beaker people

[alan trowel hands.]

I know the beaker hypothesis is a popular one for L21 and indeed R1b1b2 in general, This is presumably because it is the nearest international archaeological cultural spread to the sort of period suggested by the variance date experts like Anatole, Ken Nnrvedt, Tim Jansen, Vince Vizachero etc which seem to mainly fall into the 3000-1500BC range which has a large overlap with the beaker period which ran from about 2800BC-1800BC (roughly speaking).  So, the temptation to link the hard archaeological dates with the variance calculated DNA dates  is obvious.  Sometimes this has been linked to a third  discipline, linguistics, which has also often pointed to the spread of Indo-European in the same period westwards from somewhere around the Black Sea area/  This and early interpretations of beaker radiocarbon dates led to the notion that beaker culture was derived from the extreme west end of the corded ware culture which stretched from south Russia/Ukraine (favoured by many as the Indo-European homeland) to the Rhine area. A variant on the idea has been proposed by Anthony in his recent book. 
 
However, people should be aware that the trend of the last decade has been to swing back towards an Iberian (or perhaps south French/ west Med.) origin for beaker culture.  This is based on a careful reassessment of radiocarbon dates, whereby all dates taken from charcoal samples are disregarded or treated with suspicion on the basis that charcoal/burnt wood can easily come from the heartwood of a tree that was already centuries old when it was burned.  Hence you can get 'old wood effect' which makes the radiocarbon dates come out too old, essentially dating the birth of the tree whose wood was burnt, not the time it was burned.  With the many dates based on charcoal disregarded or at least to be treated as potentially out (too old) by a few centuries the 'gold standard'; dates were turned to i.e. those based on items like bones, seeds, hazelnuts, recognisable intact pieces of young wood etc.
 
Anyway enough of the science lesson. This process has been carried out for beakers (see http://www.jungsteinsite.uni-kiel.de/2000_mueller/14c_raum.htm.  The attachment seems to have only part translated into English but at least the part that has been is the Figures.  If you want a full translation I suggest you google the article then select translate.   Anyway, figure 2 shows the old situation based on a non-discerning use of all radiocarbon dates.  Those results meant that the jury was out and there appeared to be two beaker origin candidates in Iberia/southern France on the one hand and the Low Countries on the other. 
 
Figure 3 shows what happens if you only look at the most reliable radiocarbon dates: the loss of the Low Countries early dates and with it the fall of the possibility that Beaker is an offshoot of corded ware culture of NE Europe.   However, being this fussy with the radiocarbon dating samples while justified does mean that the map is based on a ridiculously small amount of dates and individual sites dated by a single date etc so there is clearly a downside which will remain unless a significant amount of money is spent on new top notch dating. 
 
Figure 4 tries to overcome this using a clever statistical method whereby sites with multiple dates from less perfect (i.e. charcoal) samples are averaged in some way looking for overlap to find the true dates for each particular site.  While this has some problems, it has been shown to work faitly well and it does help remove the problem of using the tiny amount of dates that were used to build figure 3.  The results can be seen on figure 4.  Although they differ in detail, there is a common thread between maps 2 (the old style map) and map 4 that supports the latter.  They both indicate east-central Europe and the west Med. as important and early areas although this has tended to be simplified and tabloid spun as supporting an Iberian or SW European origin.  Map 4 also gives a strong hint of a route up the Rhone heading towards northern France and the Rhine but not having reached them 'as yet'.  As for the isles, there is still no denying that Irish and British beakers where they are of international rather than local style  have most in common with the Rhine and have names like Wessex-Middle Rhine. North British-Middle Rhine, North British-North Rhine etc.  So, the immediate connections of the isles seem to be with each other and with the Rhine groups. 
 
 While this re-examination of the radiocarbon dates has tended to be spun as a SW origin, all I would agree with is that it appears to eliminate the Low Countries origin, the corded ware link in the origins of beaker and a more northerly east-west route of beakers into western Europe.  What it does not eliminate as far as I am concerned looking at map 4 is the possibility of an east-central European origin (or futher east in the unmapped area) followed by a seaborne spread to Italy, nearby islands, southern France and with a bifurcation  in southern France with some continuing around Iberia and others using the Rhone-Rhine route into the NW France, the Rhine, west-central Europe and the isles from there.  That seems a pretty reasonable interpretation of  map 4.  NB do not take the map really literally as sometimes its based on rather few dates so there may be the odd anomaly.   

