

The overlap then continues along the Danube corridor with Czech and Hungarian, and further north with Poland - which was mostly Germanic until Slavic expansion ~1,500 years ago.

Of further interest are the "cis-alpine" French in Italy, and the likely Etruscan Swiss. I am not at all surprised by the Latvian placement.

eurologist "When agriculture reached the very...

2012-05-31T06:53:41.508+03:00
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).

"Not along the then dry Euphrates; the very u...

2012-05-31T03:26:36.228+03:00
"Not along the then dry Euphrates; the very upper reaches of the Tigris is a (small) possibility - but it is tiny and extremely isolated compared to the Southern Caspian Basin and periodic climatic expansions along the Aras river. See, e.g.,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01788.x/pdf"

Great link . I've had time to read it today. It seems that the largest refugium was in what the authors call 'Colchis', the Southeastern Caucasus and a little way along the southern shore of the Black Sea. A couple of quotes from the article:

"The results of the present study suggest that, during the LGM, climates suitable for forest vegetation existed in six regions of western Asia: Colchis, western Anatolia, western Taurus, the upper reaches of the Tigris River, Levant and the southern Caspian basin."

So six regions of possible human survival.

"Our study suggests that, in all potential refugia, shown in Figure 4B, suitable climates existed during the LGM for temperate forest species, and this pattern provides a plausible explanation for their current distributions."

Temperate forest should provide adequate protection for humans, and that is during the LGM. Before then the climate would be even more moderate. Finally:

"Throughout the Caucasus and western Asia, a large refugium with a suitable climate was concentrated along the southern and eastern Black Sea coast (Colchis), and smaller refugia occurred in ... [the other regions mentioned above]"

Colchis looks like the most desirable location for humans during the LGM. Perhaps G originated there? Or IJ?

The map in the supplementary material is similar t...

2012-05-30T22:58:04.706+03:00
The map in the supplementary material is similar to one I saw a few years ago. All Europe countries seem to map correctly, except for:

1. Slovakia - near Cyprus
2. Latvia - far to the North East, where Northern Russia should be.

The paper pretty much confirms with a few more dat...

2012-05-30T15:02:52.044+03:00
The paper pretty much confirms with a few more data points what has been accumulated over the past decade. A couple of things one should be careful about:

- Analysis of settlement timings indicate that often, new settlements were founded at a significant (10-20km or more) distance to their progenitors - yet still always on Loess soils as long as they were practically available. This could indicate that (i) second and younger sons often intentionally created new settlements, and (ii) allowed room for the former ones, and those prior, to grow. A rather smart strategy.

- There could be many reasons for early farmers to adopt a settlement on slightly less-than-ideal soils. Among them are: climate, view, access to transportation and communication routes and/or females, or a HG married in trying to stay close (emulating a matrilocal subset). My intuition is that other than mere chance, only the latter would yield a no-adze burial - out of respect for elders.

- This is additional support that LBK men picked up girls wherever/ whenever they could find them. Clearly, many of them were local native HGs.

That was always a bunch of wishful thinking, the original inhabitants of europe were really a group of warriors.

Beastmanager, there is absolutely nothing in the archaeological context to support your statement.

This is a neolithic farming community. High stron...

2012-05-30T13:42:22.053+03:00
This is a neolithic farming community.

High strontium occurs if you grew up on a diet grown on loess.

Adzes were farmers tools. Hunter gatherers used axes in general.

Is it so surprising that a farmer's son grows up to be a farmer, has high strontium and is buried with his favourite adze?

A rich fishermans son would have a lot of iodine and likely grow up to be a fisherman buried with his favourite rod.

A rich hunter would be low in strontium and buried with a bow maybe.

A rich trader might be buried with his harness.

The real question here is why in a farming community were they not ALL high in Strontium? You simply did not have rich farmer A on loess living next to poor farmers B, C and D on some other soil. These deposits were enormous, the entire settlement would have sat upon it. And probably the surrounding settlements. Check out this map of loess in Europe.
http://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=15536

Clearly a lot of folk in the community ate other things as children. Did they convert to farming? Or was this a mixed community based on farming? I favour the latter explanation.

Yep looks like the farmers were patrilocal and married women who were not born into farming families. Probably because that was true for most of the available women (other than their sisters).

This is not rich-farmer versus poor-farmer. This is born-a-farmer (high Sr) versus not-born-a-farmer (low Sr).

