Are Cro Magnon populations in Britain native or the result of recent migrations?

[Oliver109]

Bell Beakers were a culture that spread across Western Europe (much like Slavs across Eastern Europe), but the ones in NW Europe were the purest and least diluted by Farmer blood. Actually the settled British Bell Beakers were genetically further from the settled Iberian and Southern French Bell Beakers than the modern British are from Southern French and Iberians (because of the mediating effect of the Celts).

That's quite interesting, but wasn't the farmer ancestry in the UK quite significant with all the Stonehenge etc?

[Creoda]

That's quite interesting, but wasn't the farmer ancestry in the UK quite significant with all the Stonehenge etc?

They were wiped out to the tune of over 90% in a few centuries, i.e. the Bronze Age British had less than 10% ancestry from Neolithic Britons

Strangely the Bell Beakers apparently continued the construction of Stonehenge for centuries, even while they were in the process of replacing the original builders.

[Oliver109]

They were wiped out to the tune of over 90% in a few centuries, i.e. the Bronze Age British had less than 10% ancestry from Neolithic Britons

Strangely the Bell Beakers apparently continued the construction of Stonehenge for centuries, even while they were in the process of replacing the original builders.

That's quite interesting, was it basically a massacre of the Neolithic British?

[Creoda]

That's quite interesting, was it basically a massacre of the Neolithic British?

That's impossible to know, there probably were massacres but I'd guess the Neolithic British were mostly wiped out by disease brought by the Indo-Europeans, that travelled ahead of them as well, the Neolithic British population collapse began before the Bell Beakers even invaded. The numbers of Beakers coming by sea couldn't have been too great considering they had no maritime tradition when they reached the Atlantic.

Could be from this:
https://www.livescience.com/64246-an...dish-tomb.html

In a nearly 5,000-year-old tomb in Sweden, researchers have discovered the oldest-known strain of the notorious bacterium Yersinia pestis — the microbe responsible for humanity's perhaps most-feared contagion: the plague.

The finding suggests that the germ may have devastated settlements across Europe at the end of the Stone Age in what may have been the first major pandemic of human history. It could also rewrite some of what we know of ancient European history.

The finding came about as the researchers were analyzing publicly available databases of ancient DNA for cases in which infections might have claimed prehistoric victims. They focused on the previously excavated site of Frälsegården in Sweden. Previous analysis of a limestone tomb at the site found that an estimated 78 people were buried there, and they all had died within a 200-year period. The fact that many people died in a relatively short time in one place suggested they might have perished together in an epidemic, lead study author Nicolás Rascovan, a biologist at Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France, told Live Science. The limestone tomb was dated to the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the period when farming began.

The researchers discovered the previously unknown strain of plague in the remains of a woman at the Frälsegården site. Carbon dating suggested she died about 4,900 years ago during a period known as the Neolithic Decline, when Neolithic cultures throughout Europe mysteriously dwindled. [Photos: Stone Age Skulls Found on Wooden Stakes]

Based on her hip bones and other skeletal features, they estimated the woman was about 20 years old when she died. The plague strain found with her had a genetic mutation that can trigger pneumonic plague — the deadliest form of historic and modern plague — suggesting the woman likely died of the disease. (The most common form of plague is bubonic plague, which occurs when plague bacteria spread to the lymph nodes and cause inflammation, according to the World Health Organization. The inflamed lymph nodes are called "buboes." If the bacteria spread to the lungs, they can trigger the deadlier pneumonic plague.)

By comparing the newfound strain with known plague DNA, the scientists determined that the ancient sample was the closest known relative of the plague bacterium's most recent ancestor. The study researchers theorized that the ancient sample diverged from other plague strains about 5,700 years ago.

How plague spread
The new findings contradict an older theory about how plague spread, according to the researchers. About 5,000 years ago, humans migrated from the Eurasian steppe down into Europe in major waves, replacing the Neolithic farmers who lived in Europe at that time. Previous research had suggested the steppe folk brought the plague with them, wiping out pre-existing settlements upon their arrival. However, if the plague specimen from the Swedish grave diverged from other strains 5,700 years ago, it likely evolved before the steppe migrations began — suggesting it was already there.

