Europe's conquering heroes? Likely farmers: study

[Bridie]

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.

[Allenson]

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

Well, it isn't 100% certain--it's just what a growing and rather vocal group of people think. There's been a major shift in the 'paradigm' regarding the age & origins of R1b in the past few years.

The reason why many consider the near east to be from where R1b entered Europe is due to it's current overall distribution when plotted on a map and also that the variance within R1b is greater in the east and less in the west.

In other words, there are many different subtypes of R1b. The overall frequency of R1b as a proportion of the total male population is highest in western Europe and yet, it is claimed, that there are more subtypes present in the east, Anatolia in particular. This last part though, is still not fully proven in my eyes.

The thinking is, that the greter variation within R1b in Anatolia indicates that it has existed there longer and thus has had more time to mutate into its various subforms.

Also, those who follow this line of thought suggest that the present distribution of R1b can be attributed to this haplogroup "surfing" a wave of advance of agriculturists as they fanned over the European landscape, out-breeding the Mesolithic men and swallowing them up by way of a greater and more reliable food source. This is a little simplistic though as the Neolithic didn't happen in one fell swoop, but intead, in fits, spurts & starts, finally reaching the western shores of Europe (where R1b absolutely dominates as in the case of some 85% in Ireland) 6500 years ago.

What we really need is better techniques of extracting ancient DNA--as this skill develops, many many questions will be answered.

They've gotten quite good at extracting mtDNA from ancient skeletons but the Y-chomosome is troublesome.

[Allenson]

Also, I have been wondering lately if we can look at population movements from historic times--ones that we know a fair bit about, somehow as potential analogs for ancient population movements (or lack of)?

When thinking about questions regarding ancient population movements, my mind often drifts to European colonization of North America, the mechanisms behind this, the genotypes that were carried here, the near replacement of the American Indians, etc. I guess it's a case of apples & oranges but it's tempting nonetheless.

Love to hear Agrippa's thoughts on this.

[Tony]

I'm gonna say it because of this

"Maybe, back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer," Dr. Patricia Balaresque of Britain's University of Leicester said in a statement.

and also because sometimes a veggy comes out sayin that we all should stop eating animals and adopt a vegetarian lifestyle because of this and that and also because after all hey it's been the farmers who won the civilization battle against the hunters right?so there must be something innately positive in farming and eating only vegetable.

Well , no.

There's nothing naturally or morally or phisically better in farming , if compared with hunting and gathering.
The only reason why farmers did won the battle is a matter of sheer number , farming simply can sustain more people per surface unit than hunting-gathering.
So if we were able to travel 10 thousand and then 6000 and 3000 years ago we would see the farming communities multiplying at a much faster pace than the hunting-gathering tribes until a point of no return would have been reached where the matter of continuing to hunt-gather or turning to farming were a matter of life and death , I mean or you turn to farmin and start to multiply at a rate similar to the other farming tribes or you are doomed.

Of course it's been a pattern that lasted I'd say 11.000 years and it completed itself only with the disappearing of the last nomadic people a few hundred years ago.

[Thulsa Doom]

The study is for sure interesting, but as I suggested in the other thread, the conclusions are a bit forced. I guess it depends on the strange selection of sampled populations, they missed out of the whole Black Sea area. And although the molecular clock methods they used are pseudo science, the underlying trend, the east to west migration, is believable.

When you look at population movements in the history, Africa makes a good case. Movement in the same climate zone is much preferred and can happen rapidly, e g the Hausa migration that Agrippa mentioned. Movement across climate zones takes a longer time due to the need for adjustment of the culture, e g the Bantu expansion. A similar neolithic scenario is likely for Europe too.

The first farmers spread easily westward along the Mediterranean Coast but had a harder time colonizing Balkan. So somewhere in Central Europe (or maybe Northern Italy) a group invented an adapted form of agriculture that suited Western Europe. That group must have been dominated by R1b carriers and the new farming style depended most likely heavy on cattle breeding. These people (LBK) spread along the Danube and the Rhine Valleys into Western Europe without any bigger resistance, and soon they where dominating the area.

So, the interesting question is, who were these people? The Indo-Europeans seems to be the most likely answer, but that does not explain the Basque people. The Basques could of course had come along the Mediterranean route, but that would not explain their genetic background. So either was the Basque "basqified" recently or so were all early farmer in Central Europe "Basques". I believe the latter scenario is correct.

