Neolithic Farmers and the Spread of Indo-European, The Case for Euphratic, etc.

[NealtheRed]

Cece Moore posted detailed notes on the FTDNA annual conference on her blog:

http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2011/11/family-tree-dnas-7th-international.html

http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2011/11/family-tree-dnas-7th-international_09.html

I was very interested in Spencer Wells and Thomas Krahns contributions.
"Age of R1b still appears to be an issue. Although on the positive side ancient DNA is yielding interesting results.
• They are doing things with ancient DNA that 10 years ago was impossible, that they "wouldn't have dreamed of doing".
• A paper is coming next year on ancient DNA research "transecting time", including information on farmers replacing hunter gatherers in Central Germany and mtDNA Haplogroup U5, which Spencer called "the hunter-gatherer haplogroup". They found different frequencies of haplogroups from samples at different layers. He says that the debate about the age of R1b has not yet been resolved. Spencer commented that outstanding issues about STR mutation rates is "not helping" and that we still "have to figure out Y-STR mutation rates."

Interesting coorelation between Indo European languages and tested participants.
"2000 Caucasus language speakers were sampled, finding a "remarkable concordance between genetic contrasts and language groups."
Many new SNPs discovered from walk the Y and 1000 genomes project.
"• 366 participants, 125.8 million basepairs sequenced, 180,000 bp average coverage per participant, 450 undocumented new Y-SNPs have been found.

Peter Biggins and the DNA of the Three Collas:
Peter gave a thorough review of the FTDNA Clan CollaNull 425 Project. This clan is thought to have descended from the 3 Colla brothers who lived ca 400 AD in Ireland. There are quite a few different Irish surnames in this group. All members of this project are R-L21+ and every member who has tested has also been discovered to be R-DF21+.

So it looks like we can look forward to several interesting papers in the near future.

Jean M. reported on another forum that Spencer Wells stills believes in a paleolithic origin  in Europe for R1b.

I guess it is difficult to entertain new ideas about R1b if one was the initial impetus for its Paleolithic origins.

[GoldenHind]

Deleted double post

[GoldenHind]

Cece Moore posted detailed notes on the FTDNA annual conference on her blog:

http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2011/11/family-tree-dnas-7th-international.html

http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2011/11/family-tree-dnas-7th-international_09.html

I was very interested in Spencer Wells and Thomas Krahns contributions.
"Age of R1b still appears to be an issue. Although on the positive side ancient DNA is yielding interesting results.
• They are doing things with ancient DNA that 10 years ago was impossible, that they "wouldn't have dreamed of doing".
• A paper is coming next year on ancient DNA research "transecting time", including information on farmers replacing hunter gatherers in Central Germany and mtDNA Haplogroup U5, which Spencer called "the hunter-gatherer haplogroup". They found different frequencies of haplogroups from samples at different layers. He says that the debate about the age of R1b has not yet been resolved. Spencer commented that outstanding issues about STR mutation rates is "not helping" and that we still "have to figure out Y-STR mutation rates."

Interesting coorelation between Indo European languages and tested participants.
"2000 Caucasus language speakers were sampled, finding a "remarkable concordance between genetic contrasts and language groups."
Many new SNPs discovered from walk the Y and 1000 genomes project.
"• 366 participants, 125.8 million basepairs sequenced, 180,000 bp average coverage per participant, 450 undocumented new Y-SNPs have been found.

Peter Biggins and the DNA of the Three Collas:
Peter gave a thorough review of the FTDNA Clan CollaNull 425 Project. This clan is thought to have descended from the 3 Colla brothers who lived ca 400 AD in Ireland. There are quite a few different Irish surnames in this group. All members of this project are R-L21+ and every member who has tested has also been discovered to be R-DF21+.

So it looks like we can look forward to several interesting papers in the near future.

Jean M. reported on another forum that Spencer Wells stills believes in a paleolithic origin  in Europe for R1b.

I guess it is difficult to entertain new ideas about R1b if one was the initial impetus for its Paleolithic origins.

I suspect academic about-faces are about as rare as hen's teeth. Once they go out on a limb and take a position, it seems they are highly unlikely to lose face by later admitting  they got it completely wrong.

