# Humanities & Anthropology > History & Civilisations >  The Chalcolithic, Swastika, and pre-proto-Indo-Europeans in Mesopotamia

## ToBeOrNotToBe

In, as far as I know, all of the most ancient sites associated with copper metallurgy, swastikas have been found. I will be focusing on Mesopotamia here, but it is worth noting the presence of Swastikas, metallurgy and primitive writing script in the Chalcolithic Balkans.

The spread of the Swastika in Mesopotamia can be mapped from the Halaf culture in Upper Mesopotamia, through Mesopotamia during the Hassuna and Samarra cultures, and down to the Ubaid culture by the Persian Gulf. Later, the Ubaid culture is replaced by that of the Uruk period.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...C3%ADodo_6.PNG

As an example, here is some pottery from the Samarra period, clearly with the Swastika motif:

https://i.imgur.com/4vqvJk7_d.jpg?ma...idelity=medium

We can also work backwards to complete this migration story. Maykop was formed by settlers from Leyla Tepe, which itself was likely formed from late Ubaid settlers (pre-Uruk). Presuming Maykop was the source of CHG and R1b to Yamnaya, we can trace the movement of R1b from Halaf all the way to Yamnaya.

This makes sense archaeologically, but does it make sense in other ways?

It, as mentioned, explains the spread of the Swastika across Mesopotamia (the Swastika would have been picked up by J2 tribes, and spread through things like the Kura-Araxes expansion to e.g. the IVC)

It explains the presence of shared words with Semitic languages, such as the word for bull.

It agrees with the recent Yamnaya-like R1b found near Azerbaijan (where the Gutians were likely from).

It explains the CHG found in Yamnaya (R1b would have inevitably mixed with J2 women on the way to the Steppe).

mtDNA found in these regions are very R1-like, for example U4 and H3a.

Amongst other things.

In this migrational chain of Halaf to Maykop (then to Yamnaya), assuming the presence of Swastikas in Halaf to be indicative of R1b (and Maciamo has other reasons to suspect R1b was present in that rough area, check his entry for R1b on the main page), and assuming Maykop is R1b (highly likely, especially given the recent result from Iranian Azerbaijan), we now have two knotted ends of the rope. I cannot see how this idea can be wrong.

And for the final reminder to those who doubt the presence of R1b in this period, not least as culture-bearers, may I refer you to the plethora of naturally red-haired mummies of Ancient Egypt.

Perhaps, despite not inventing farming, these gingers imposed themselves in a hierarchical system similar to the Indo-Europeans themselves.

And I fully realize this will sound ridiculous to some, but then again, it also seems ridiculous that an Egyptian, probably the greatest ever, could look like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...picture%29.jpg

And my final disclaimer against the mods - this isn’t Nordicism. There would be little to no Northern European genetic component involved.

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## IronSide

> In, as far as I know, all of the most ancient sites associated with copper metallurgy, swastikas have been found. I will be focusing on Mesopotamia here, but it is worth noting the presence of Swastikas, metallurgy and primitive writing script in the Chalcolithic Balkans.
> 
> The spread of the Swastika in Mesopotamia can be mapped from the Halaf culture in Upper Mesopotamia, through Mesopotamia during the Hassuna and Samarra cultures, and down to the Ubaid culture by the Persian Gulf. Later, the Ubaid culture is replaced by that of the Uruk period.
> 
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...C3%ADodo_6.PNG
> 
> As an example, here is some pottery from the Samarra period, clearly with the Swastika motif:
> 
> https://i.imgur.com/4vqvJk7_d.jpg?ma...idelity=medium
> ...


Hail the gingers !!!! our ancient masters who imposed themselves on us in a hierarchical system, who wouldn't want that ...

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Hail the gingers !!!! our ancient masters who imposed themselves on us in a hierarchical system, who wouldn't want that ...


The ginger bit was a joke lol - I’m not ginger by the way, I’ve got brown hair and blue eyes.

But seriously - give me a flaw. Of course, we need more evidence before it can be confidently said to be true, but there’s nothing wrong with this theory. In fact, it makes a lot of sense.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Hail the gingers !!!! our ancient masters who imposed themselves on us in a hierarchical system, who wouldn't want that ...


If you think it’s so ridiculous, provide arguments against it.

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## IronSide

> If you think it’s so ridiculous, provide arguments against it.


Against what ? the imposing, we couldn't resist .. those ginger bastards overwhelmed us, and then took our women .. and then took them again and made us watch (it was hot) and then imposed the caste system.

Our lovely ginger dictators ..

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Against what ? the imposing, we couldn't resist .. those ginger bastards overwhelmed us, and then took our women .. and then took them again and made us watch, and then imposed the caste system.
> 
> Our lovely ginger dictators ..


A similar story occurred in India, yet that’s widely accepted.

If it wasn’t for the Swastika, I would have guessed all these cultures (Halaf, Samarra etc.) would be J2 (pred.). But with that, and also Halaf basically perfectly superimposing itself on Maciamo’s prediction of the Middle Eastern R1b’s pre-migration homeland, I’m sold. Plus the red-haired mummies.

I mean, Ramses II was a ginger, and Tutankhamun was probably R1b-M269

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## IronSide

> A similar story occurred in India, yet that’s widely accepted.
> 
> If it wasn’t for the Swastika, I would have guessed all these cultures (Halaf, Samarra etc.) would be J2 (pred.). But with that, and also Halaf basically perfectly superimposing itself on Maciamo’s prediction of the Middle Eastern R1b’s pre-migration homeland, I’m sold. Plus the red-haired mummies.
> 
> I mean, Ramses II was a ginger, and Tutankhamun was probably R1b-M269


Hey what's wrong with J2 people if they wanted to join the Swastika club ? we demand social justice here

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Hey what's wrong with J2 people if they wanted to join the Swastika club ? we demand social justice here


Well they did join the Swastika club, but they weren’t Indo-European. It’s just a good luck symbol, probably something to do with the Sun, it’s not some mystical symbol of Aryan powaaaa

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

God will somebody just argue against this or state agreement, it’s pretty rubbish if an idea remains in isolation - I could just be nuts

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## IronSide

> God will somebody just argue against this or state agreement, it’s pretty rubbish if an idea remains in isolation - I could just be nuts


No man you're a genius, don't listen to them.