Anyway., the point of all this?  This is similar to what I posted recently as a possible variant route for L21 to NW Europe from the east that neither involves the east-west Danube or an Iberian one  but does involve a SE Europe to the Med. route.   Clearly applying this model to modern clade distributions would require L21 to have happened as it passed up the Rhone before passing into the river systems of northern France, the Rhine, isles etc.  This would explain why it largely bypassed Iberia.  I quite like this scenario from the point of view of both the L21 distribution and in terms of the current distribution of upstream S116-/S21- clades which are mainly in SE Europe but best represented in western Europe in Italy (where the earliest west European copper mine has been found).  In this scenario the S116 mutation would have happened among the S116- S21- group before or as as it crossed into Italy from the east.  Hence the mix of the two typs of R1b there.  West of Italy along the Med, I believe that  S116* dominates, so a founder effect may have happened as it left Italy and/or the nearby islands for southern France. As I noted above, S116* could have then split and partly spread west to Iberia and partly to the north up the Rhone where at some point the L21 happened.     
 
This is just an attempt to find a way of correlating R1b1b2 clade distribution and the spread of beakers within the constraints of the latest review of the dating.  It is just a scenario worth looking a bit more into and will need a bit of work on it to fully check out its viability but its an interesting scenario to chew over and one that fits clade distribution very well. 
 
Alan

[alan trowel hands.]

A short summary is that while an east-west route direct from central or eastern Europe into western Europe north of the alps is not supported by the beaker dates, I personally would not rule out an east-west movement that went from the north Balkans area to Italy to southern France and from there north into NW and west-central Europe and west into Iberia.  I certainly think that is still within the bounds of possibility when you look at map 4.  However, this sort of emphasises that a beaker=R1b1b2 solution is actually throwing a problem at a problem so nothing is likely to suddenly be solved.

[Mikewww]

Alan, thanks for the explanation.  My eyes have been illuminated as to amount of risk in archaeological dating methods.  I had kind of assumed that archaeological dates were fairly clear and did not realize they too were subject to as much interpretation.

Well, an origin for P312(S116) in the Balkan Pennisula or on the way from there into Italy could certainly fit a couple of migrations.    The closest fit for this direction of movement is from the Neolithic/farming perspective - the Cardial/Impressed Wares culture, correct? ...although probably more oriented towards south of Italy, whereas I suppose you are thinking more of the north of Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardium_Pottery

I guess it could be also that the supposed "Italo-Celts" could have had a splintered to sneak north to the Middle Danube River Valley, thereby creating a Proto-Celtic Beaker group.  That does differ with David Anthony's route up the Danube where the Proto-Italics were the ones that split off to go south and west into Italy.

This seems to make Deep Clade DNA testing along the Danube River and points south very important.    If P312(S116) shows up along the river all the way back to the Black Sea, but not south of the Balkan Mountains, that is telling versus showing up south of the Balkan Mountains but not along the Lower Danube River as it empties into the Black Sea.

I never quite understood the exact placement of upstream  P312- U106- clades of R-M269 from Vince V's ht35 project.   Are they purely SE Europe as in the Balkan Penninsula or are there findings north of the Balkan Mountains?  

http://www.staraplanina.eu/mountain/Balkan-mountains-high-map.jpg

Do we even have enough testing to discern?

[Jean M]

A short summary is that while an east-west route direct from central or eastern Europe into western Europe north of the alps is not supported by the beaker dates, I personally would not rule out an east-west movement that went from the north Balkans area to Italy to southern France and from there north into NW and west-central Europe and west into Iberia. 

My proposal (which takes into account the latest radio-carbon dates for Bell Beaker) suggests two trails, much as I think you are doing.



If that image won't enlarge, go to http://www.buildinghistory.org/distantpast/peoplingeurope.shtml#beaker

[alan trowel hands.]

