[AnimeThat]

Now that E-V13 has been found in early Neolithic Spain, it also disproves Dienekes' theory that E-V13 is of Greek origin and expanded during the Bronze Age.

[eEwbYjOH]

Now that E-V13 has been found in early Neolithic Spain, it also disproves Dienekes' theory that E-V13 is of Greek origin and expanded during the Bronze Age.

Truth be told, I never understood Dienekes hypothesis there with a Bronze Age expansion, anyways. There's no evidence for a colonization of Iberia from the eastern Mediterranean during the bronze age, anyways, and certainly not from the Greeks. The first people from the Eastern Mediterranean to arrive in Iberia were the Phoenicians. The Greeks didn't have any presence in Iberia before the 6th century BC, and there certainly never was a large-scale settlement by the Greeks in Iberia (the impact of the Phoenicians is a bit more debatable, though, since Andalusia had an extensive number of Phoenician settlements).

[Enalsebeerkawl]

Are we saying that E-v13 is phoenician or north african ?. If phoenician where does that leave the albanian question of e-v13?

I did previous place information that the phoenician reached the lower areas of adriatic sea to trade with the adriatic veneti for amber , which they sold to alexandria.

Could it not be phoenician and be Mycenean people. they did disperse from the pelopennes around 1150BC.

[Promotiona]

Are we saying that E-v13 is phoenician or north african ?. If phoenician where does that leave the albanian question of e-v13?

I did previous place information that the phoenician reached the lower areas of adriatic sea to trade with the adriatic veneti for amber , which they sold to alexandria.

Could it not be phoenician and be Mycenean people. they did disperse from the pelopennes around 1150BC.

I am not sure if you read well the new study, but this Spanish E-V13 is 7000 years old. It means that it was probably all over the Mediterranean in the Early Neolithic, and possibly some even before that. The Phoenicians and Mycenaeans are not thought to have propagated any significant amount of E-V13. If they had an impact, it is especially on the spread of haplogroup J2.

[VIDEOHITE]

I am not sure if you read well the new study, but this Spanish E-V13 is 7000 years old. It means that it was probably all over the Mediterranean in the Early Neolithic, and possibly some even before that. The Phoenicians and Mycenaeans are not thought to have propagated any significant amount of E-V13. If they had an impact, it is especially on the spread of haplogroup J2.

I was trying to see where these two links would fit, one being an extension of yours/or not
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/11...nd-g2a-in.html


and the other
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068964/

[DOWNLOADnowADOBEphotoSHOP]

Here is another post talking about early human findings in Europe, and Dienekes' uses it to argue Neanderthat admixture wasn't that huge: http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/11...in-europe.html

I still don't have a clear opinion about this, so I'd prefer to read other points of view.

[Abarricoss]

Both greeks and phoenicians had a very small impact on Iberia, with that said, we can guess this minor E-V13 neolithic presence it came trough the Pyrenees from Central Europe.

[Kayacterype]

The G2a surely came from there, but the E-V13 certanly could have crossed from North Africa even long before the estimated age of the sample. It possibly contributed with the other typical North African clades, to configure the small amounts of African admixture present in all today's Iberians.

[ThisIsOK]

E-V13 is very rare in North-Africa, while is the most common clade in the Balkans, and quite common in Central Europe, this sounds like regular neolithic farmers

[Peertantyb]

Regarding Neanderthals, Dienekes made it very clear in his latest blog that he remains more than sceptical that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred.

[sapedotru]

I already posted this yesterday, Taranis. And still waiting for other points of view...xD

[vTLWqa1l]

I have followed Dienekes' Anthropolgy Blog for a few years now. The guy certainly knows how to find new studies, and copy and paste them on his blog. But I am increasingly bewildered, even dumbfounded by his point of view and theories regarding, well, just about everything...

It started with Neanderthals, when I realised that Dienekes was adamantly opposed to the idea that Homo Sapiens could have interbred with them (example 1, example 2) and only reluctantly retracted his position when the evidence of Neanderthal DNA among Eurasian became unavoidable this year.

Then comes his position on the diffusion of the Neolithic, about which he commented today.

Ötzi's genome will be extremely important for a different reason: for a long time a conflict has simmered in archaeology between idea diffusionists, demic diffusionists, and migrationists.