I state agreement, HAIL GINGERIA

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> No man you're a genius, don't listen to them.
> 
> I state agreement, HAIL GINGERIA


Not an argument. Anyway, hopefully this conversation can get more serious.

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## IronSide

> Not an argument. Anyway, hopefully, this conversation can get more serious.


Sorry if I hurt your ginger feelings.

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## Ygorcs

Where did you make the link between man who carry one haplogroup called R1b and being ginger or more generally light-haired? I'm sure it's not R1b or J2 that determine one's hair color, nor is R1b as a whole consistently correlated with high frequency of light hair even nowadays, let alone 6000-5000 years ago. Because there are supposedly many red-haired elite mummies in Egypt? (by the way did they make DNA tests on them to even affirm that so confidently? Henna-colored hair was pretty common fashion in Egypt, and then there is also the obvious fact that hair tends to lighten as it starts to decompose) I'm really lost on some of your assumptions, they're making huge leaps from the premise to the conclusion, and the necessary explanations are lacking. Much of it seems, if I understood you correctly, to rely on the undemonstrated speculation that there is something particularly "Indo-European" about light hair.

Also, how on earth such a powerful, technologically advanced (copper metallurgy, a huge novelty at that time), hierarchically dominant, economically and politically prized population did not manage to spread a huge and common language family in the ancient world from Europe to India and Egypt? Or do you believe those were already the Indo-Europeans even though their languages were not attested in the Middle East (where all the 1st inscriptions are found) until milennia later, and their language most probably started to diverge (at least if you take exception to Anatolian and maybe, not certainly, Tocharian) only during the Bronze Age?

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## Ygorcs

About Ramesses II, come on, that pharaoh is supposed to have died when was around 90 years old! Do you really think he still had his natural hair at that age? If he did, he was not only lucky, but also virtually miraculous. LOL. I really hope they make a thorough DNA analysis on this mummy to see if he had the derived genes for lighter hair, though that proves little to nothing about your hypothesis, since the mutations for blonde and red hair are much much older than this supposed spread of swastika-bearing Near Easterners and was by then certainly found, even if in low proportions, in lots of different populations and ethnicities.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> About Ramesses II, come on, that pharaoh is supposed to have died when was around 90 years old! Do you really think he still had his natural hair at that age? If he did, he was not only lucky, but also virtually miraculous. LOL. I really hope they make a thorough DNA analysis on this mummy to see if he had the derived genes for lighter hair, though that proves little to nothing about your hypothesis, since the mutations for blonde and red hair are much much older than this supposed spread of swastika-bearing Near Easterners and was by then certainly found, even if in low proportions, in lots of different populations and ethnicities.


Yeah he was ancient when he died so clearly that isn't his natural colour, but his hair is still naturally red. You only need a microscope to find this out, I don't know the details, but I know that they confirmed he was naturally ginger.
As for associating R1b with red hair - I think that's especially fair given that back then, everybody was a little less mixed. R1b tribes would have had lots of female R1b lines (the equivalent, obviously they don't carry Y DNA), unlike today, where R1b tribes have progressively snatched EEF women.
I don't believe there is anything Indo-European about these people, but I believe like Maciamo they would later mix with R1a foragers to create such a language (and the shared words with proto-Semitic, and even shared mythologies (both believe in a world tree bearing a fruit granting immense power that is tended to by either a snake or dragon, as but one example) suggest that their Urheimat's can't have been far apart).
And the Swastika is clearly related to the Indo-Europeans, one way or another (either by pots or people), they all trace back to them. The oldest Swastika is in the Ukraine, on mammoth ivory iirc, which matches the hypothesis of R1 people being mammoth hunters. Swastikas seem to be especially associated with the R1b branch, considering it has been found in Africa (from V88 tribes) but also in Mesopotamia before ever being found on the Steppe, as far as I know.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> About Ramesses II, come on, that pharaoh is supposed to have died when was around 90 years old! Do you really think he still had his natural hair at that age? If he did, he was not only lucky, but also virtually miraculous. LOL. I really hope they make a thorough DNA analysis on this mummy to see if he had the derived genes for lighter hair, though that proves little to nothing about your hypothesis, since the mutations for blonde and red hair are much much older than this supposed spread of swastika-bearing Near Easterners and was by then certainly found, even if in low proportions, in lots of different populations and ethnicities.


The there's also signs of Swastikas being found in places like Peru as early as 300 AD, it just doesn't make any sense that they developed this independently. There's also the famous red-haired Chinchorro mummies, that Maciamo looked at (via Genetiker's analysis) and claimed the best fit of the European components was in Neolithic Ukraine. I also don't believe they developed farming independently - are we to believe all farming ultimately derives from the Middle East, except for that of the Americas? Because that's currently our best guess (there's debate as to whether Papuans invented their agriculture outside of any foreign influence too, but they're minor players). Is it really the case that after being hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years, in the space of a few thousand years farming had been adopted indepently in multiple places? 

Also, consider things like metallurgy in South America - I don't believe they discovered that independently either. 

But Swastikas and red-haired mummies are the real clinchers of outside influence for me. There's also blue eyed sculptures in all of these very places, but associating blue eyes solely with Indo-Europeans isn't fair. I don't know if the Amerindian mummies have been examined so as to deduce if they have naturally red hair, but whatever the case, the hair is definitely Caucasoid. 
There MUST have been a maritime, red-haired people, who spread agriculture to hunter-gatherers in the Americas, or at least if they didn't, they found their way there. Coincidentally, the ancient Greeks associated red hair with the sea, but anecdote doesn't count for much.