[[/quote]

My proposal (which takes into account the latest radio-carbon dates for Bell Beaker) suggests two trails, much as I think you are doing [/quote]

Yes, you have a similar broad picture with the crucial similarity being a jump from east-central Europe to the Adriatic coast then Italy etc and the west Med.  I still though am unclear what culture was ancestral to the beakers culture.  The main components still seem to come from nowhere.  I think something as distinct as the archer kit with barbed and tanged arrows, wrist bracers etc and the distinct burial traditions and metal skills must have come from a predecessor culture.  I just havent ever seen a potential list of ancestral cultures that were beaker-like and it still feels that they appeared from nowhere and spread from one end of Europe to the other so fast that we cannot distinguise origin or even direction with any confidence.

Where in Europe and SW Asia were their archer based warrior cultures? Who was using barbed and tanged arrow in the immediate pre-beaker period?  Who used the typical crouched inhumation rite in pre-beaker times?  Who had a metalworking tradition that resemebled the beaker style in pre-beaker times?  Who had a pottery (preferable funerary pottery) tradition that could be ancestral to beakers in pre-beaker times?   Where was the physical type linked to beakers known in pre-beaker times?   All obvious questions for anyone looking for the origin of the beaker culture but strangely not often commented on in modern publications.

[Jean M]

Have you read the article by Harrison and Heyd that I sent you? I know it's massive, but  I think you'd find it rewarding. It does lay out in specific detail the archaeological missing links between Yamnaya and Bell Beaker.

The key object-type that I picked out was anthropomorphic stelae. These appear well before Bell Beaker. They mark the proposed southern route from the steppe to Iberia. Bell Beaker ware appears later in many areas where the stelae appeared. The bow which becomes the seemingly iconic weapon of the Beaker culture is engraved on a number of stelae representing males. The Cetina Culture - my proposed link from the Danube to the Adriatic - had wrist guards and later Bell Beaker.

In their discussion section (p. 193 onwards) Harrison and Heyd present a Yamnaya "package" (p. 196 onwards) which includes a discussion of the bow and arrows (p. 206), as well as burial customs and metal-working. The last I cover in my article, though not in great technological detail. 

[alan trowel hands.]

Have you read the article by Harrison and Heyd that I sent you? I know it's massive, but  I think you'd find it rewarding. It does lay out in specific detail the archaeological missing links between Yamnaya and Bell Beaker.

The key object-type that I picked out was anthropomorphic stelae. These appear well before Bell Beaker. They mark the proposed southern route from the steppe to Iberia. Bell Beaker ware appears later in many areas where the stelae appeared. The bow which becomes the seemingly iconic weapon of the Beaker culture is engraved on a number of stelae representing males. The Cetina Culture - my proposed link from the Danube to the Adriatic - had wrist guards and later Bell Beaker.

In their discussion section (p. 193 onwards) Harrison and Heyd present a Yamnaya "package" (p. 196 onwards) which includes a discussion of the bow and arrows (p. 206), as well as burial customs and metal-working. The last I cover in my article, though not in great technological detail. 

Cheers.  I will have another read over the paper.

[rms2]

Have you read the article by Harrison and Heyd that I sent you? I know it's massive, but  I think you'd find it rewarding. It does lay out in specific detail the archaeological missing links between Yamnaya and Bell Beaker.

The key object-type that I picked out was anthropomorphic stelae. These appear well before Bell Beaker. They mark the proposed southern route from the steppe to Iberia. Bell Beaker ware appears later in many areas where the stelae appeared. The bow which becomes the seemingly iconic weapon of the Beaker culture is engraved on a number of stelae representing males. The Cetina Culture - my proposed link from the Danube to the Adriatic - had wrist guards and later Bell Beaker.

In their discussion section (p. 193 onwards) Harrison and Heyd present a Yamnaya "package" (p. 196 onwards) which includes a discussion of the bow and arrows (p. 206), as well as burial customs and metal-working. The last I cover in my article, though not in great technological detail. 

I'm surprised I didn't see this thread until just now.

Anyway, can you send me that article? I don't find it among those you sent me before.

[IALEM]

There is a problem with the datation of Zambujal Bell Beaker, it is based on few samples not in context  (at least those by Salanova). They also put a big problem when compared with Los Millares, that has earlier dates as a site, but where Bell beaker can only be found in late periods, after 1800 BC. In all, the general impression you get for Bell beakers in Southern Spain is that they arrived from inland to the coast, and at a late date, not of a maritime extension.