Is there any evidence for this? Well, not much, there is though some circumstantial proofs. The close east-west genetic connection in Europe is one. Some similarities in the appearance between people north of the Black Sea, Danube people, Frenchmen, Dark Irish and Iberians is another indication. Then there is the theory about old European hydronyms which indicates that there existed an earlier widespread language in Europe, but interestingly not in Southern Balkan and Eastern Europe. Normally this theory is explained by an older IE substratum or that any recemblance is pure coincidence. But (oh this is going to wind up Osweo) one linguist, Theo Vennemann, has proposed that the hydronyms can be explained by a Basque origin of the river names. Another evidence proposed by Vennemann is the use of vigisimal counting system in different part of Europe. This (the f-d up Danish) way of counting has a parallel in the Basque language.

Where were the Indo-Europeans then? The northward expansion for the farmers went sluggish due to difficult climate and bad terrain, they did probably reach the Baltic Sea through Denmark. So the IEs must have been somewhere on the other side of the Moravian Gate, between the Baltic Sea and the Steppe, where they got some time to adopt and adapt to agriculture.

[Agrippa]

Also, I have been wondering lately if we can look at population movements from historic times--ones that we know a fair bit about, somehow as potential analogs for ancient population movements (or lack of)?

When thinking about questions regarding ancient population movements, my mind often drifts to European colonization of North America, the mechanisms behind this, the genotypes that were carried here, the near replacement of the American Indians, etc. I guess it's a case of apples & oranges but it's tempting nonetheless.

Love to hear Agrippa's thoughts on this.

Actually America is really a nice experiment, also with the introduction of horses and their effect on the people. The Indians were pushed into the "steppes" = prairie, but they also went there, because they had a new way of life, mobile, more warlike etc. The typical Amerindians, like portrayed in many movies, are the adaptation of some Indians to the mounted hunter and warrior way of life after Europeans introduced the horse. Most of those lived quite different before that event.

So in a way, they repeat the steppe people-horse warrior shift in Eastern Europe some thousand years ago in some generations, but unlike those with less animal husbandry, also because there were so much wild animals around them, they didnt have to do it I guess.

Whats even more interesting in America, probably more interesting than the Europeans march through the continent, for Europe's past, is how the Amerindians among themselves pushed each other from here to there etc.

Because there is not just one Indianid racial form, ethnocultural group and history. Today it might look so to some, but in fact they pushed and fought each other over thousands of years and some became exterminated or enslaved by others.

Usually the more progressive groups, racially and culturally, with techniques which were, beside animal husbandry of the large extend of Europids, since these animals were absent or just not domesticated at the right time for various reasons, pushed in more or less peaceful advances the others aside.

If comparing the European forests with the Brazilian forests, we can see parallels actually.

The more progressive Brasilid racial forms expanded over a wide area along the coast and along the rivers, took the open fertile planes and pushed the older groups aside. They usually killed the males, but took the females - similar to the Bantu, similar to some Turkic, similar to what we have to expect from warlike Neolithics, as some findings suggest and what was common among Indoeuropeans.

If looking at this map of the Tupi-languages, you might see no structure, no order at the first look:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._languages.png

But now look at the topography of the country:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...razil_topo.jpg

And landscape:

http://images.nationmaster.com/image...l_veg_1977.jpg

The older, more often Lagid racial and more primitive cultural, people, can be largely associated with the Jê languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%AA_languages

Compare their habitat:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._languages.png

The language might be related to the more dominant and progressive Tupi, Caribs, Arawauk etc., so probably we deal with more layers over an even more ancient people, of which little is left by now. Yet the Jê languages being driven close to extinction, by the Tupi & related as well as European languages alike. They are in Brazil, the lowest-oldest surviving layer.

You can compare that situation 1:1 to the expansion of Neolithics in Central Europe, Northern Europe and the Baltic-NE-European situation. There in particular, as to this day Nordoid forms are more dominant at the coast, the open plains and Osteuropid in the inland, the former forest areas etc.

The Tupis/Brazilids/culturally-racially more progressive groups "encircled" the older forms in the inland, drove them out of the areas they wanted.

The Tupi people were one of the main ethnic groups of Brazilian indigenous people. Scholars believe they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, but 2,900 years ago they started to spread southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast.