• Idea diffusionists aka proponents of acculturation propose that ideas (such as the idea of crop-raising or metal-working) spread without large movements of people. They predict that Europeans did not change much since the Paleolithic, and Neolithic/post-Neolithic processes have little affected them.
• Demic diffusionists propose that humans behave like mindless automata, random walking across the landscape, mating with whom they find, and filling up a continent by the accretion of millennia-long processes of diffusion. They predict that Europeans are a fairly smooth cline of Neolithic+Paleolithic constituent elements from southeast to northwest.
• Migrationists adhere to an older and much-maligned arrows-on-the-map paradigm, whereby humans intentionally decide to move from A to B, even across great distances. According to this idea, colonists sometimes mix with/sometimes kill/sometimes avoid pre-existing inhabitants. Migrationists predict that prehistoric Europe was a dynamic patchwork of genetic-cultural units entering the continent from different routes at different times, gradually forming the cornucopia of its proto-historical ethnic groups.

It's been about two years since I came out as a migrationist. In my view, the colonization of Europe was less a random process and more akin to the much later colonization of the Mediterranean and Black Sea by the Greeks, and of the Americas by Europeans. We can envision initial forays of exploration, prompted by either curiosity or tales of strange sights and great riches (be it the riches of Marco Polo's East, El Dorado, the Golden Fleece, etc.). These were followed by colonists, either pushed from their homelands by social/economic malaise, or pulled towards their destinations by opportunity, establishing long-range communication/trade networks. Finally, more people could flow along the established routes in a directional, intentional flow of people.

The first problem is the way he presents the choices. He obviously only allows for one diffusion or migration to have taken place, which is an overly simplistic view. He doesn't take into account the possibility of successive waves of Neolithic migrants, nor later migrations, including the expansion of the steppe people in the Bronze Age.

Secondly, the way he presents it presumes that all Europe was affected equally, when it seems obvious enough by now that the genetic impact of West Asian Neolithic farmers was much more important in Southeast Europe than in North Europe.

Thirdly, the way he imagines that Neolithic farmers intentionally decided to colonise Europe doesn't make much sense because these people were not organised in nations or city-states like the Greeks of the Classical Antiquity. They didn't have maps, and didn't even have writing. The Neolithic and Chalcolithic villages and towns of Southeast Europe didn't have any government or temple or any other public buildings associated with cities. Some towns in the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture were bigger than Mesopotamian cities, but cannot be called cities by archaeologists because they lacked these essential features of an organised society. If Dienekes doesn't even know the archaeology of Southeast Europe, where his ancestors are from, chances are he doesn't know much about archaeology in general.


Dienekes has mentioned many times that he supports the hypothesis that Neolithic farmers brought R1b and Indo-European languages to Europe. This is a double mistake, because all the evidences (ancient DNA, autosomal studies, study of R1b subclades, archaeological cultures, and linguistics of the IE languages) concur against a Neolithic arrival of R1b in Europe (except in the Pontic Steppe) and against a Neolithic spread of IE languages to Europe.

Dienekes obstinately thought that Ötzi would be R1b, and apparently is still convinced that R1b1b2 will show up in other Neolithic or Chalcolithic sites.


So which of the three choices do I think is correct ? None, of course ! The way I imagine things is more intricate and involves a bit of the three (depending on the region) and numerous migrations. Anybody who would choose only one of these scenarios is a fool (and I mince my words).

What probably happened, based on the current data, is this (chronologically) :

1) Early Neolithic : Anatolian farmers (G2a) move to the Balkans, the Danubian basin, and progress as far as Germany, the Low Countries and northern France. The migration is not an invasion. It is not sudden, nor planned. Farmers just keep advancing little by little every year, or every generation, in order to produce more food for the growing population. Only the most fertile regions are settled, leaving ample space for local hunter-gatherers (I2) to live around them. After a few centuries (or possibly millennia) of living side by side, hunter-gatherers learn to farm too, and the two groups increasingly merge with one another through exchanges of brides. I expect a lot of word borrowing from each part, as well as cultural exchanges.

Another migration from Anatolia (by sea) brings agriculture to Italy, North Africa, Iberia and South France. Similar process except that Mesolithic South Europeans are a blend of I2 and E1b1b.

A third migration from northern Anatolia/Mesopotamia to the Pontic Steppe brings mostly domestic animals (goats, pre-sheep, cows) and pottery. Agriculture fails in most places due to the cold climate. G2a3b and R1b2a1 merge in the southern steppes (North Caucasus to Southeast Ukraine). Foragers (R1a) in forest-steppe to the north.

Agriculture doesn't spread to Scandinavia and the British Isles at first due to the cold climate, but some Neolithic technology like pottery are adopted through contact with neighbours from the continent.

2) Late Neolithic & Chalcolithic : deeper fusion between Mesolithic and Neolithic populations in Europe. New wave of migrants from Anatolia to Greece and the Balkans (perhaps J2 ?).