[Jean M]

In the past archaeologists thought that the earliest Bell Beaker pottery in any given area indicated the arrival of "Beaker People".

Then we had decades in which the idea of migration was altogether dismissed. 

Now some archaeologists are starting to look at this question in a different way. The characteristic Beaker pottery seems to have developed in Portugal after the arrival of a new people, who brought copper-working technology. So the copper-working is the first sign of their arrival - not the pottery. Once the Bell Beaker style had developed, it seems to have spread gradually along trading routes in the sphere later dominated by Celtic, Italic and Illyrian-speaking peoples.

On the north-west fringe of Europe Bell Beaker ware arrived with copper-working, for example in the British Isles. So there  it makes sense to think of Beaker People arriving. But not in Iberia.

[alan trowel hands.]

Something does not ring true to me about a beaker spread from Iberia but ultimately of eastern origin due to copper prospectirs.  I have also heard that the Iberian early beaker dates hinge on a couple of dates from questionable contexts but I do not know the details.  My experience over the years is that where RC dates suggest something odd and geographically improbable, they will make more sense after more RC dates are obtained.  Only about 5 years ago it seemed like the earliest Neolithic dates in the British Isles were in NW Ireland but now with new dates and a review of old dates it seems that the Neolithic arrived in SE England c. 400 years before Ireland.  I suspect a similar sea change may happen with beaker dates given time. 

[Jean M]

Johannes Muller and Samuel van Willigen, New radiocarbon evidence for European Bell Beakers and the consequences for the diffusion of the Bell Beaker phenomenon, in Franco Nicolis (ed.),  Bell Beakers Today 2 vols. (2001) reviewed 182 published radiocarbon dates for Bell Beaker sites.

They concluded:

A comparison of 14C-dates for Bell Beakers from secure contexts and short-lived materials (mainly human bone samples) all over Europe gives evidence for a diffusion of Bell Beaker elements starting on the Iberian peninsula and reaching the eastern province hundreds of years later.

This was the paper that overturned previous ideas.

[IALEM]

The characteristic Beaker pottery seems to have developed in Portugal after the arrival of a new people, who brought copper-working technology. So the copper-working is the first sign of their arrival - not the pottery.

It is evident that copper workig and Bell beaker are linked, however I think the problem is in the link between Zambujal/Los Millares culture and Bell Beaker. I have the following reservations
1) Los Millares predates Zambujal for at least 400 years. The earliest date for Los Millares is c.3200 BC (calibrated). Bell Beaker is certainly not that old.
2) Bell Beaker is not found until the last period of Los Millares, after the city has been destroyed and only partially rebuilt. The classical interpretation (before the cultural diffusion models) was that Bell Beaker people destroyed Los Millares and then rebuilt it partially to live there for a few centuries afterwards. It is also my opinion, since there is a new type of individual burial (instead of collective burials of earlier Los Millares) and the traditional Bell Beaker objects previously totally absent.
3) Los Millares and Zambujal exhibit a complex urban structure, with massive walls reinforced by defensive towers. There is nothing like that in the whole Bell Beaker area.
IMO the old theory of Siret and Alberto del Castillo is the more logical. Los Millares is a colony of metal prospectors from Eastern Mediterranean coast, Bell Beakers are a separated group that at one point receive from Los Millares the copper working technique.

[Jean M]

I agree entirely that the Los Millares and Zambujal complexes look like intrusive, sea-borne colonies of metal prospectors.

But to be honest I get the feeling that national pride has entered into the arguments on dating. I am not accusing you of anything of that kind. But some Spanish archaeologists seem absolutely determined that

1) Los Millares should predate Zambujal.
2) That metal-working should have arrived in Spain before Portugal.
3) That Bell Beaker ware could not have arisen in Portugal rather than Spain.

So I'm treating a lot that appears out of Spain on these topics with reservation, and placing more weight on independent studies.

1) The archaeologists working on Los Millares claim that it sprang out of indigenous culture. This website on Los Millares claims a date of 3600 BC for the start of copper metallurgy there. Whereas another website that looks official talks of carbon 14 dating, and suggests that copper metallurgy arose in a culture that started c. 3000 BC. That is much more credible. It make sense that two such similar metal-working centres as Zambujal and Los Millares should have begun at around the same time, as indicated by the German team working on Zambujal.