The Tupi people inhabited almost all of Brazil's coast when the Portuguese first arrived there. In 1500, their population was estimated at 1 million people, nearly the same population of Portugal at that time. They were divided into dozens of tribes, living in each tribe from 300 to 2,000 people.

The Tupi often fought against the other tribes of the region or even among themselves, because there was not a unified Tupi identity. Despite the fact that they were a single ethnic group that spoke a common tongue, the Tupi were divided into several tribes which were constantly engaged in war with one another. In these wars the Tupi normally tried to capture their enemies to later kill them in cannibalistic rituals, instead of just killing them in battle.[2]

Cannibalism was part of their ritual after a war. The warriors captured from other Tupi tribes were eaten as they believed they were absorbing their strength. The practice of cannibalism among the Tupi was known in Europe by Hans Staden, a German soldier and mariner who was captured by the Tupi. Staden was taken three times to be eaten in a cannibal ritual, but the Indians refused to eat him, because he cried and asked for leniency. According to Darcy Ribeiro, the Tupinambá "did not eat cowards". Back to Europe, Staden published a book about his experience among the Brazilian Indians, which was published in 1557.

The new conquerors played the same game:

Although the Tupi population was exterminated because of slavery or because of European diseases to which they had no resistance, a large population of maternal Tupi ancestry occupied much of the Brazilian territory, taking the ancient traditions to several points of the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people

What type dominates the future depends on the constant influx of new settlers and the selective conditions. If the newcomers have, probably because of a different culture or selective disadvantage in specific conditiosn, lower birthrates, the original forms will reemerge even if being pushed close to extinction on the longer run.

If the Europeans would have given these Indians some thousand years more, what could you expect? The old races being extinct? No, but only mixtures live on, mostly with a Tupi-Brazilid father and Lagid mothers. They still pushed the others aside, when Europeans came, they actually still do it! Europeans, the next wave of even more developed settlers, just pushed the Tupis forwards which again pushed the older Indian groups into even more unfavourable areas. From the remains we know, obviously the older Indian groups, the Lagid race, was present on the coast in areas where you dont find them in significant numbers any more - already not when the Europeans came.

Interestingly they had also the custom of "adopting" some sons of the conquered, making them Tupi-warriors and letting them fight as their own ethnic kin with their related Lagid tribes. Thats the main form of survival for their y-DNA/male line. Without that custom, they would be totally eliminated in the mixed groups and Tupis.

The very same happened in Europe. The Neolithic people, later especially those which were racially and culturally more progressive, well organised, warlike, patriarchal and more mobile with an effective animal husbandry, went always along the coasts, along the rivers and into the fertile open planes.

Everywhere the leptodolichomorphic types and more progressive longheaded Cromagnids being associated with this pattern, on the higher planes and mountains the Dinaroids emerged as specialists and most other racial and cultural forms, which were comparatively more primitive and one sided, were pushed aside and lived on in areas of retreat, in dense forests, isolated mountainous regions, or that areas where the former population was so numerous, that even if the newcomeser just mixed with some, they made a significant part of the population.

The whole scenario took place in a better, warmer climate and under specific, high level competition situation, with higher individual and group selection.

Later Alpinisation and Baltisation happened as a result of the fact, that the newcomers didnt eliminate the former, more archaic Cromagnoids of their areas and their servants and mixed offspring survived the worsening and more one sided conditions, especially in Medieval Europe at the time of the dependent farmers, hunger, plagues, social suppression, unergonomic work-physical stress etc. better.

So the whole "re-emergence" of non-Aurignacoid forms is largely the result of this pattern: Conquest-high level selection -> One sided low level selection in later civilisation.

For that pattern it doesnt really matter whether single racial forms of the leptodolichomorphs, progressive longheaded Cromagnids and Dinarids came from inside or outside of Europe, they just fit into the concept of the human forms needed to do the task at that time.

If you have to imagine a simple farmer surviving all the hardships of the Medieval Age with maximal offspring, you get an Alpinoid in Central Europe and an Osteuropid in North-Eastern Europe, so much more than about immigration, its from this perspective, about "demands".

A typical Alpinoid is less likely to be an effective herder-warrior, a Nordid an efficient poor tiller-servant, so Europe bred its "workers" under the respective conditions.