Rather, the researchers suggested that the plague emerged in so-called mega settlements of 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants that existed in Europe between 6,100 and 5,400 years ago. These mega settlements — up to 10 times larger than previous European settlements — "had people, animals, and stored food close together, and, likely, very poor sanitation. That's the textbook example of what you need to evolve new pathogens," senior study author Simon Rasmussen, a computational biologist at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.

If plague evolved in these mega settlements, "then when people started dying from it, the settlements would have been abandoned and destroyed. This is exactly what was observed in these settlements after 5,500 years ago," Rasmussen said. Plague then could have spread across trade networks made possible by wheeled transport, which had expanded rapidly throughout Europe by that time, Rascovan said. Eventually, it would have made its way even to relatively distant sites like Frälsegården in Sweden, where the woman the researchers analyzed died. That woman's DNA revealed she was not genetically related to steppe folk, supporting the idea that this ancient strain of plague arrived before the migrants came from the steppe.

Poetically mirrors the fate of Amerindians and Aboriginals from diseases brought by Indo-European/Bell Beaker descendants thousands of years later.

[Oliver109]

That's impossible to know, there probably were massacres but I'd guess the Neolithic British were mostly wiped out by disease brought by the Indo-Europeans, that travelled ahead of them as well, the Neolithic British population collapse began before the Bell Beakers even invaded. The numbers of Beakers coming by sea couldn't have been too great considering they had no maritime tradition when they reached the Atlantic.

Could be from this:
https://www.livescience.com/64246-an...dish-tomb.html


Poetically mirrors the fate of Amerindians and Aboriginals from diseases brought by Indo-European/Bell Beaker descendants thousands of years later.

Thanks for the info, this makes sense and it would explain why Bell Beakers had quite a large impact in Britain and elsewhere

[aherne]

Alpines in France are not the result of a mythical migration of ENF farmers from western Asia but rather the result of shrunken Cromagnids.

That phenotype is abused to mean everyone with a round-ish face: obviously it can point to any ancestry, but true Alpinids (like in Italy and Spain or Greece) point to Anatolian plateau, where this phenotype is found in greatest purity. A true Alpinid is brunet by definition and it can be found from Tajikistan to Morocco and most of Europe. It is absolutely an ENF inheritance

[aherne]

That's impossible to know, there probably were massacres but I'd guess the Neolithic British were mostly wiped out by disease brought by the Indo-Europeans, that travelled ahead of them as well, the Neolithic British population collapse began before the Bell Beakers even invaded. The numbers of Beakers coming by sea couldn't have been too great considering they had no maritime tradition when they reached the Atlantic.

Could be from this:
https://www.livescience.com/64246-an...dish-tomb.html

You are treating their findings as an unfailible gospel, when in reality it's just pseudoscience with no historical evidence, strongly contradicted by phenotypes in the region. But what can I say... some people truly believe that NATO is a defensive alliance as well

[Immanenz]

How much more? That still doesn't explain the fact that gracile alpine types are about 4 times as common in central France than in England.

Alpine cannot be explained by anything that easy- it might be the fact that- in reality outside of NW Europe in MOST- areas people DID NOT select for robustness.

[Oliver109]

Alpine cannot be explained by anything that easy- it might be the fact that- in reality outside of NW Europe in MOST- areas people DID NOT select for robustness.

Thanks but how do you explain the pigmentation difference? Alpines as a rule are brunet with some darker shades of blonde and red hair occasionally, they also are usually not freckled but have a slightly sallow complexion, again this is typical of southern France or Dagestan.

[Oliver109]

That phenotype is abused to mean everyone with a round-ish face: obviously it can point to any ancestry, but true Alpinids (like in Italy and Spain or Greece) point to Anatolian plateau, where this phenotype is found in greatest purity. A true Alpinid is brunet by definition and it can be found from Tajikistan to Morocco and most of Europe. It is absolutely an ENF inheritance

Thanks but there is also the chance that upper paleolithic survivors became reduced in the region of France and Spain etc thanks to climate, all alpine regions have a similar climate and topography, large robust features seemed to hold on in the colder flatter north.