3) Early Bronze Age : Pontic steppe pastoralists domesticate the horse, develop wool-sheep, the lactose tolerance mutation appears and spreads, bronze weapons first developed in the North Caucasus quickly adopted by steppe nomads (R1a1a, R1b1b2a1, G2a3b1a).

Thanks to the greater mobility (horse), increased population (lactose tolerance + more cattle thanks to herding on horses), superior weapons (swords and axes) and a new greed for copper and tin, Steppe nomads start attacking the rich copper-mining cultures of Southeast Europe. After a few centuries of killing and pillaging, they leave the ruined Danubian basin and continue westward and conquer Western Europe.

This latter migration brought Indo-European languages to Europe. It doesn't fit in any of the three categories, since it wasn't a slow and peaceful demic diffusion, but it wasn't a planned colonisation either. It was more like a disorganised series of raids by different clans that grew in power and number and progressively conquered most of Europe. It's difficult to find an analogy in historical times. Just imagine war-like Celtic or Germanic tribes each expanding their domains until there isn't any land left among the "Natives", then they start fighting against each others (which is pretty much what happened until the Roman conquest). View more random threads same category:

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[GetsTan]

That's not all. Yesterday Dienekes wrote :

It is rather remarkable that after millions of years of living as foragers, humans on opposite sides of the Eurasian landmass adopted agriculture at roughly the same time. Some would interpret this as evidence of long-range diffusion of ideas, or even people.

I don't reject that idea; it's possible that the notion of agriculture became widely known among contemporary hunter-gatherers even if they did not adopt it right away. If that was the case, then "agriculture" (the concept) could have traveled far and wide without the spread of people or domesticates, explaining why eastern and western Eurasian peoples domesticated different species. It was later that "agriculture" started expanding from its cradles not only as a concept, but also as a people and as a complete economic package.

Alternatively, agriculture as an idea sprouted at the same time in West and East because of a law-like response of humans to the changing environment after the end of the last Ice Age. Under that hypothesis, prehistoric climate change either led to increases in population size or changes in ecosystems, and people on either side of the Eurasian landmass responded in sync to the same problem in similar ways.

Although I agree that the end of the Ice Age was a necessary factor for the development of agriculture in Eurasia, it is too simplistic to say that it was the only reason. As he said himself, "humans" had been hunter-gatherers for millions of years. There were plenty of climatic variations during that period. Obviously the anatomically modern humans only appeared 200,000 years ago. But that is still plenty of time to develop agriculture. The Ice Age is a poor excuse for not developing agriculture since most of humanity lived in Africa or South Asia, where it was warm enough to farm. Furthermore, the Neolithic revolution wasn't just about farming, but also about making pottery and domesticating animals. Why didn't humans in Africa think about that earlier ?

What really changed is our brains, from about 50,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens left Africa and started mingling with Neanderthals in the Middle East, then again in Europe and Central Asia 30 to 40,000 years ago. This was a crucial part of our recent evolution. Two sexually compatible types of hominids would meet for the first time (?) since they split from each others at least 700,000 years ago. The combined immune systems made the hybrid children stronger (as attested by a study this year). And the hybrid offspring could have inherited the best characteristics of each subspecies, including the best alleles for intelligence, adaptability, imagination, heat and cold resistance, social skills, and so on. Some of the hybrid offspring got many bad alleles from each parent and were eliminated from the gene pool through natural selection. This was a long process, probably spanning on tens of thousands of years. I believe that this is the reason why cave paintings suddenly appeared out of nowhere around 32,000 years ago in Europe, just a few thousands years before pure Neanderthals disappeared completely. Pure Homo Sapiens and pure Neanderthals each had their own qualities, making it impossible for one to eradicate the other for 30,000 years since they first met. But neither could compete with the new hybrids.

Consequently, when the climate eventually got warmer, the Eurasian survivors had inherited the most beneficial genes from both Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal, and were more creative and adaptable than any human had ever been before. This is why agriculture and pottery were invented (and could be invented at all) in such distant places as the Middle East and China/Japan roughly around the same time, then independently again a bit later by other Neanderthal hybrids in Papua and the Americas.

Agriculture only reached sub-Saharan Africa when a back migration of the new Middle Eastern hybrids "updated" the gene pool (they were surely the E1b1b, T and R1b-V88 lineages which are dispersed all around Africa today).