Everywhere the advance of more progressive cultural and racial forms follows the same pattern, for various reasons: Coast, rivers, open fertile plains, avoid the foreign, unknown and less productive mountains, forests and very hot or very cold areas, in which the older and less competitive forms can retreat into.

America, South East Asia, Europe, Africa, always the same...

Also the reemergence took place elsewhere. F.e. in some parts of South Eastern Asia more progressive Sinids conquered the lands, yet among their servants survived large numbers of mixed and pure Palaemongolids, this small tiller and hunger-gatherers survived in an even more infantile form in large numbers among the new civilisations.

The same Mexico. The Spanish conquered the country, most surviving Mexicans have Spanish fathers, so do the Mestizos and even many self-identified "Indians", yet the racial type of the frugal, indifferent, stoic and enduring Indian farmer survived in large numbers and dominates today the picture of many areas, in which more intermediate or even European forms dominated some decades ago.

They bred themselves to numbers, which will swallow the European layer on the longer run and the only trait of the Europeans which will survive is in many of the future Mexicans probably just a somewhat finer face and the y-chromosome, yet most other traits of the Europid conquerors being lost.

The Dinaroids explored the mountains later and with a higher cultural level, they had metallurgy, animal husbandry etc., thats a specialisation to this environment which allows an effective and dominant form to survive in it, that wasnt possible before and the Dinarid in Europe adapted to this niche.

Already the surviving Bell Beaker groups show that pattern...

So, whatever the results will be, a drastic expansion of the early Neolithic markers is plausible and concordant with the picture we get from other areas of the world as well as from the prehistoric findings.

To what extend it happened in the "far-away" areas, after so many times of mixture, is hard to tell. But a 90percent plus survival of indigenous lines is even less likely, if looking at the big picture. The only reason could be, that the local y-DNA had a significant biological advantage. Otherwise its impossible, because the movements were too big, to signficant for being ignored and so low especially in the yDNA in many areas of Western Europe.

I always asked myself how this could have been possible. The only option would be, that local Mesolithics made up a second centre of expansion, lets say from Northern Spain, from which they spread successfully and dominant the culture they adopted - with their genes.

So if such a secondary centre existed, of a people which developed the racial and cultural characteristics which were so successful, it might not be visible in the genetic lines at all, because it would be an expansion of R1b at the expense of other R1b in the West largely.

As for the whole R1b story, we all came from the Near East, all Europids do, the question is just WHEN! And if that WHEN depends solely on the mathematic model to calculate the age and there are many of such models around, I'm still rather sceptical to which scenario I will tend.

Furthermore my personal opinion is that both R1b and R1a was strongest in Central Asia, an Europid heartland for a long time, from where they expanded in various waves, Mesolithic AND Neolithic, which makes the picture even more complicated. The whole Black Sea region might have adopted the full Neolithic package very early and the Catalhöyük-type of people being surely influential, which would have introduced a very modern European form into the mixture.

In some European areas you had not just one wave of the new types, ethnicities and cultures, but many, every new wave strengthened the impact of the former, that must be considered, especially if looking at Britain f.e. Its close to impossible that 90+ percent are local survivors in most regions, yet the question is from where the bearers of the new way of life came from, like suggest above...

[Sigrid]

Farming is given scant attention in most Western societies today, but new genetic detection work indicates that most European men are descended from early farmers who led arguably the most important cultural change in the history of humanity.

A team at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom tracked back the male Y chromosome, passed down from father to son, and found that the most common Y chromosome in Europe mirrored the spread of farming about 10,000 years ago.

Dr Patricia Balaresque, first author of the study, said that 80 percent of European Y chromosomes had their ancestry in farmers who pushed into Europe from the "Fertile Crescent", the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the Persian Gulf, where cereal cropping was thought to have originated.

[...]

Link

[Sigrid]

Here is a similar article on the subject.

[Beorn]

Already posted: Most British men are descended from ancient farmers and then Aemma decided to copy me and posted it also: Europe's conquering heroes? Likely farmers: study

Come on mods. Earn your keep. Chop-chop!.

[Sigrid]

Already posted: Most British men are descended from ancient farmers and then Aemma decided to copy me and posted it also: Europe's conquering heroes? Likely farmers: study

Come on mods. Earn your keep. Chop-chop!.

My apologies for doing a re-post ....