Quote Originally Posted by XenophobicPrussian View Post
I don't see how you get to any conclusion other than Hallstatt Celts were southern French/Iberian like.

Yes, there's an incredible amount of variation, that's the entire reason why Hallstatt Celts are going to be southern French/Iberian like. Levels of that kind of variation in steppe/neolithic farmer ancestry will not survive from the early Bronze Age to the Iron Age, that's just not going to happen, not without some sort of rigid caste system, and I'm not even sure the differences between Indian castes are that large. This means the variation is explained by locals, mixed people, and immigrants. The Breton/British clustering ones are clearly the locals, the others mixes(could be just more southernly located locals too though), the southern shifted ones are quite clearly immigrants from the Hallstatt zone(potentially from southern France, but there's literally no reason to think this as we already have the southern shifted population appearing in the Alpine Hallstatt Zone, and Switzerland/Austria are closer to Alsace than southern France, and there's actually known migration and cultural diffusion from the Alpine area to all surrounding areas, unlike from southern France).

Right now the only IA sample from Switzerland is Iberian clustering(for the record, N. Iberian to S. France clustering can just be natural variation in a population, but N. Iberian to Belgian? not happening), and you don't even need more as this paper pretty much ends the argument. More IA samples from Switzerland/Austria would be great but as far as I'm concerned this is settled.
I'll examine the Bronze age samples later but at least the Bronze age and Iron Age averages are still very close so the most evident change between the 2 periods is a reduction of variation, not a particular southern shift, but like I said I'll look into it more, Alsace especially.

A bit off-topic, but you previously mentioned that the original proto-Celts would have been quite Northern before reaching the South German region, what do you believe the general chronology of events was? Where and when did the Proto-Celts come from and when did they mix with the Southern-looking Danubian/Upper Rhine populations?