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## Maciamo

I have also thought about a movement Halaf->Hassuna-Samarra->Ubaid->Leyla-Tepe->Maykop->Yamnaya. I didn't know about the swastikas and it reinforces the connection. Besides, Halaf is the region where cattle were domesticated, presumably by R1b people, so the presence of R1b in the region wouldn't be odd. The problem is the timing. R1b-L23 is supposed to have reached the Steppe before 5000 BCE and in that scenario Leyla-Tepe culture is too young. But the others could still work.

Northern Mesopotamia is overwhelmingly J2 today, with also lots of J1 and T1a. But it could very well be that these haplogroups came during the Kura-Araxes expansion from the region of Armenia, and replaced a lot of R1b lineages. It's also possible that only some tribes were R1b, or that through a founder effect it was mostly R1b people that led the migration across the Caucasus, even though R1b wasn't dominant in Halaf, Hassuna and Ubaid. There are many possibilities.


As for Ramses II's red hair, I agree with Ygorcs. It could be discoloration with age. All black hair are reddish when bleached. As for Tutankhamun being R1b-M269, I think it was a hoax. The only source was the PC screen in the lab showed on a Discovery Channel documentary, but people who make such documentaries will just show any lab or any PC screen without caring if it's the actual results being discussed, as they don't expect their audience to pause the screen and run the STR values to verify the haplogroup. The haplotype shown on TV was an Irish R1b-M222, which is impossible for Tutankhamun.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> I have also thought about a movement Halaf->Hassuna-Samarra->Ubaid->Leyla-Tepe->Maykop->Yamnaya. I didn't know about the swastikas and it reinforces the connection. Besides, Halaf is the region where cattle were domesticated, presumably by R1b people, so the presence of R1b in the region wouldn't be odd. The problem is the timing. R1b-L23 is supposed to have reached the Steppe before 5000 BCE and in that scenario Leyla-Tepe culture is too young. But the others could still work.
> 
> Northern Mesopotamia is overwhelmingly J2 today, with also lots of J1 and T1a. But it could very well be that these haplogroups came during the Kura-Araxes expansion from the region of Armenia, and replaced a lot of R1b lineages. It's also possible that only some tribes were R1b, or that through a founder effect it was mostly R1b people that led the migration across the Caucasus, even though R1b wasn't dominant in Halaf, Hassuna and Ubaid. There are many possibilities.
> 
> 
> As for Ramses II's red hair, I agree with Ygorcs. It could be discoloration with age. All black hair are reddish when bleached. As for Tutankhamun being R1b-M269, I think it was a hoax. The only source was the PC screen in the lab showed on a Discovery Channel documentary, but people who make such documentaries will just show any lab or any PC screen without caring if it's the actual results being discussed, as they don't expect their audience to pause the screen and run the STR values to verify the haplogroup. The haplotype shown on TV was an Irish R1b-M222, which is impossible for Tutankhamun.


It’ll be interesting to see what comes of ancient DNA from the Middle East, as it’s all a bit confusing as to whether people or pots founded a particular culture. I’d lean towards people, but we don’t know yet. It could easily be various combinations, like in the case of the Beaker folk.

I’m quietly confident that Halaf, Hassuna-Samarra and Maykop have something to do with the R1b that made its way to the Steppe. Ubaid may be involved too, but there’s a possibility the Halaf-Ubaid transition (I’m not sure why they skip Hassuna-Samarra, but I think they’re considered Southern extensions of Halaf) was of a replacement of Halafians with Ubaidians. In my head, the Sumerians are pred. J2, as the Gutians didn’t have their own writing system, and they seem like a pretty good candidate for R1b as well as likely not being related to the Sumerians.

I’m not at all sure about other players - the Sumerians, at least, certainly seem to be invaders, as they clearly described Ubaidians as non-Sumerian. Shulaveri Shomu also needs to be considered, as it too has links to Halaf. If I could find craniometric analysis of all of these cultures, it would be immensely useful, as despite its lack of precision, I’m a big believer in all that stuff - it’s a physical characteristic that measurably differs among different populations. Whatever the case, all these cultures will very likely be part of some interaction between J2, perhaps J1, and R1b, due to their links to animal husbandry. But anyway...

Firstly, why are the Egyptians flat-out refusing to publish Tut’s Y DNA? Clearly it can’t be an Irish subclade, but it seems a bit suspicious to me, especially considering the following:

That’s incorrect about Ramses II, here is a sourced quote from Wikipedia:

Microscopic inspection of the roots of Ramesses II's hair proved that the king's hair originally was red, which suggests that he came from a family of redheads.[70] This has more than just cosmetic significance: in ancient Egypt people with red hair were associated with the deity Seth, the slayer of Osiris, and the name of Ramesses II's father, Seti I, means "follower of Seth."[71]

Seth, amongst other things, was the storm god of the ancient Egyptians, but tellingly also that of foreigners. Seth was also seen as the same god as the Hittite storm god Teshub, AND was associated with the Hyksos (meaning "rulers of foreign lands").

If Ramses II actually had red hair, which he did, it strongly points to R1b ancestry somewhere along the line. If, like you’ve hypothesised, R1b was involved in Chalcolithic Mesopotamia, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he potentially derives his ancestry from an Asiatic group of invaders.

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## IronSide

@Dr. Eugenics

It seems my efforts to trollalize your thread have failed, congrats my swastika loving friend, people are taking you seriously, may the ginger gods guide you to the right path, like they guided the ancient ginger adventurers to the Americas to civilize them or whatever.

Maybe I'm just too cruel? I'll let you be.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> @Dr. Eugenics
> 
> It seems my efforts to trollalize your thread have failed, congrats my swastika loving friend, people are taking you seriously, may the ginger gods guide you to the right path, like they guided the ancient ginger adventurers to the Americas to civilize them or whatever.
> 
> Maybe I'm just too cruel? I'll let you be.


I don’t love the Swastika by any means, but it is fascinating. Besides, the Nazis wouldn’t have associated its spread with red haired peoples - the average Ashkenazi Jew is more likely to have red hair than the average German (I see this as relating to the Kura-Araxes expansion, with the KA folk mixing with R1b folk, as outlined above).