Wow, the Swiss Germans almost completely overlap w...

2012-05-30T07:37:35.700+03:00
Wow, the Swiss Germans almost completely overlap with the Germans.

"Firstly, such expansions and contractions ca...

2012-05-30T06:38:14.354+03:00
"Firstly, such expansions and contractions can be, and in extremely diverse regions likely are, at first very limited, geographically".

And therefore not moving a haplogroup far from its origin.

"Secondly, we know many examples of haplogroups for which all but one or two lines, and often even the progenitor, were eliminated"

Very many. Most haplogroups have a string of mutations from their 'origin' haplogroup to their diversification. But such a string of mutations is far more likely to develop in a population confined to a single region rather than in one migrating any substantial distance.

"it appears rather common (e.g., no IJK nor IJ found to date; there are few basal I and J lineages, K is predominantly Australia/ Oceania; IJ is North-Central Europe/ Southwest Asia, respectively".

The sequential development of the IJK haplogroups greatly supports the origin of the haplogroup in pretty much the region postulated here for G's origin. IJ was the earliest haplogroup that formed from IJK. Even though no IJK or IJ has been found in the region both I and J are basically found only nearby: I in North-Central Europe and J in Southwest Asia. Presumably IJ and, before that, IJK developed somewhere between Central Europe and Southwest Asia.

"--- with pretty much nothing in between"

I have trouble accepting that claim. For a start the next IJK haplogroup in the sequence was LT. This haplogroup looks very likely to have developed somewhere in South Asia, quite possibly in the northwest (Indus?). K1 is also an India haplogroup, although rare. Those haplogroups fill in the gap between South Asia and SE Asia/Melanesia quite nicely. In fact the most parsimonious conclusion is that the sequence of IJK's breakup very much supports a west to east movement through South Asia from SW Asia to SE Asia.

"Autosomal? Yes. Not for y-DNA".

Most geneticists accept that each individual gene has its own evolutionary history. The individual genes move through populations, often grouped together of course. In this context haploid genes would obey the same rules, therefore any distinction between autosomal and haploid genes is artificial. Individual haploid genes would be drifted out in the same way as individual autosomal genes would be.

"Not along the then dry Euphrates; the very upper reaches of the Tigris is a (small) possibility - but it is tiny and extremely isolated compared to the Southern Caspian Basin and periodic climatic expansions along the Aras river"

Thanks for the link. Very interesting. I'm certainly prepared to accept the Aras as the region of origin for G, and perhaps IJK and F3 as well. But the region is not 'South Asia'.

I don't think that the authors gave sufficient...

2012-05-30T02:32:08.057+03:00
I don't think that the authors gave sufficient weight to an alternative hypothesis, that a growing LBK agriculturalist child's diet may have had heavy contributions from foraging. The authors (and the Science reviewer) note that the Strontium isotope ratios in the environment of Europe are highly variable over a distance of mere kilometers, but that the variation tends to be greatly diminished in the humans (because of agricultural input averaging, especially when the consumption of milk and meat is high ... farm animals are essentially "strontium averaging machines"!).

Even the contemporary small agricultural communities of Europe (especially Europe's North and East) heavily rely on supplemental foraging (berries, nuts, and edible mushrooms from the woods and the bogs, as well as wild greens). Foraging has traditionally been the girls' activity, and the dependence on wild edibles have always been the strongest in "lean years". Wild edible plants and fungi come from a variety of habitats but obviously not from the choice agricultural soils, so they would exhibit higher, and more variable, strontium isotope ratios. These isotope patterns would in turn show up in humans, especially in female gatherers but also in males who happened to grow up during crop-failure spells (and may have grown stunted, ending up without spare adzes?).

So strictly speaking, one doesn't have to postulate heritable land ownership, female exogamy, or even strong social stratification, to explain the correlation between Sr isotope ratios and sex / societal status reported in the paper.

Thanks to disciplines like archaeology, we are lea...

2012-05-30T01:45:19.618+03:00
Thanks to disciplines like archaeology, we are learning a lot of useful information about how our ancestors lived. We humans of the modern world have lost our moral compass, so we need the information gathered from the physical remains of our ancestors more than ever. They can be our guide in how to live and organize as societies and can rescue us from this corrupt age of decadence by returning us to a form of society that is more compatible with our nature as a species.