[rms2]

I suspect academic about-faces are about as rare as hen's teeth. Once they go out on a limb and take a position, it seems they are highly unlikely to lose face by later admitting  they got it completely wrong.

Especially after having taken that position in print, I imagine.

In one way this could work to our advantage.

Surely there must be some scrambling going on to get testable y-dna from some Paleolithic and Mesolithic remains in R1b hotspots.

I say bring it on. They'll either find some R1b and prove themselves right . . . or not.

Either way we'll get some real knowledge.

[alan trowel hands.]

I have just ordered this very new book on the prehistory of Anatolia.

http://www.archaeology.leiden.edu/organisation/publications/news/the-prehistory-of-asia-mino-bleda-during.html  

I have read a sample of it on Google books and its very interesting.  One thing I noted is that the NW corner of Anatolia, the area where dairy farming is thought to have arises, seems to have been Neolithicised through the hunter-gatherers around the SW Black Sea there adopting farming rather than migration.  In fact he thinks that much of Anatolia was Neolithicised by this method rather than migration from Mesopotamia.  The evidence is not open-shut but he has a point.  Anyway, that would suggest we should not see the NW Anatolians as the same as the Natufian derived Mesopotamians. Regardless it is interesting that these hunters that adopted farming in the NW of Anatolia and originated dairying seem to have been locally based in NW Anatolia since the Palaeolithic.  They seemed to be still using Mesolithic style microlithic tools up to 6000BC by which time farming had spread into Europe.  That seems to confirm to me the recent suggestion that Europe was settled by farmers initially by sea from the Levant rather than Anatolia.  Does make you wonder who these people in the NW of Anatolia were?  I am not saying they were necessarily R1b folks but whoever they were went from being marginal to having a major advantage c. 6000BC and their dairying economy could have allowed them to fan out in many directions and settle land that perhaps was not viable before dairying.    One direction was into Europe a little before 5000BC around Bulgaria but dairying spread far and wide in the following 1000 years. 

[MHammers]

I suspect academic about-faces are about as rare as hen's teeth. Once they go out on a limb and take a position, it seems they are highly unlikely to lose face by later admitting  they got it completely wrong.

Especially after having taken that position in print, I imagine.

In one way this could work to our advantage.

Surely there must be some scrambling going on to get testable y-dna from some Paleolithic and Mesolithic remains in R1b hotspots.

I say bring it on. They'll either find some R1b and prove themselves right . . . or not.

Either way we'll get some real knowledge.

Unless they test the right snp's, some academics will hold onto the Iberian Paleo-R1b model.  Even if R1b is found in an bronze age kurgan, they can still claim it was in Europe during the ice age.

[alan trowel hands.]

The amazing thing is although it now seems certain R1b is far older outside Europe, there still seems to be a huge area that could be its homeland including Anatolian, the Caucuses, the steppes, SW Asia etc. 

[NealtheRed]

I suspect academic about-faces are about as rare as hen's teeth. Once they go out on a limb and take a position, it seems they are highly unlikely to lose face by later admitting  they got it completely wrong.

Especially after having taken that position in print, I imagine.

In one way this could work to our advantage.

Surely there must be some scrambling going on to get testable y-dna from some Paleolithic and Mesolithic remains in R1b hotspots.

I say bring it on. They'll either find some R1b and prove themselves right . . . or not.

Either way we'll get some real knowledge.

I agree with you. If R1b happens to be found in Europe during Paleolithic times (I personally doubt this), that is fine with me. At least we will have some answers.

If R1b is found is some Bronze Age kurgan, and someone still dismisses it as a Paleolithic remnant, I am very skeptical of this field at that point.

[alan trowel hands.]

I suspect academic about-faces are about as rare as hen's teeth. Once they go out on a limb and take a position, it seems they are highly unlikely to lose face by later admitting  they got it completely wrong.

Especially after having taken that position in print, I imagine.

In one way this could work to our advantage.

Surely there must be some scrambling going on to get testable y-dna from some Paleolithic and Mesolithic remains in R1b hotspots.

I say bring it on. They'll either find some R1b and prove themselves right . . . or not.