But these ideas aren’t mine, and they should be taken seriously because there’s a lot of evidence for them. 

People go on about this idea of the White gods (mainly in the context of Amerindians), but a lot of it can be substantiated. But it’s not like they would have invented civilisation - only spreading it (R1 explorers, yo). Civilisation has been clearly associated with farming, and R1b doesn’t have much to do with that. 

Importantly, what is known is that in Mesopotamia, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that there was at least a dual based class system between farmers and herders. This wasn’t thought to be the case originally. 

From Wikipedia: 

Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear connections to earlier cultures in the region of middle Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to the origins of Sumeriancivilisation. Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts.

If I was to be too simplistic, the identity of the farmers could be assuming to belong to something like G2a, but for the pastoralists and fishermen it’s unclear. Red hair has long been associated with the sea (by the ancient Greeks for example) and it matches with my auburn maritime folk idea (not my idea, but you get the point). But R1b is clearly associated with pastoralism. But, J2 peoples have also been herder types, and have also made great sailing civilizations. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume the tripartite was between G2a farmers, R1b herders, and J2 fishermen, or some other combination, but the idea of segregation has to be considered! Historically, rulers and heros in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were associated with animal taming, so there’s that. 

And sorry for the caps, but I believe this is pretty important:

IT WOULD BE FASCINATING IF THERE WAS SOME FORM OF SEGREGATION BETWEEN FARMER AND HERDER/H-G AT PLAY HERE - WE ALREADY KNOW THAT IN THE EARLY FARMER EXPANSION INTO NEOLITHIC EUROPE, BOTH GROUPS MAINLY KEPT TO THEMSELVES.

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## IronSide

> People go on about this idea of the White gods (mainly in the context of Amerindians), but a lot of it can be substantiated. But it’s not like they would have invented civilisation - only spreading it (R1 explorers, yo).

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> 


Not an argument, and did you read what I wrote? They were explorers, just as they have been in other accepted parts of history. I know it sounds kooky, but can you explain those mummies? You can’t, and your attitude is consistently trollish, so I’m no longer responding to you unless you become serious.

*If I was still at school, where there were many Indians, and told them a (at least relatively) light-pigmented people had invaded India, brought with them Sanskrit and Hinduism, and set up the caste system, they’d see me as a retarded neo-Nazi with a fetish for Whites. Yet that’s what happened.*

And they would be genetically very different to any modern European, anyway.

tl;dr Leave this thread

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## Ygorcs

> As for associating R1b with red hair - I think that's especially fair given that back then, everybody was a little less mixed. R1b tribes would have had lots of female R1b lines (the equivalent, obviously they don't carry Y DNA), unlike today, where R1b tribes have progressively snatched EEF women.


The problem is that virtually all most ancient populations that have been analyazed and found to have an appreciable ammount of R1b haplogroups were overwhelmingly brown-haired and not blonde or, which is even rarer, ginger - and that includes the pretty unequestionably Indo-European Yamnaya. Thus, it seems to me that you simply took as a preconceived dogma that R1b people must've originally have had something to do with ginger or more generally lighter haid, even in the absence of any strong evidence leading to this conclusion. I don't think this kind of thing, first establishing what you want to be true and only then trying to find something that backs it up while perhaps neglecting what does not fit that narrative. Another problem is that we know that there were probably some percenage of light-haired people among EEF populations (including some samples from Anatolia) and in SHG populations of Northern Europe - none of which was associated with high proportion of R1b men or admixture with West Asian lineages (CHG-like?). In fact, the first population (among those we've analyzed) where light hair seems to have been really common, maybe prevalent, was the Globular Amphora Culture, made up mostly of EEF (and even the probably Indo-European peoples they interacted with, CWC, had very little R1b in them).

I still cannot see anything that makes your assumption at least plausible, much less likely. You may be right on some points, but this supposed correlation with ginger hair or even blonde hair is very weak, and there is also not many evidences to presume, without further, more enlightening genetic findings, that there was any great immigration of R1b-majority people in the Middle East as early as the Late Neolithic, much less this completely speculative, dare I say even somewhat fanciful idea that they became a highly hierarchic political/cultural elite in a caste-like system, yet they somehow managed to rule Egypt and be not just politically prestigious, but also culturally more advanced (metallurgy and so on), but still left virtually no linguistic impact at all, not even a strong substrate in the local language.

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## Ygorcs

As for swastikas, I'd be a little wary of associating all the spreads of this motif with just one expansive people in a particular culture, location and period. There are swastika motifs (of course there are variations in the specific format of the image) found as far away as Pre-Columbian Native America. Also, swastikas are archetypical symbols that may spread much faster than genes or even ethnicities through partial absorption of prestigious cultural elements of foreigners, especially if they were near to them. Greeks adopted a much more profoundly transformative thing, the alphabet, yet they didn't turn Phoenicians because of that. Now, I don't deny that there may be some cultural association with a real genetic/ethnic expansion, but I don't think we can safely say that expansion happened the way you propose (hierarchy, caste-like system, creation of metallurgy etc.), and was as influential in the long term (in terms of genetics and language) as you might think, especially if you're talking of decidedly non-IE regions like Copper Age Egypt, Sumer or Levant.

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## Ygorcs

> Not an argument, and did you read what I wrote? They were explorers, just as they have been in other accepted parts of history.


I sincerely hope you're not implying that a complex set of socio-cultural behaviors and contingent attitudes and practices (generally summed up as "being explorers") are not passed on seamlessly and unchanged through a certain Y-DNA haplogroup, especially when you yourself say that those first R1b tribes were most probably very different, autosomally and even in terms of Mt-DNA distribution, to any modern Europeans (and West Asians, I'd add). That kind of thinking would really make seriously doubt your reasons for all these hypotheses and, more than that, your actual knowledge on this subject.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> I sincerely hope you're not implying that a complex set of socio-cultural behaviors and contingent attitudes and practices (generally summed up as "being explorers") are not passed on seamlessly and unchanged through a certain Y-DNA haplogroup, especially when you yourself say that those first R1b tribes were most probably very different, autosomally and even in terms of Mt-DNA distribution, to any modern Europeans (and West Asians, I'd add). That kind of thinking would really make seriously doubt your reasons for all these hypotheses and, more than that, your actual knowledge on this subject.