The find tells us more about patrilocality than it...

2012-05-29T23:58:22.349+03:00
The find tells us more about patrilocality than it does about inheritance. The case that women were disproportionately imported while the men were more often local is a strong argument for patrilocality in the early Neolithic.

But, the fact that high status men are buried in the community where they grew up just establishes that someone from that community ended up having the primary benefit the land and livestock of their predecessor in that post. It can't distinguish, however, for example, between a system where land and livestock pass from father to son, and a system in which the ownership of the land and livestock is vested in the community in which the village chief is the primary beneficiary and the chief is chosen by some means other than hereditary succession (e.g. trial by contest, non-hereditary selection of a successor by the current chief, election by the community, or election by a ruling council of elders).

This conclusion is pretty trival once you establish that there is a patrilocal society. If the men aren't going anywhere, and the land isn't going anywhere, then voila, some man who grew up in the area is going to be in the family of the people who run the show, no matter what rule or lack of rule is used to get from one generation to the next.

Patrilocality, per se, also doesn't tell you heaps about the status of women within that society, although matriarchal societies tend not to be patrilocal.

Also, inequality between communities because some communities have better farmland than other communities, in a society where the largest strong political unit was probably not any bigger than a little village, doesn't say much about intracommunity inequality imposed by social distinction as about to mere de facto differences in prosperity arising from "natural" differences in economic productivity.

That was always a bunch of wishful thinking, the o...

2012-05-29T23:02:26.863+03:00
That was always a bunch of wishful thinking, the original inhabitants of europe were really a group of warriors

Consistent with Paul Friedrich's classical ana...

2012-05-29T22:04:01.446+03:00
Consistent with Paul Friedrich's classical analysis of Proto-Indo-European kinship as patrilineal and patrilocal. However, he reconstructed this kinship system having nomadic pastoralists in mind, as those tend to be almost universally patrilineal and patrilocal.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3772899?uid=3739728&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=47699046384597

At the same time, cross-culturally (see the works of William Divale) agricultural populations migrating into previously occupied territories tend to be matrilocal, rather than patrilocal. This is true of Austronesian-speaking Melanesians as well as Bantu speakers and possibly the Iroquois. This is because migration involves warfare with native populations and the migrant society protects itself by shifting to matrilocal residence. Once the migrant population is well-established in the region, it can shift (back) to patrilocality.

If early neolithic farmers were patrilocal, this means that either external warfare was minimal or that by LBK times the farmers had already firmly established themselves in Europe.

However you are actually suggesting that they w...

2012-05-29T13:35:27.144+03:00
However you are actually suggesting that they would make it impossible to place any haplogroup's origin anywhere. It would then become possible to postulate any region of origin for almost any haplogroup. Besides which any such periodic expansions and contractions would almost certainly leave several discontinuous distributions, as the contractions would be unlikely to eliminate all the population in all regions except one. In other words if G, or one of its post-F ancestors, had lived anywhere other than in the Armenian Highlands (or nearby) we would expect to Find remnant populations containing descendants of such haplogroups.

No, Terry. Firstly, such expansions and contractions can be, and in extremely diverse regions likely are, at first very limited, geographically. Secondly, we know many examples of haplogroups for which all but one or two lines, and often even the progenitor, were eliminated - it appears rather common (e.g., no IJK nor IJ found to date; there are few basal I and J lineages, K is predominantly Australia/ Oceania; IJ is North-Central Europe/ Southwest Asia, respectively --- with pretty much nothing in between).

A long period of drift acting on a relatively small, isolated population is a much more likely explanation.

Autosomal? Yes. Not for y-DNA.

The population could just as easily have weathered the fluctuations along the Tigris or Euphrates as well.

Not along the then dry Euphrates; the very upper reaches of the Tigris is a (small) possibility - but it is tiny and extremely isolated compared to the Southern Caspian Basin and periodic climatic expansions along the Aras river. See, e.g.,

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01788.x/pdf

"much more likely some F* very early on did t...

2012-05-28T05:43:22.153+03:00
"much more likely some F* very early on did this at an opportune time, but had changing fortunes that may have led to such expansions and contractions on the way, and close to the eventual home".