Either way we'll get some real knowledge.

I agree with you. If R1b happens to be found in Europe during Paleolithic times (I personally doubt this), that is fine with me. At least we will have some answers.

If R1b is found is some Bronze Age kurgan, and someone still dismisses it as a Paleolithic remnant, I am very skeptical of this field at that point.

I cant understand people who decide what answer they want in advance and let this distort all their thoughts and interpretations.  Almost all periods and cultures are interesting.  When people take that approach they back themselves into corners and then the issue of pride kicks in and they end up refusing to accept reality. I think at all times the Occam's Razor approach should be applied.  Until some evidence emerges to say otherwise, it seems that M269 moved into Europe at some point in the Neolithic or Copper Age from somewhere in SW Asia or the southern fringe of easternmost Europe.  At present there is no clearcut archaeological trace of this and the best options vaguely in this timeframe are the spread of dairying from Anatolia and the beaker network although in neither case is the migrational story very clear.    

[authun]

I cant understand people who decide what answer they want in advance and let this distort all their thoughts and interpretations.

The idea that europe was repopulated at the end of the ice age by peoples from Iberia goes back a long way, well before genetic studies. When the studies started to appear and they showed lots of R1b in western europe and also amongst the Basques, it seemed to confirm it, especially as the Basques speak a non indo european language. It is therefore more a desire to confirm a long held view rather than deciding what answer they want.

The alternative, that the population and languages of europe are relatively recent and on a massive scale is actually quite mind boggling. It forces us to contemplate the demise of all those palaeolithic, mesolithic and early neolithic populations. Most archaeologists are trained to think in terms of one culture changing into another with some sort of link between them. So farmers arrived and the hunter gatherers learned from them. The question was always, on what scale did the new farmers settle? Once into the neolithic period, few have contemplated the possibility that the later neolithic is fundamentally different from the early neolithic. Whatever the initial scale of settlement in the early neolithic, most have assumed that the neolthic was continuous, just with different pottery styles and burial customs. There was no real reason to think otherwise. DNA always tried to fit into these scenarios. Now, DNA plus other scientific analyses are suggesting that things were more complex but, archaeology still wants to look for connections and is wary that the new sciences is a case of the horse pushing the cart, no pun on Anthony's book intended.

If, in order to understand the modern european population, one has to come to the conclusion that the paleolithic, mesolithic and early neolithic played only a minor role, one can see why strong objections are raised and understand the tendency amongst some to want to continue to look for an explanation which still links them all.

[rms2]

That is true. I can remember reading about the post-Ice Age repopulation scenario long before genetic studies were possible. Old authors like H.G. Wells and, I think, Carleton Coon mention it and the idea that the Basques are a Paleolithic relic population.

Of course, aspects of that idea are no doubt true. It's just that it now seems likely that R1b was not involved.

I can remember arguing several years ago on Rootsweb that the Basque-Paleolithic-Relic idea was simply an old wineskin into which some were attempting to press the new wine of dna testing. Ellen Levy Coffman was saying the same thing.

Neither do men put new wine into old wineskins: else the wineskins break, and the wine runs out, and the wineskins perish: but they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.  - Matthew 9:17

[rms2]

I cant understand people who decide what answer they want in advance and let this distort all their thoughts and interpretations. . .    

When I ordered my first 37-marker y-dna test, I had the idea that I was of Germanic descent, probably Anglo-Saxon, but possibly even Viking (which was my desire at the time, I will confess). I awaited a finding of y haplogroup I1a (as I-M253 was then known). I read all of Ken Nordtvedt's y-hap I stuff in anticipation of the blessed event.

When my "R1b1" result came in (that's as far as things went in May of 2006), I thought it still possible to salvage my imagined Teutonic heritage, especially when I heard the news about S21 (U106). I rushed to order what was then known as the "S-Series" from Ethnoancestry. When S21 (and all the other R1b esses of that time) crashed and burned on the unforgiving stone of my dna sample, I began to suspect the truth: my y-dna is not especially Germanic.

Well, you know the rest. I'm L21+ and very happy about it. The truth is better than any vaporous imagining, for the most part because it is true.