I know Y DNA doesn’t encode for much given its relatively low mutation rate, which is necessary if it’s to be passed down virtually unchanged from father to son. Selection through the Y chromosome can take place, but it’s going to be a lot rarer than in autosomal chromosomes. I don’t at all think they were explorers because they were R1b, just that there is a correlation between the R1b tribes and that lifestyle. I didn’t mention anything of a genetic component, though I do believe it has over time been somehow selected for. But looking at the history of R1b and R1 tribes in general, can you argue against it?

Also, addressing previous points:

SHG received their light pigmentation from their partial EHG ancestry. As for GAC being so blonde - that one really stumps me, as I think it does everyone. Regardless, there is clearly a correlation between R1b tribes and rufosity - and no, I don’t believe this genetic component is encoded within the Y chromosome! Yamnaya being dark pigmented is unexpected to me, but if this really was the case (as the DNA suggests), I put this down to the CHG these R1b guys must have picked up on their way to the Steppe. I again would have thought there would have been lots of red hair amongst Yamnaya - in fact I am extremely confident of this, but ancient DNA doesn’t seem to be great at picking up red hair for some reason (one example - the British Beakers barely have any red hair, yet are said to have almost entirely replaced the previous Britons to match almost perfectly modern Briton ancestry, which we know to have a lot of red hair). End of story though - there is a very ancient connection, that is evident through examining distributions, between R1b tribes and red hair.

As to the doubt of R1b-folk being involved in some form of hierarchy, I think you’re forgetting what happened in Yamnaya, and later during its expansion into Europe. Check out the Insular Celtic Y DNA profile. Also, and you haven’t fully commented on this, Ramses II DID have red hair, and he almost certainly had pretty fair skin too (or at least I could never imagine someone with red hair and dark olive skin, as the Egyptian portraits suggest his skin would have been). 

As for the Swastika - there is a clear correlation with R1 people going back all the way to the Paleolithic Ukraine, but I agree that at the end of the day it is just a symbol, and plenty of non-IE people have used it. My hypothesis starts out with pre-proto-IE though, but I get your point. 

And as for the Americas - surely you can see it can’t be a coincidence that they happened to develop the exact same symbol. They clearly saw it from somewhere, and it’s unlikely to be from across the Bering Strait given the earliest in the Americas are actually in South America iirc, but there’s always that possibility - but then the Swastika would have to be ******* old (Ma’lta-ish old).

How do you personally explain the clear Caucasoid red hair on Peruvian mummies though? That is a minor point to everything I believe in, but it’s by far the most fantastical, and if it’s true, the element of disbelief before evidence should be taken away from consideration.

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## IronSide

I was wrong to Mr ToBeOrNotToBe .. I bombarded his thread with nonsense, I apologise and ask if my posts can be removed.

Even if you're a tr0ll this was not the right way to address you. And it seems there are some issues you thought with at least the faint smell of logic. But most of the rest is still madness.

Sorry Dr. Eugenics

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> I was wrong to Mr ToBeOrNotToBe .. I bombarded his thread with nonsense, I apologise and ask if my posts can be removed.
> 
> Even if you're a tr0ll this was not the right way to address you. And it seems there are some issues you thought with at least the faint smell of logic. But most of the rest is still madness.
> 
> Sorry Dr. Eugenics


Yeah okay - also I seriously have no idea why my title is Dr Eugenics too, but I can’t be bothered to change anything as I’m typing from a super slow iPad.

And I think all of it has the smell of logic ;)

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## Ygorcs

> The there's also signs of Swastikas being found in places like Peru as early as 300 AD, it just doesn't make any sense that they developed this independently. There's also the famous red-haired Chinchorro mummies, that Maciamo looked at (via Genetiker's analysis) and claimed the best fit of the European components was in Neolithic Ukraine. I also don't believe they developed farming independently - are we to believe all farming ultimately derives from the Middle East, except for that of the Americas? Because that's currently our best guess (there's debate as to whether Papuans invented their agriculture outside of any foreign influence too, but they're minor players). Is it really the case that after being hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years, in the space of a few thousand years farming had been adopted indepently in multiple places? 
> 
> Also, consider things like metallurgy in South America - I don't believe they discovered that independently either. 
> 
> But Swastikas and red-haired mummies are the real clinchers of outside influence for me. There's also blue eyed sculptures in all of these very places, but associating blue eyes solely with Indo-Europeans isn't fair. I don't know if the Amerindian mummies have been examined so as to deduce if they have naturally red hair, but whatever the case, the hair is definitely Caucasoid. 
> There MUST have been a maritime, red-haired people, who spread agriculture to hunter-gatherers in the Americas, or at least if they didn't, they found their way there. Coincidentally, the ancient Greeks associated red hair with the sea, but anecdote doesn't count for much.


Why do you think it just does not makes sense that Native Americans could have developed things like agriculture, metallurgy and even a simple and arguably archetypal, sun-related symbol as a swastika? What is there that is so illogical and unlikely, huh? You just "do not believe" that they could've developed those things or is it based on some concrete evidences, not just some faith or intuition? Let's not even comment much about the obvious fact that those swastikas and supposedly "European" mummies of Peru (you know there is still a lot of controversy and no established consensus in the scientific community about those) are just way too late to explain the development of agriculture in South America, the first signs of which date to as early as 5000 BC. Some mummies and swastikas of the Late Antiquity won't cut it.

I find your readiness to accept the most unrealistic scenarios of ginger Middle Easterners in South America and your unwillingness to believe that Native Americans could have, just like Neolithic East Asians developed agriculture independently, had enough inventiveness and intelligence to find out some ideas and techniques by themselves in more than 10,000 years living in one place a bit... let us say to not be so offensive... suspicious. It's getting really difficult to try to believe that you aren't only speculating too much, but that you are led by a strong confirmation bias mixed with some unsettling doses of bigotry.