Periodic expansions and contractions almost certainly have occurred. However you are actually suggesting that they would make it impossible to place any haplogroup's origin anywhere. It would then become possible to postulate any region of origin for almost any haplogroup. Besides which any such periodic expansions and contractions would almost certainly leave several discontinuous distributions, as the contractions would be unlikely to eliminate all the population in all regions except one. In other words if G, or one of its post-F ancestors, had lived anywhere other than in the Armenian Highlands (or nearby) we would expect to Find remnant populations containing descendants of such haplogroups.

"Y-DNA needs occasionally large population numbers for so many mutations to occur as G shows, versus F*. IMO this happened before LGM"

I'd agree that such mutations must have happened before the LGM, but it is not true that Y-DNA needs a large population for so many mutations to have occurred in the line. A long period of drift acting on a relatively small, isolated population is a much more likely explanation. In a large population a diverse array of haplogroups is likely to arise, not a single haplogroup with multiple mutations.

"and since I don't believe current age estimates are better than a factor 2 or 3 off target, way before LGM (also look at C4 and K* in Australia - likely >50, 000 years old, for comparison)".

Age estimates are of no consequence here. We're simply looking at phylogeny. I agree that C4 in Australia must be at least 50,000 years old but I'd be less certain that K* is necessarily as old as that. To me it looks like a later arrival (perhaps not much later) in Australia and New Guinea.

"There clearly were sufficient climatic fluctuations between 50,000 ya and LGM to cause this in the general region between Armenia/NW Iran and Pakistan. Maybe the population weathered LGM along the middle/lower Aras river".

The population could just as easily have weathered the fluctuations along the Tigris or Euphrates as well.

"The implication is that the advanced music a...

2012-05-28T05:12:18.964+03:00
"The implication is that the advanced music and art of the Aurignacian did not accompany modern humans as they made their first steps into Europe, but rather developed there."

First of all, what the hell do archaeologists know about the music of the Aurignacian or any other period of deep history? Because they found an old flute? Please!

Second of all, why do anthropologists in general tend to ignore the work of people who might actually know something about music because they have actually studied it?

My own research points very clearly to a musical tradition very advanced indeed, that in all likelihood was practiced by our MRCA in Africa possibly as early as 100,000 years ago or more. I don't need a fossil flute to make such inferences, they are based on a thoroughgoing study of age-old musical distribution patterns worldwide.

But what do I know? I'm merely an ethnomusicologist.

For more on my research, I'll refer you to the following sources:

http://doktorgee.worldzonepro.com/BlogFiles/wom_2006_21--%20pp%201-134%20only.pdf

http://doktorgee.worldzonepro.com/BlogFiles/NewPerspectives2007_2_41.pdf

http://soundingthedepths.blogspot.com/2011/02/chapter-one-pygmy-bushmen-nexus.html

My main hope for the future is that militant at...

2012-05-27T12:56:29.944+03:00
My main hope for the future is that militant atheism never joins the circus.

It already has, in the past. Communist East Germany is one such example. Ask Germany's new president about his experience...

But I agree, non-secularism and absence of religious freedom have been at the core of humanity's problems for millennia. Unfortunately, to this day, religion is too easily and too frequently used by the most contradicted powerful people as a political tool. No - you were not born that religion - your ideas are at your liberty, no one can guess or foresee or control them.

Terry, I understand your hypothesis of a northern...

2012-05-27T12:28:09.996+03:00
Terry,

I understand your hypothesis of a northern migration route, but don't think it is viable.

At any rate, you need to distinguish between autosomal and non-autosomal drift. The former happens easily in small groups, the latter requires large groups and famine/contractions and/or migration. It's not that G magically appeared in NW India or Pakistan and then migrated west; much more likely some F* very early on did this at an opportune time, but had changing fortunes that may have led to such expansions and contractions on the way, and close to the eventual home. Y-DNA needs occasionally large population numbers for so many mutations to occur as G shows, versus F*. IMO this happened before LGM, and since I don't believe current age estimates are better than a factor 2 or 3 off target, way before LGM (also look at C4 and K* in Australia - likely >50, 000 years old, for comparison).

There clearly were sufficient climatic fluctuations between 50,000 ya and LGM to cause this in the general region between Armenia/NW Iran and Pakistan. Maybe the population weathered LGM along the middle/lower Aras river.

"Pakistan is 100% par to India" I'...