But giving up a cherished idea is an agonizing process. The evidence has to take form and solidify and become a hammer that smashes the old notions.

I don't think the hammer has quite materialized for some of these folks.

But then again, it might yet materialize in their hands instead of ours.

I must confess up front that I do have a preference in this case, just as I had when I was waiting for my first 37-marker test. It certainly seems more exciting to me to be descended from men who arrived during the Bronze Age and spread Indo-European languages than to be descended from old-west European Longue Duree natives who were, like the landscape, just kind of always there.

But I have experience abandoning my preferences when the evidence goes against them. If I have to do it again, it will probably just be easier.

[alan trowel hands.]

To be honest archaeologists had pretty firmly turned back in favour of the Neolithic being mainly immigrants rather than hunters adopting farming for most of Europe.  This reverse in opinion actually happened in the later 90s before DNA had produced much of any use.  Indeed, archaeologists had realised that the hunter involvement in the Neolithic was limited at exactly the same time as the DNA was suggesting the opposite (that R1b was Iberian hunter gatherer derived).  So, it was really the DNA interpretations that seem to have got that wrong.

The real shocker is if it is true that Europes DNA has a massive copper age element.  Noone in many decades in archaeology or indeed many of the DNA people saw that coming and the evidence for this is very new and DNA based.  

[alan trowel hands.]

That is true. I can remember reading about the post-Ice Age repopulation scenario long before genetic studies were possible. Old authors like H.G. Wells and, I think, Carleton Coon mention it and the idea that the Basques are a Paleolithic relic population.

Of course, aspects of that idea are no doubt true. It's just that it now seems likely that R1b was not involved.

I can remember arguing several years ago on Rootsweb that the Basque-Paleolithic-Relic idea was simply an old wineskin into which some were attempting to press the new wine of dna testing. Ellen Levy Coffman was saying the same thing.

Neither do men put new wine into old wineskins: else the wineskins break, and the wine runs out, and the wineskins perish: but they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.  - Matthew 9:17

There is no doubt that the Magdallenian did see an out of Iberia/France palaeolithic spread into western Europe.  No doubt at all.  The problem was the striking and tempting correlation with R1b, Basque language, perhipheral location etc was a false correlation.  Actually a textbook example of one. 

[alan trowel hands.]

I have just ordered this very new book on the prehistory of Anatolia.

http://www.archaeology.leiden.edu/organisation/publications/news/the-prehistory-of-asia-mino-bleda-during.html  

I have read a sample of it on Google books and its very interesting.  One thing I noted is that the NW corner of Anatolia, the area where dairy farming is thought to have arises, seems to have been Neolithicised through the hunter-gatherers around the SW Black Sea there adopting farming rather than migration.  In fact he thinks that much of Anatolia was Neolithicised by this method rather than migration from Mesopotamia.  The evidence is not open-shut but he has a point.  Anyway, that would suggest we should not see the NW Anatolians as the same as the Natufian derived Mesopotamians. Regardless it is interesting that these hunters that adopted farming in the NW of Anatolia and originated dairying seem to have been locally based in NW Anatolia since the Palaeolithic.  They seemed to be still using Mesolithic style microlithic tools up to 6000BC by which time farming had spread into Europe.  That seems to confirm to me the recent suggestion that Europe was settled by farmers initially by sea from the Levant rather than Anatolia.  Does make you wonder who these people in the NW of Anatolia were?  I am not saying they were necessarily R1b folks but whoever they were went from being marginal to having a major advantage c. 6000BC and their dairying economy could have allowed them to fan out in many directions and settle land that perhaps was not viable before dairying.    One direction was into Europe a little before 5000BC around Bulgaria but dairying spread far and wide in the following 1000 years. 

Weirdly its one of three new books on prehistoric Anatolia that have come out in the last 2 years.  One of them out this year costs about £120 (something like $180?  I dont think I will be buying it any time soon! 

[rms2]

Yeah, some of these books are outrageously priced, I guess because they don't appeal to the mass market.

I wish someone would come out with a new one on the Beaker Folk. Last time I looked, the most recent book on the subject dated from the early 1980s.

Btw, I just ordered an Amazon Kindle Touch to make it easier for me to read on the train to and from work each day.