2) One claim of an extraordinarily early date for copper-working at another site in Spain has been refuted.  

3) The dating for Bell Beaker ware does not rest on a couple of dodgy dates, as I explained above. If new dates have been published which completely overturn the conclusions of Johannes Muller and Samuel van Willigen, I think we would know about it.  

[alan trowel hands.]

The possibility that beakers arose in Iberia has growing support.  However, if this is the case then maintaining an Indo-European aspect to beakers seems to involve a lot of mental gymnastics.    It seems difficult to see how the idea of Iberian beakers as a source of Indo-European dispersal can survive an Iberian origin for beakers.  I think the hypothesis that there were links between Iberia and the steppes area a stretch of slender evidence and I find it hard to accept.  Its too important a link in the argument to be based on such slender evidence. 

Perhaps there was some sort of reflux where beaker culture elements and people spread from Spain but only acquired certain classic beaker elements in the areas where they mixed with single grave corded ware/battleaxe culture and that it was only where beaker culture and corded ware cultures met and mingled that the Indo-European languages, the classic single graves etc became attached to the beaker populations.  In other words it is the corded ware element that mattered linguistically.  A recent book on British Isles archaeology sees the NW and west-central beaker area with the classic single burials etc as a hybrid between an Iberian beaker culture that lacked some of the classic beaker elements and the corded ware single grave culture.  I found this argument quite compelling.  This may mean that in Iberia and much of France the beaker culture was not Indo-European and it is only in the overlap areas with corded ware in Switzerland, the Rhine and Danube areas of Germany, the Low Countries etc that it became Indo-Europeanised through the corded ware contact.  It then passed in the latter form to Great Britain.  That is a kind of reprise on the old reflux idea but it’s the best way I can see of maintaining any sort of link between beakers and Indo-European if an Iberian origin is correct.

One upshot of this may be that in Iberia and perhaps most of France and Italy where no corded ware element existed, beakers may have initially spread a non-Indo-European language from Iberia.  This is just a shot in the dark but could it have been a Caucasian one associated with metal workers?  Could it be that this was replaced by Indo-European wherever the beaker people were close to corded ware people and that in the end the original beaker language disappeared everywhere except in Iberia and SW France?  Was it ancestral to Basque/Iberian and perhaps other non-Indo-European languages in and around the west Med?

Then we have to ask ourselves what R1b is?  Is it possible that it was indeed a lineage brought along the Med. from the Caucuses/Anatolia area by metalworkers.  It is possible that S116 could have built up in Iberia before spilling out east.   

The blending of beaker and corded ware elements could be the origin of the Celts, the most crucial aspects being the language and warrior culture of the corded ware society and the more advanced technology and society of the Beaker people.  That perhaps set the Celts apart from other societies who were based on just one or the other.

[Jean M]

The picture I have painted only works if we stop thinking that pots are people. British academia has been dinning this into archaeology students for decades. But so ingrained is the idea of the Beaker People, that it is a wrench to let go of it! Zambujal and Los Millares pre-date Beaker. The discontinuity in Iberia lies in the arrival of copper-workers, not with a particular style of pottery.

Don't worry! Bell Beaker ware from Iberia does not equal all Celts were from Iberia. :)

The pottery style was a fashion that disseminated along trade routes developed for other reasons by people already in a network, and already culturally linked by language, beliefs and technology. The Corded Ware Culture and Bell Beaker sprang from the same parent - Yamnaya. As you know I envisage two routes for the Proto-Celtic-Italic migration stream, one of which ends up in Austria and the other in Iberia, but the two apparently retained links by several routes.  

In short the pottery is not desperately important, except that its distinctive shape makes Beaker sites easy for archaeologists to recognise. Naturally archaeologists have been thrown by the new BB dating, and will be trying to make sense of the new picture as best they can. But an explanation needs to take on board all the evidence.

The anthropomorphic statues that spread from Crimea and parts adjacent across through Italy and into Iberia are distinctive. There is nothing like them before or since. That is not a slender thread.  

