Halstatt R U106?

[whoknows]

Anyone have any authoritative information regarding the presence of R U106 in Austria, had read that some suggest the Haplogroup may have sprung from that region, as part of a Halstatt expansion, including traveling up the Rhine to establish itself in present day Netherlands and Northern Germany? Is that a credible scenario, when viewed against the view that the Haplogroup's occurrence in Western Europe is due to later Germanic invasion and settlements?

[alan trowel hands.]

Anyone have any authoritative information regarding the presence of R U106 in Austria, had read that some suggest the Haplogroup may have sprung from that region, as part of a Halstatt expansion, including traveling up the Rhine to establish itself in present day Netherlands and Northern Germany? Is that a credible scenario, when viewed against the view that the Haplogroup's occurrence in Western Europe is due to later Germanic invasion and settlements?

There are common misconceptions that the origin of Hallstatt (Hallstatt C) and La Tene are in the locations where the sites which gave the names to these cultures are located.  In fact Hallstatt in Austria was on the extreme eastern periphery of the western Hallstatt culture.  Only the western part of Hallstatt C culture is usually thought to relate to the Celts and Austria was on the borderline between this and the eastern Hallstatt C area which tends to be more associated with Illyrians etc.  Hallstatt D seems to have originated as a 'culture' (although I think this is the wrong term - really just a collection of rich graves) in the west Alpine area which was on the trade route to NW Italy (the source of their wealth and influences), well away from Austria.  The place called  La Tene (in Switzerland) is well south of the origin point of the La Tene culture, effectively on the southern periphery of the culture north of the Alps.  Often archaeological cultures are named after the 1st site where cultures were identified rather than the real point of origin and this makes them often turn out to be inappropriate names.

I think people get the wrong idea about these two cultures anyway.  There is a tendency to call something a 'culture' if a phase of rich burials (often based on a good position on trade networks) is found in an area and metalwork influences spread from these areas tp less well placed areas due to both those trade networks and the inherent wish to emulate the rich and prestigious chiefdoms.  That is not to say there were no movements of people but there is little evidence of anything on a major scale.       

[Richard Rocca]

No solid evidence, but this is my educated guess: since an Urnfield sample is predicted to have been U106 based on its DYS390=24 value, I would assume that U106 was also part of the Hallstatt Culture.

[Jean M]

No solid evidence, but this is my educated guess: since an Urnfield sample is predicted to have been U106 based on its DYS390=24 value...

I was told that prediction was unsafe and therefore I do not include it in my table of aDNA. It's not impossible of course, but I wouldn't build too much on it as things are.

[Jean M]

Anyone have any authoritative information regarding the presence of R U106 in Austria...

Austria is included in the Myres 2010 data. I was looking at it just recently for the Swiss data, which is revealing because of the language divisions.

Austria  0.222
NE Switzerland (German-speaking) 0.188
NW Switzerland (French-speaking) 0.037

There is a similar language difference in French/Flemish data for Flanders.

[Richard Rocca]

No solid evidence, but this is my educated guess: since an Urnfield sample is predicted to have been U106 based on its DYS390=24 value...

I was told that prediction was unsafe and therefore I do not include it in my table of aDNA. It's not impossible of course, but I wouldn't build too much on it as things are.

For your awesome aDNA pages, you are right to keep it at the R1b level.

[Jean M]

The distribution of U106 coincides with the spread of Germani, not La Tene/Gaulish Celts (despite the confusing degree of overlap, which we have to expect as the result of Germani overrunning large stretches of former Celtic territory in the Iron Age and post-Roman period). There is none in Anatolia, whereas we see a patch of U152 in Central Anatolia, where Gauls settled. We have U106 all over Scandinavia and the Baltic, etc.

Of course the supposed connection with Germani can only be a provisional conclusion, as are all others from modern distribution alone, and I wouldn't care to guess where exactly U106 first cropped up or what its route was prior to the Iron Age. For all we know it could have been absorbed into Jastorf from Celtic-speakers and then spread both north into Scandinavia and in other directions with Germanni. We have to bear in mind in any case that there would have been little or no cultural/linguistic differences among the speakers of IE when they first started to spread west/north into Europe. Proto-Germanic was a much, much later development.

[alan trowel hands.]

The distribution of U106 coincides with the spread of Germanni, not La Tene/Gaulish Celts (despite the confusing degree of overlap). There is none in Anatolia, whereas we see a patch of U152 in Central Anatolia, where Gauls settled. We have U106 all over Scandinavia and the Baltic, etc.

Of course the supposed connection with Germanni can only be a provisional conclusion, as are all others from modern distribution alone, and I wouldn't care to guess where exactly U106 first cropped up or what its route was prior to the Iron Age. For all we know it could have been absorbed into Jastorf from Celtic-speakers and then spread both north into Scandinavia and in other directions with Germanni. We have to bear in mind in any case that there would have been little or no cultural/linguistic differences among the speakers of IE when they first started to spread west/north into Europe. Proto-Germanic was a much, much later development.

I totally agree. There is a big wish to back project cultural or linguistic divisions deep in time and also to ignore that each group may have gone through several phases of changes of language and culture.  My current feelings on U106 are based on the eureka moment that west of Poland U106 is rather young, the normal variance calculations would place it in the late Bronze Age except in eastern Europe where it seems a lot older and presumably as old as U106 itself.  That sort of model suggests to me that U106 was on the Baltic coast and became part of the blend of cultures in the Germanic ethnogenesis.  I suppose that would point to U106 being within the Pomeranian culture and its Lusatian predecessor.  It seems that Pomeranian had a lot of intereraction with the Nordic world and Lusation was even to some extent considered as part of the Nordic Bronze Age and it also as been linked to the House Urn culture in central Germany. 

[Jean M]

@ Alan

That would fit Anthony's supposition that the pre-Proto-Germanic speakers left the steppe from Usatovo via the Dniester River. I'm not against the idea. I've gone along with it for U106 in fact on my speculative map of R1b spread. But I'm not 100% sold. Proto-Germanic is a complex thing and doesn't just involve U106. U106 up the Dniester could be part of the story though.