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## Ygorcs

> I know Y DNA doesn’t encode for much given its relatively low mutation rate, which is necessary if it’s to be passed down virtually unchanged from father to son. Selection through the Y chromosome can take place, but it’s going to be a lot rarer than in autosomal chromosomes. I don’t at all think they were explorers because they were R1b, just that there is a correlation between the R1b tribes and that lifestyle. I didn’t mention anything of a genetic component, though I do believe it has over time been somehow selected for. But looking at the history of R1b and R1 tribes in general, can you argue against it?


Well, if you do not think those R1b tribes are related to the CHG admixture, since according to you this one may be the responsible for the dominant dark hair in Yamnaya people, then what do you think they were like (predominantly) in terms of autosomal DNA? The only admixture that is common to Bronze Age Levant, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe and possibly Central Asia is some kind of CHG or CHG-related ancestry. What does the EHG part of SHG have to do with this narrative of Halaf R1b tribes in the Middle East? There is no appreciable EHG in the ancient Middle East until much later, and there is no significant sign of expansion of EHG admixture in the ancient samples from that region spreading as far south as Egypt. I really don't follow what you're exactly trying to say. You talk about R1b tribes, if such a thing ever existed as one common ethnicity significantly distinct from surrounding cultures, but you don't make it clear what you think those R1b were like genetically. Believing they had a prevalence of a given Y-DNA haplogroup is not enough. They apparently were not CHG nor EEF in your opinion, but they also can't have been simply EHG. Then... Which autosomal admixture do you think they spread to other regions, what they were like autosomally, what specific genetic impact of those R1b tribes can we see as a common feature of the genetic history of regions as far as India, Egypt and North Europe (indicating they may have come from one and the same demographic event)?

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## davef

@ToBe
Why do you think the native South Americans weren't capable of a Neolithic revolution? And a good amount of native North American tribes adopted farming as well.

If that isn't your view and I misunderstood, i apologize in advance

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## Ygorcs

> Microscopic inspection of the roots of Ramesses II's hair proved that the king's hair originally was red, which suggests that he came from a family of redheads.[70] This has more than just cosmetic significance: in ancient Egypt people with red hair were associated with the deity Seth, the slayer of Osiris, and the name of Ramesses II's father, Seti I, means "follower of Seth."[71]
> 
> Seth, amongst other things, was the storm god of the ancient Egyptians, but tellingly also that of foreigners. Seth was also seen as the same god as the Hittite storm god Teshub, AND was associated with the Hyksos (meaning "rulers of foreign lands").
> 
> If Ramses II actually had red hair, which he did, it strongly points to R1b ancestry somewhere along the line. If, like you’ve hypothesised, R1b was involved in Chalcolithic Mesopotamia, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he potentially derives his ancestry from an Asiatic group of invaders.


Why on earth are you trying to substantiate your claim about Halaf culture and Early-Mid Neolithic R1b peoples (you're talking about R1b getting into the steppes, right? That sets a latest date of around 5000 BCE to your hypothesis) by talking about a man and historic migrations of the Late Bronze Age some 4000 years later? That's anachronism at its best (or worst), and it also of course means that you're comparing peoples that were most certainly distinct not just culturally, but also genetically. That would be like believing that the migrations of Syrians in the present Civil War must be strongly correlated and even prove something about the invasions of Assyrians and Amorites in Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia. LOL

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Why do you think it just does not makes sense that Native Americans could have developed things like agriculture, metallurgy and even a simple and arguably archetypal, sun-related symbol as a swastika? What is there that is so illogical and unlikely, huh? You just "do not believe" that they could've developed those things or is it based on some concrete evidences, not just some faith or intuition? I find your unwillingness to believe that Native Americans could have, just like Neolithic East Asians developed agriculture independently, had enough inventiveness and intelligence to find out some ideas and techniques by themselves in more than 10,000 years living in one place a bit... let us say to not be so offensive... suspicious. It's getting really difficult to try to believe that you aren't only speculating too much, but that you are led by a strong confirmation bias mixed with some unsettling doses of bigotry.


I also don’t believe these R1b guys developed agriculture themselves, so do I see them as stupid?

For every Eurasian culture, it all traces back to the Middle East. Why should the Amerindians be any different? What made them emerge out of hunter-gatherers, as they had been for a great deal of time, roughly at the same time (roughly in a very broad sense, but in the grand scheme of human history, the agricultural revolution is relatively recent) as the ENF?

Same goes for metallurgy - in Eurasia it’s clearly spread by influence/people, but the Americas are special?

And the Swastika too, they also happened to use that particular geometric symbol for luck? Think about how many simple geometric shapes are possible to be drawn, and realise the almost infinitely small odds that they widely adopted this design independently, for roughly the same purpose no less.

What about the Chinchorro mummies, with Caucasoid chestnut hair and European DNA, as shown by (the very racist, agreed, but still truthful) Genetiker?

Also consider the mythology describing the Si-Te-Cah, who were described as red-headed, and living on rafts much like the one sailed by Thor Heyerdahl to the Americas, which perhaps was uncoincidentally via the Canary Current, and I’m sure you know how the Spaniards described some of the Guanches (yes, he used some relatively advanced ancient Egyptian sailing technology iirc, but the fact his team managed the trip definitely says something).