2012-05-27T03:10:13.590+03:00
"Pakistan is 100% par to India"

I'd be very surprised if the population of South Asia forms anything other than a cline, basically from north to south. Near the borders the people will be part of a cline stretching beyond those borders. Because pakistan is in the northwest I'd expect it to have commonality with countries further northwest.

"the partition was done be outsiders, the killing of upto 1million people during the parition has never ever been fully acknowledged".

From an outsider's perspective it is my understanding that the partition was a product of internal politics. The killing of up to a million people during the partition is fully acknowledged by most and is the explanation usually given as the main reason for the partition. I agree that the killing continued after partition though.

"Forced conversion are part and parcel of a man made religous system of which is a core feature of Christianity and Islam".

I'd hesitate to claim that Hindus are blameless in the religious divisions in South Asia. Religion in general is the problem, not specific religions. My main hope for the future is that militant atheism never joins the circus.

"One reason could be that the hunting methods...

2012-05-27T02:58:59.123+03:00
"One reason could be that the hunting methods of modern humans were sufficiently different from Neanderthals, such that some of the prey initially was an easy target, and these first bands 'picked the low-hanging fruit.' Once the prey adapted their instincts, humans had to resort to more sophisticated methods".

An interesting idea, and I like the expression, 'picked the low-hanging fruit'. It certainly seems to be the case with the Polynesian expansion through the Pacific, including New Zealand where seal colonies and the flightless moa rapidly became extinct.

"I just think one needs to distinguish betwee...

2012-05-27T02:47:42.161+03:00
"I just think one needs to distinguish between where G originated, and where it first expanded".

True, but they could quite often be the same place. Any expansion may simply have been delayed by unfavourable environmental conditions.

"Neither the Iranian plateau nor the Armenian Highlands were great places to live during LGM (due to dryness and low temperatures), and G itself is obviously yet older".

Perhaps also true, but we can tell from the very delayed expansion from time of origin that G was confined to a small region where it underwent considrable drift. Such a level of drift is extremely unlikely to have occurred as members of the haplogroup moved around. Drift occurrs (quite possibly 'only occurrs') in a single, small, geographically isolated population. Therefore G is unlikely to have originated in Pakistan inspite of F being 'clearly from the subcontinent'. G doesn't look to have left any early descendants there, a situation unlikely to occurr if that region had been a great place to live during LGM.

"so it is not far-fetched to believe that one branch of it migrated via Pakistan and Iran to the Armenian Highlands. But not during LGM - much more likely before then".

To me the evidence to fit much better that G was left behind in Iran or the armenian Highlands when the remainder of F migrated to Pakistan, especially when we consider that F3 is not South Asian either.

Sorry, N1B with 16176-G is not Jewish, however 161...

2012-05-27T02:42:56.738+03:00
Sorry, N1B with 16176-G is not Jewish, however 16176-A is Jewish.

Interesting that the emergence of human symbolism,...

2012-05-26T18:20:44.411+03:00
Interesting that the emergence of human symbolism, art and technology has been traced back to Germany 40,000 years ago as Germany remains a core artistic and technological area. We cant a priori exclude that Germans have some descent from Geißenklösterle; indeed they must have some Geißenklösterle ancestry if the genes that dispose us to human behaviour originated there. It may even be that the descendents of the Geißenklösterle area preserved knowledge of their geographical origins and found their way back to Germany after the last glacial maximum. Germanic mythology talks about the advance of the "ice giants" from the north and about how Odin drove them back; and about how the "magic cow" suddenly appeared, which would seem to allude to the introduction of cattle during the neolythic. So it may be that the descendents of Geißenklösterle preserved an ethnic knowledge of geography and of climatic and cultural transitions over many thousands of years. Perhaps they had a aesthetic disposition that disposed them to contentment in the Swabian region where human aesthetic genes developed. They were better disposed to survive back in the old region. It raises the question of how genes have disposed us to aesthetic contentment in different regions: have desert tribes acquired variations of the genes that dispose them to aesthetic contentment in the desert through natural selection and adaptation? Do I find aesthetic contentment in the English countryside because it resembles the Bavarian region where aesthetic genes emerged? How adaptable are aesthetic dispositions? Do desert tribes find more contentment in bland concrete cities than the descendents of Geißenklösterle? I dont know how much we really understand about these questions but they would seem to be related to questions of human happiness and adaptation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Swabian_Alb-Typical-landscape.jpg