Europe's conquering heroes? Likely farmers: study

[Allenson]

Meh, it really remains to be seen anyway. Geneticists have had a pretty good run at contructing phylogenetic trees but they can't seem to agree on how to date these things.

[Polako]

Why is it 100% certain that R1b entered Europe from the Near East? Due to its relationship with R1a?

In any case, it seems unlikely to me at this stage that R1b was carried with Neolithic expansions into Europe, since some of it's highest concentrations are reached in the area of the Franco-Cantabrian Ice Age refuge.

R1a was definitely in North/Central Europe 4,600 years ago, because we have the skeletons to prove it. It remains to be seen whether R1b was there as well at that time.

Modern haplogroup frequencies don't mean much.

[Albion]

Black = haplogroups associated with the neolithic "first farmers", Blue = pre-farming or Indo-European haplogroups.
Map created by shading in haplogroups map in two shades.

Farming would have be transmitted by a few farmers, a lot in the SE to negligible amounts in the NW.

Another thing to keep in mind in these PC times with sensationalist headlines like "European men are descended from Middle East Farmers" is this: let's say for the sake of argument that is ineed so and that the mighty R1b was carried into Europe by a bunch of farming usurpers from the east. In modern day populations of the Middle East, R1b is rare to non-existent. Therefore, all the R1bs left, creating a vaccum for the J & E lineages that now dominate the Middle East. The highest percentages of one clade or another of R1b in the east are found in Anatolia (15%) and amongst Ossetians (43%).

Exactly. PC bullshit would write it like we are one of the same with the modern Middle Easterners.
Even E3b1 associated with first farmers changed in Europe.

My money is still on one of two scenarios: R1b is either a lineage of the Paleolithic/Mesolithic times in Europe or, it actually came to Europe after the introduction of agriculture on the backs of horses from the steppes.

I go with either Palaeolithic or via the Indo-European invasions (partially replacing I), but I think it's Palaeolithic.

R1b is probably a Paleolithic lineage. Most Paleolithic Europeans adopted agriculture through cultural diffusion, not demic diffusion.

According to Kalevi Wiik, demic diffusion happened only in the blue area, everything outside that area was cultural diffusion. The black dots shows the border between demic and cultural diffusion.

These correlates roughly to the "first farmer" haplogroups on the map above.