Plus Iberia very definitely had the warrior culture, and Portugal is littered with Celtic place-names.  Linguistically the picture is complex. That's true. I suspect that R1b filtered into the Yamnaya Culture from the NW Caucasus with the Maikop people. If this happened not all that long before the migration up the Danube, then one can see that the Maikop descendants may not have been fully assimilated linguistically. That might explain the existence of the Basque and Iberian languages living alongside Celtic in Iberia.  

[IALEM]

I agree entirely that the Los Millares and Zambujal complexes look like intrusive, sea-borne colonies of metal prospectors.

But to be honest I get the feeling that national pride has entered into the arguments on dating. I am not accusing you of anything of that kind. But some Spanish archaeologists seem absolutely determined that

1) Los Millares should predate Zambujal.
2) That metal-working should have arrived in Spain before Portugal.
3) That Bell Beaker ware could not have arisen in Portugal rather than Spain.

So I'm treating a lot that appears out of Spain on these topics with reservation, and placing more weight on independent studies.

1) The archaeologists working on Los Millares claim that it sprang out of indigenous culture. This website on Los Millares claims a date of 3600 BC for the start of copper metallurgy there. Whereas another website that looks official talks of carbon 14 dating, and suggests that copper metallurgy arose in a culture that started c. 3000 BC. That is much more credible. It make sense that two such similar metal-working centres as Zambujal and Los Millares should have begun at around the same time, as indicated by the German team working on Zambujal.

2) One claim of an extraordinarily early date for copper-working at another site in Spain has been refuted.  

3) The dating for Bell Beaker ware does not rest on a couple of dodgy dates, as I explained above. If new dates have been published which completely overturn the conclusions of Johannes Muller and Samuel van Willigen, I think we would know about it.  

National pride may be in some arguments, but as for Bell beakers and Los Millares, it is the other way around of what you suggests, the team working at Los Millares dates Bell Beaker there not before 1800 BC, not an early but a very late date. So, if you link Los Millares/Zambujal to Bell Beaker, you have to explain
1) That Los Millares predates Bell Beaker
2) That Bell Beaker in Los Millares is a very late  occurrence
3) That the urban culture of Los Millares/Zambujal is not replicated anywhere in any other Bell Beaker area.
So, I think that even if we admit the early Bell Beaker dates for Zambujal, we should reckon that Zambujal and Bell beaker worlds are culturally far apart. IMO it is more logical to think of Zambujal as an alien colony from the East that had a deep influence over Bell Beakers, but was a different population.
In the old "barbaric" days of archaeologists Luis Siret(Early 20th century) He dared to write that the phisical characteristics of Bell Beaker folk buried in Los Millares was quite different from the tipycal Los Millares people buried in collective graves, meaning Bell Beakers were a different population, invaders from inland. Nowdays, of course, the explanation is that of cultural assimilation.

[IALEM]

The possibility that beakers arose in Iberia has growing support.  However, if this is the case then maintaining an Indo-European aspect to beakers seems to involve a lot of mental gymnastics.    It seems difficult to see how the idea of Iberian beakers as a source of Indo-European dispersal can survive an Iberian origin for beakers.  I think the hypothesis that there were links between Iberia and the steppes area a stretch of slender evidence and I find it hard to accept.  Its too important a link in the argument to be based on such slender evidence. 

Perhaps there was some sort of reflux where beaker culture elements and people spread from Spain but only acquired certain classic beaker elements in the areas where they mixed with single grave corded ware/battleaxe culture and that it was only where beaker culture and corded ware cultures met and mingled that the Indo-European languages, the classic single graves etc became attached to the beaker populations.  In other words it is the corded ware element that mattered linguistically.  A recent book on British Isles archaeology sees the NW and west-central beaker area with the classic single burials etc as a hybrid between an Iberian beaker culture that lacked some of the classic beaker elements and the corded ware single grave culture.  I found this argument quite compelling.  This may mean that in Iberia and much of France the beaker culture was not Indo-European and it is only in the overlap areas with corded ware in Switzerland, the Rhine and Danube areas of Germany, the Low Countries etc that it became Indo-Europeanised through the corded ware contact.  It then passed in the latter form to Great Britain.  That is a kind of reprise on the old reflux idea but it’s the best way I can see of maintaining any sort of link between beakers and Indo-European if an Iberian origin is correct.