There is a mountain of evidence in my favour here, but you respond by claiming I’m being bigoted.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Well, if you do not think those R1b tribes are related to the CHG admixture, since according to you this one may be the responsible for the dominant dark hair in Yamnaya people, then what do you think they were like (predominantly) in terms of autosomal DNA? The only admixture that is common to Bronze Age Levant, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe and possibly Central Asia is some kind of CHG or CHG-related ancestry. What does the EHG part of SHG have to do with this narrative of Halaf R1b tribes in the Middle East? There is no appreciable EHG in the ancient Middle East until much later, and there is no significant sign of expansion of EHG admixture in the ancient samples from that region spreading as far south as Egypt. I really don't follow what you're exactly trying to say. You talk about R1b tribes, if such a thing ever existed as one common ethnicity significantly distinct from surrounding cultures, but you don't make it clear what you think those R1b were like genetically. Believing they had a prevalence of a given Y-DNA haplogroup is not enough. They apparently were not CHG nor EEF in your opinion, but they also can't have been simply EHG. Then... Which autosomal admixture do you think they spread to other regions, what they were like autosomally, what specific genetic impact of those R1b tribes can we see as a common feature of the genetic history of regions as far as India, Egypt and North Europe (indicating they may have come from one and the same demographic event)?


I’m not speculating on what these guys where, but I’d suspect similar to Neolithic/pre-Neolithic Ukraine. 

Also, the Copper Age was well before the Bronze Age.

SHG has nothing to do with these R1b guys, obviously. It’s not like they all spread from Scandinavia, and only Eastern Norway and Western Sweden remains pure. 

I dont believe EHG is the final word on red hair, don’t link anything I’m saying to EHG.

Basically, there isn’t enough genetic evidence to say yet. But you don’t need genetics to attempt to track migrations (see my post above). Phylogeny is one way to do this with a relative lack of ancient samples, and it’s the best understanding I could possibly utilise at this stage. 









> @ToBe
> Why do you think the native South Americans weren't capable of a Neolithic revolution? And a good amount of native North American tribes adopted farming as well.
> 
> If that isn't your view and I misunderstood, i apologize in advance


Check my post above

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## ROS

Overcoming the negative that reminds us of the esvastica of World War 2, we must recognize that it is a symbol, possibly representing the sun, and that it extends from India to the Iberian Peninsula, it is possible that it is correlated with R1B? or with the Indo-Europeans? Indian connection with the Iberian peninsula through the steppe or anatolia? or a mixture of the two that gave rise to the centum and satem languages?

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Why on earth are you trying to substantiate your claim about Halaf culture and Early-Mid Neolithic R1b peoples (you're talking about R1b getting into the steppes, right? That sets a latest date of around 5000 BCE to your hypothesis) by talking about a man and historic migrations of the Late Bronze Age some 4000 years later? That's anachronism at its best (or worst), and it also of course means that you're comparing peoples that were most certainly distinct not just culturally, but also genetically. That would be like believing that the migrations of Syrians in the present Civil War must be strongly correlated and even prove something about the invasions of Assyrians and Amorites in Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia. LOL


I agree, I did realize this by the way, but I can’t type everything. But it just shows that R1b was present in West Asia for a long time. But I agree, just because it was around around the time of Ozymandias, doesn’t mean it was during the Copper Age. I’ve outlined my argument about this in previous posts on this thread, you haven’t truly addressed my strong points.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Overcoming the negative that reminds us of the esvastica of World War 2, we must recognize that it is a symbol, possibly representing the sun, and that it extends from India to the Iberian Peninsula, it is possible that it is correlated with R1B? or with the Indo-Europeans? Indian-Iberian peninsula connection through the steppe or anatolia? or a mixture of the two that gave rise to the centum and satem languages?


It massively predates the Indo-Europeans, but is best associated with them. The oldest Swastika is in Paleolithic Ukraine, and there are many in the Copper Age Balkans and Copper Age Mesopotamia.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

Would kill for an update of opinion by @Maciamo (does this @ thing work?), if he can be arsed to read my comments lol

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## hrvclv

Personally, I don't find this Ubaid to Steppe hypothesis that ridiculous (the red hair part excepted). Tribes of mesolithic R1(b) could have hunted their game in vast expanses of land between the Caspian, the Urals, and the Altai, neighboring Q people to the east, and I people to the west. Some of those tribes may have got around the south Caspian (cp the now-famous R-Z2103) then back up to the Steppe (where more R1b cousins were already waiting for them). What happened on the way remains for us to guess, but they did pick their CHG somewhere along the trail, didn't they ?

What baffles me, though, is this : Ubaid and neighbors BUILT extensive, and elaborate, houses, of clay bricks and timber. It's a bit strange to imagine people going through this comparatively "developed" stage and then ending up roaming the steppe in bark-covered wagons north of the Caucasus.

Perhaps the R1b newcomers just stopped by without mixing much. In the more densely populated areas, they remained "cultural outsiders" alongside more sedentary pops. They grazed their cows, perhaps feared or fearing, and moved on. That would have been before writing emerged anyway, so no records of their stopover were kept, and they went unremembered. They picked elements of culture, left a few of theirs, but only conquered and mixed when they got to more sparsely populated areas in the marches of the Caucasus.

This does not rule out the possibility that some Mesopotamian influences reached Maykop independently, eg through Leila Tepe. "Innovations" like the Leila Tepe kurgans later became popular on the steppe. 

@ToBe : In my opinion, the true neolithic and copper age sailors were not R1b, but J2a - from Turkey to Crete, then to Sicily, Tuscany, Southern France, Spain...

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Personally, I don't find this Ubaid to Steppe hypothesis that ridiculous (the red hair part excepted). Tribes of mesolithic R1(b) could have hunted their game in vast expanses of land between the Caspian, the Urals, and the Altai, neighboring Q people to the east, and I people to the west. Some of those tribes may have got around the south Caspian (cp the now-famous R-Z2103) then back up to the Steppe (where more R1b cousins were already waiting for them). What happened on the way remains for us to guess, but they did pick their CHG somewhere along the trail, didn't they ?
> What baffles me, though, is this : Ubaid and neighbors BUILT extensive, and elaborate, houses, of clay bricks and timber. It's a bit strange to imagine people going through this comparatively "developed" stage and then ending up roaming the steppe in bark-covered wagons north of the Caucasus.
> Perhaps the R1b newcomers just stopped by without mixing much. In the more densely populated areas, they remained "cultural outsiders" alongside more sedentary pops. They grazed their cows, perhaps feared or fearing, and moved on. That would have been before writing emerged anyway, so no records of their stopover were kept, and they went unremembered. They picked elements of culture, left a few of theirs, but only conquered and mixed when they got to more sparsely populated areas in the marches of the Caucasus.
> This does not rule out the possibility that some Mesopotamian influences reached Maykop independently, eg through Leila Tepe. "Innovations" like the Leila Tepe kurgans later became popular on the steppe. 
> @ToBe : In my opinion, the true neolithic and copper age sailors were not R1b, but J2a - from Turkey to Crete, then to Sicily, Tuscany, Southern France, Spain...