Australian Aborigines never developed farming, pottery, etc. because they descended from the first migration of Homo Sapiens out of Africa, the one that departed from East Africa 70,000 years ago and followed the coast of South Asia until Australia. Therefore they never interbred with Neanderthals (although they seem to have mated with the archaic Southeast Asian Homo Erectus, descended from the Java Man), and apart from a few very localised contacts with Papuans or South Asians never really had a fresh influx of new genes from outside either (unlike sub-Saharan Africans) before the Europeans arrived.

Dienekes rejected the idea of interbreeding with Neanderthals, so he obviously couldn't have thought about it. As usual he took the chose the first easy solution that any child could have thought of.

[ugosanchezo]

You direct harsh words there against Dienekes, Maciamo! But, I'm inclined to agree. The part that actually raised alert on my side was the vast mis-assessment regarding Ötzi, and his maintainance of R1b.

Regarding your own scenario, I'm confused by your statements regarding the Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age. Which archaeological cultures do you see at work there, exactly?

[neguoogleX]

I don't think the mating with Neanderthals was something important. It was something rather minoritary and occasional. As for the colonisation of Europe, we still can't explain how can R1b be so high in Western-Europe, unless it was a massive colonisation

[toponlinecasinoer]

I don't think the mating with Neanderthals was something important. It was something rather minoritary and occasional.

I'm inclined to agree with you there, given how we are talking about a percentage of admixture of a few percent. Having said this, I definitely won't rule out that this didn't have some benefits to humanity.

As for the colonisation of Europe, we still can't explain how can R1b be so high in Western-Europe, unless it was a massive colonisation Well, yes. But is it reasonable, despite obvious absence of R1b from all Neolithic sites known thus far, to assume that this occured in the Neolthic, if a Copper Age (or even Bronze Age) spread seems more likely?

[nerrttrw]

I tend to agree with you rather than Dienekes on most things, Maciamo, and you're definitely winning the prediction contest if anybody is keeping score. Still, it's worth taking any individual's speculation with a grain of salt, even someone with as much data in front of him as Dienekes, or you, or Taranis, or anybody. Of course, even if we are to relegate Dienekes' usefulness to a source aggregator, he's nonetheless a very good source aggregator.

Dienekes' definitions in his list of the three models are weird, as you indicate. Migrationism is becoming popular among genetic athropologists who see that idea diffusion and demic diffusion don't fit the data. But migrationism doesn't imply colonalism, that's an absurd jump in logic that nobody but Dienekes seems to hold. People can be migrating intentionally, keeping to their own groups, and making warfare with other groups (obviously not demic diffusion) without anything mirroring colonialism.

[SobiquYo]

All Europeans have Neanderthal admixture, but it's true we are talking about a few alleles. Not sure about the phenotypical impact, although sometimes I saw people with very curious traits.

I personally don't give too much importance to Dienekes' opinions. He is good performing admixture analysis, that's what I really care.

[Gastonleruanich]

I tend to agree, but I must partly contest this:

Dienekes has mentioned many times that he supports the hypothesis that Neolithic farmers brought R1b and Indo-European languages to Europe. This is a double mistake, because all the evidences (ancient DNA, autosomal studies, study of R1b subclades, archaeological cultures, and linguistics of the IE languages) concur against a Neolithic arrival of R1b in Europe (except in the Pontic Steppe) and against a Neolithic spread of IE languages to Europe.

In my opinion (as I have stated a few times), while it is true that the bulk of the R1b was brought to Europe with the Indo-European migrations of the Eneolithic/Bronze Age, I think that there was most probably some R1b (without the L11 mutation) in Neolithic Southeast Europe brought about by widely attested (archaeologically) migrations to what is now the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast from northern Anatolia. This, in my opinion, is supported by the frequency of R1b-M269 (xL11) in SE Europe:
Busby_R1b%28xL11%29.jpg

[GZFL2tDA]

In my opinion (as I have stated a few times), while it is true that the bulk of the R1b was brought to Europe with the Indo-European migrations of the Eneolithic/Bronze Age, I think that there was most probably some R1b (without the L11 mutation) in Neolithic Southeast Europe brought about by widely attested (archaeologically) migrations to what is now the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast from northern Anatolia. This, in my opinion, is supported by the frequency of R1b-M269 (xL11) in SE Europe:

I don't think R1b L11- was what Maciamo was talking about, but you bring up a good point. Still, R1b L11- doesn't mirror other clearly Neolithic haplogroups in Europe (namely G2a). Was this a distinct Neolithic migration from G2a's in your opinion?

I suppose R1b L11- has some similar spots as G2a, but generally, if your map is right, it trends more Eastern, at least. Just drift in favor of G2a as the Neolithic population moved West?