One upshot of this may be that in Iberia and perhaps most of France and Italy where no corded ware element existed, beakers may have initially spread a non-Indo-European language from Iberia.  This is just a shot in the dark but could it have been a Caucasian one associated with metal workers?  Could it be that this was replaced by Indo-European wherever the beaker people were close to corded ware people and that in the end the original beaker language disappeared everywhere except in Iberia and SW France?  Was it ancestral to Basque/Iberian and perhaps other non-Indo-European languages in and around the west Med?

Then we have to ask ourselves what R1b is?  Is it possible that it was indeed a lineage brought along the Med. from the Caucuses/Anatolia area by metalworkers.  It is possible that S116 could have built up in Iberia before spilling out east.   

The blending of beaker and corded ware elements could be the origin of the Celts, the most crucial aspects being the language and warrior culture of the corded ware society and the more advanced technology and society of the Beaker people.  That perhaps set the Celts apart from other societies who were based on just one or the other.

I agree with the beaker/corded ware mix theory and the non IE character of Beakers, at least originally, because Beakers lack a very important IE item, the Horse.
In the Aryan invasion debate raging in India, a central piece of the argument to discard Harappan culture as IE is the lack of horses. According to Romila Thapar, it is not just the total absence of horses that matters, but the lack of a warrior culture centered around the horse and the war chariot, clearly visible in all ancient IE populations, from Vedic Aryans to Mitanni, to Micenic. That is also based in linguistics, since the Proto IE word for horse, ekwos, is the root of all the words for horse in every IE family, it follows that all IE populations were already familiar with the domestic horse.
Well, Nell Beaker graves have been interpreted as warrior graves, people buried with bows and daggers, but in that warrior graves any link to horses is missing, for sure for  early Bell Beakers in Iberia, and I am almost certain for Bell Beakers in general except for those in the border area with Corded Ware.
So, to sum up, I am in agreement that the Bell Beakers were not IE, that is also supported by the late arrival of IE languages to Iberia (Lusitanian, as I posted in DNA forums, is very much a fabric of Linguists), and the IE languages arrived through a mix of influences of Corded ware over Bell Beaker folk.

[rms2]

The horse only becomes central to identifying IE peoples and cultures if one first accepts the Gimbutas-Mallory-Anthony et al position on IE origins.

With Renfrew's hypothesis or that of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, there is no such requirement.

[rms2]

My understanding is that there are differences between the "Bell Beaker" people of Iberia and of the Neolithic passage graves in Britain and the "Beaker Folk" of the round barrows, such as the famous Amesbury Archer. Sometimes it's tough to maintain the distinction. There were physiological differences as well as differences in artifacts and burial customs.

I suppose the idea being tossed about in the last few posts of a melding of Bell Beaker and Corded Ware is what you all are guessing produced the Beaker Folk phenomenon.

I don't think the evidence supports the idea that P312 arose in Iberia and spread eastward from there, and what of Anthony's dates for the Csepel Beaker Folk of the Hungarian Plain? He has them estimated as early as anything I have seen for the Bell Beaker people of Iberia. Faulty dating?

[Jean M]

The horse only becomes central to identifying IE peoples and cultures if one first accepts the Gimbutas-Mallory-Anthony et al position on IE origins.

With Renfrew's hypothesis or that of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, there is no such requirement.

That's true, but the latter theories are not supported by the evidence. There is no need to throw out the Mallory/Anthony position simply because there are variations on the IE theme. The Harrison and Heyd paper helpfully sets out the "Yamnaya package" which consists of a whole range of things - not just kurgans and horse-riding. It includes metallurgy, anthropomorphic statues, and cord-impressed pottery.

If the "Yamnaya package" + IE languages arrived in Iberia by sea, as is indicated, then we would not expect them to bring a lot of livestock initially. Horse-bones do appear at Bell Beaker sites elsewhere, such as Hungary, where people arrived by land.

The mounted warrior cult was visible in Iberia in the Iron Age. Of course the old idea was that the Celts spread in the Iron Age. But that is not supported by the archaeology. The Urnfield Culture barely entered Iberia. There is no evidence that Celtic entered Iberia late. IALEM may have disposed of Lusitanian, but Celtiberian had antique features.