[alan trowel hands.]

Yeah, some of these books are outrageously priced, I guess because they don't appeal to the mass market.

I wish someone would come out with a new one on the Beaker Folk. Last time I looked, the most recent book on the subject dated from the early 1980s.

Btw, I just ordered an Amazon Kindle Touch to make it easier for me to read on the train to and from work each day.

It s long been the case that archaeologists cant afford a lot of archaeological texts! I notice Cunlffe has had a tendency to bring out books at crazy prices.

I totally agree.  The beaker period desperately needs an overview book.  So much new data and rethinking has come out since the 80s but no overview text.  What I am wondering is what the knock on effect on some of the other old ideas is now that beakers are seen as being oldest in the south-west.  For example is there still any validity to the old groupings like Wessex-Middle Rhine etc? 

[Heber]

Btw, I just ordered an Amazon Kindle Touch to make it easier for me to read on the train to and from work each day.

Unfortunately we are unable to order the Kindle Fire in Europe. I have no idea why. It is an amazing specification at this price. I have become addicted to Kindle on Android in the last few months. You can preview pretty much any book, usually an entire chapter, in the entire collection of hundred of thousands and get a flavour for it before deciding to buy. All the good archaeology and anthropology books are there.

I believe Anatolia holds the key to the expansion of M269. The only problem is the dates. Was it 10K BCE or 5K BCE. If the former, as Myers states, then it corresponds to the period of Gobleki Tepe and the transition from hunter gatherer to farmer. What are the other candidate haplogroups for Gobleki Tepe?
As for R1b, did it come from the East or the West. Conventional wisdom says it came from the East, but could it have come from Magdelanean cultures? If not which haplogroup corresponds to the Magdelanean people's.

[seferhabahir]

I believe Anatolia holds the key to the expansion of M269. The only problem is the dates. Was it 10K BCE or 5K BCE. If the former, as Myers states, then it corresponds to the period of Gobleki Tepe and the transition from hunter gatherer to farmer. What are the other candidate haplogroups for Gobleki Tepe?

In a long and drawn out debate between Anatole Klyosov and Dienekes Pontikos on the latter's blog site, Klyosov offered up the following: "theoretically, Gobekli could have been built by G, J2, E".

[IALEM]

When I was studying at the university back in the 80s professor Ignacio Barandiaran was teaching archaeology. He was convinced that
1) Neolithic was brought to Western Europe by inmigrants from Eastern Mediterranean area (at the time that was radical, diffusionism was at its peak)
2) Hunter-gatherers learnt Neolithic culture and fought back in the form of Bell Beaker culture, a basically nomad culture of pastoralist/traders that in the end got the upper hand, even destroying centers of Mediterranean cultures, like Los Millares (at the time that was extremely radical) I was fascinated by that theory and when I saw the basic superposition between R1b and Bell Beakers areas I thought that was it, the theory was right. Then genetic chronology apparently changed all that.
Personally I would like Barandiaran´s theory proved right in the end. OTOH if R1b is Bronze Age DNA could be a much more valuable tool to track prehistorical migrations, which would be a great help for archaeology.

[rms2]

When I was studying at the university back in the 80s professor Ignacio Barandiaran was teaching archaeology. He was convinced that
1) Neolithic was brought to Western Europe by inmigrants from Eastern Mediterranean area (at the time that was radical, diffusionism was at its peak)
2) Hunter-gatherers learnt Neolithic culture and fought back in the form of Bell Beaker culture, a basically nomad culture of pastoralist/traders that in the end got the upper hand, even destroying centers of Mediterranean cultures, like Los Millares (at the time that was extremely radical) I was fascinated by that theory and when I saw the basic superposition between R1b and Bell Beakers areas I thought that was it, the theory was right. Then genetic chronology apparently changed all that.
Personally I would like Barandiaran´s theory proved right in the end. OTOH if R1b is Bronze Age DNA could be a much more valuable tool to track prehistorical migrations, which would be a great help for archaeology.

That is an interesting idea. I had not thought of that. It makes sense, although it goes against the age estimations for R1b based on haplotype variance.

But everything seems up for grabs lately, doesn't it?