 

[IALEM]

The mounted warrior cult was visible in Iberia in the Iron Age. Of course the old idea was that the Celts spread in the Iron Age. But that is not supported by the archaeology. The Urnfield Culture barely entered Iberia. There is no evidence that Celtic entered Iberia late. IALEM may have disposed of Lusitanian, but Celtiberian had antique features.

 

Why is not supported by archaeology? It is true that Urnfield only affected NE of Spain (which BTW, despite the efforts displayed by Maluquer, historically only shows evidence of Iberian language), but there is plenty of evidence of Halstatt culture in the Celtic part of Iberia, or do you limit Celtic to La Tène?

[Jean M]

I don't think the evidence supports the idea that P312 arose in Iberia and spread eastward from there...

No-one is suggesting that P312 arose in Iberia and spread east from there. What I am suggesting is that P312 either arose in or was present in the Proto-Italic-Celtic-speaking, kurgan-building, Yamnaya (+Maikop) people who migrated in their thousands up the Danube from the European steppe.

Groups appear to have broken away from that migration to filter into Balkan region between the Danube and the Adriatic. Some stayed there and became Illyrians. Others seem to have moved into Northern Italy. Some stayed there to mine copper and become Ligurians. Others moved south into Central Italy to become Italic-speakers. Yet others seem to have prospected by sea for copper, finding it in Iberia. They stayed, set up fortified colonies at Zambujal and Los Millares, and eventually emerge into history as Celtiberians and other Iron Age peoples of Iberia.

Meanwhile the mother group was still progressing up the Danube into the Carpathian Basin and after a long pause there, up further to emerge at the head of the Danube in Austria, where the Celts are noted by Classical writers in the Iron Age.  

All of these groups appear to have been tied together by trade networks involving copper and (after a while) Bell Beaker pottery.

[Jean M]

Why is not supported by archaeology? It is true that Urnfield only affected NE of Spain (which BTW, despite the efforts displayed by Maluquer, historically only shows evidence of Iberian language), but there is plenty of evidence of Halstatt culture in the Celtic part of Iberia, or do you limit Celtic to La Tène?

I don't limit Celtic to either of those cultures. For me a person speaking a Celtic language is a Celt. The idea that the Celtic languages arrived in the Iron Age has long been abandoned in the British Isles, because the archaeology does not support it. There is some  La Tène influence, but the archaeological picture is broadly one of continuity from Copper/Bronze to Iron Age.

Now I know that I have been sceptical of other claims of continuity by dyed-in-the-wool anti-migrationists, but this one does seem to hold up. The physical anthropology shows a new type of people arriving with Copper (which in places outside Iberia generally means with Bell Beaker). The isotope analysis is saying the same thing. These were new people.   

[IALEM]

Yet others seem to have prospected by sea for copper, finding it in Iberia. They stayed, set up fortified colonies at Zambujal and Los Millares, and eventually emerge into history as Celtiberians and other Iron Age peoples of Iberia.

That I find quite unlikely. I already stressed the differences between Bell Beakers and the Zambujal/Los Millares culture. I don´t know the article you mention about anthropomorphic statues (I haven´t found it in the list of articles you kindly sent to me), but the Urban culture of Los Millares is very different of anything you find on the Steppes.
A second problem, the settlers of Los Millares, cleearly related to Zambujal, left no trace of IE presence in a territory that historically is dominated by Iberian language.
Another difficulty, if Celtiberians descended from Zambujal settlers, that is at least 2600 BC, their language should be one of the earliest branch of Proto IE, and while Celtiberian shows some archaic features, it is clearly a language belonging to the Celtic, or CeltoItalic branch.
Then there is the presence of Hallstatt tumuli in Celtiberian territory, that would explain Celtic presence in Spain quite nicely wiothout having to resort to very early IE migrations.
Besides, there is ample evidence that there was a migration of populations, not just a cultural expansion, as it is shown for instance in the replacement in SE Spain of El Argar derivative cultures by a very different culture, with different pattern of habitation and territory exploitation.
To sum up, Hallstatt migrations are well proven and fully explain Celtic presence in Spain, without having to resort to a very early and highly especulative IE maritime migration.