I don't see why the red hair bit can't be true, but it's a small detail. But, for example, try to explain how Ashkenazim (like my grandfather and brother as two examples) can have such high levels of red hair? If Ashkenazim ORIGINALLY derive a lot of their ancestry from the Kura-Araxes expansion, which I strongly suspect given the Y DNA patterns, that clearly aligns with the idea of R1b once being prominent in the region.
R1b1 would probably have stemmed from Anatolia by the way, not Iran.
Also, the Ubaid point you made isn't an issue - in the later but similar Uruk period, as I mentioned earlier on, clear social divisions were made between the peasant farmers (Wikipedia's words not mine) and herders (and also fishermen apparently). Also, as I said earlier on, in the ancient Middle East the rulers and heros were associated with taming animals. Maykop, similar to Uruk, was predominantly sedentary, as another counterpoint, yet Yamanya wasn't I don't believe. Also, horses were present in Maykop but not prominent at all as compared to things like pigs and cattle - unlike in Yamnaya, where the horse is much more common.
I imagine the pastoral elite of Maykop moving on to the Steppes, and leaving the "peasants" behind. They would have imposed their rule onto whoever they subjugated (EHG), who would become the new "peasants" and provided a lot of the food. Such a class system is entirely natural from invasion and it's constantly seen among IE expansions. I think the population of Yamnaya not in Kurgans would have been more "peasant" like, and so more EHG and less CHG than those in the kurgans (unless there has also been DNA taken from plenty of non-kurgan samples). The Y DNA being so overwhelmingly R1b, yet the CHG-like admixture being roughly 50%, helps to explain the admixture event being male dominated. This idea of subjugated peasants reminds very strongly of the Spartans and the helots, but also pretty much everywhere the I-E imposed their rule. Of course, there was always mixing - mainly through taking "peasant" women.
These R1b guys could have either moved on to the Steppe of their own will, and the power vacuum that formed lead to the Kura-Araxes expansion, or the K-A expansion could have forced them onto the Steppes. I'm undecided on this.
tl;dr R1b pastoralists (and probably metallurgists) originally from Anatolia subjugated farmers from Halaf to Maykop, and later the EHG in Yamnaya. This subjugation basically continued during the Yamnaya expansion. Why they moved about isn't fully clear, but when they moved, the culture they left behind would be replaced with that of foreign tribes, or there simply would have been assimilation (as would eventually be the case in Sparta).
Basically, R1b (and later R1a during their expansion period) was the ultimate subjugators of peoples. Should be no surprise there.

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## davef

> Personally, I don't find this Ubaid to Steppe hypothesis that ridiculous (the red hair part excepted). Tribes of mesolithic R1(b) could have hunted their game in vast expanses of land between the Caspian, the Urals, and the Altai, neighboring Q people to the east, and I people to the west. Some of those tribes may have got around the south Caspian (cp the now-famous R-Z2103) then back up to the Steppe (where more R1b cousins were already waiting for them). What happened on the way remains for us to guess, but they did pick their CHG somewhere along the trail, didn't they ?
> 
> *What baffles me, though, is this : Ubaid and neighbors BUILT extensive, and elaborate, houses, of clay bricks and timber. It's a bit strange to imagine people going through this comparatively "developed" stage and then ending up roaming the steppe in bark-covered wagons north of the Caucasus.*
> 
> Perhaps the R1b newcomers just stopped by without mixing much. In the more densely populated areas, they remained "cultural outsiders" alongside more sedentary pops. They grazed their cows, perhaps feared or fearing, and moved on. That would have been before writing emerged anyway, so no records of their stopover were kept, and they went unremembered. They picked elements of culture, left a few of theirs, but only conquered and mixed when they got to more sparsely populated areas in the marches of the Caucasus.
> 
> This does not rule out the possibility that some Mesopotamian influences reached Maykop independently, eg through Leila Tepe. "Innovations" like the Leila Tepe kurgans later became popular on the steppe. 
> 
> @ToBe : In my opinion, the true neolithic and copper age sailors were not R1b, but J2a - from Turkey to Crete, then to Sicily, Tuscany, Southern France, Spain...


Yeah. I don't know anything about those cultures but if you're thriving where you are and worked hard to build up your territory, why would you pack things up, leave and go back to square one with weaker technology? Why leave it all behind?

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Yeah. I don't know anything about those cultures but if you're thriving where you are and worked hard to build up your territory, why would you pack things up, leave and go back to square one with weaker technology? Why leave it all behind?


True. It could simply be expansion, or it could be the pressure from foreign tribes. We can't know. But that doesn't disprove anything and really it's clutching at straws, as we know this sort of thing happened to Yamnaya itself.

Also the weaker technology bit isn't true - Maykop was extremely advanced for example, especially in metallurgy.

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## Ygorcs

> I also don’t believe these R1b guys developed agriculture themselves, so do I see them as stupid?
> 
> For every Eurasian culture, it all traces back to the Middle East. Why should the Amerindians be any different? What made them emerge out of hunter-gatherers, as they had been for a great deal of time, roughly at the same time (roughly in a very broad sense, but in the grand scheme of human history, the agricultural revolution is relatively recent) as the ENF?


This is just not true, nor is it a historically sound argument. You need to demonstrate that it must have happened, not that it "could've happened" this way. Unless you have at least a modicum of evidence that there was Eurasian-American contacts, let alone in South America and not in North America (which is much closer to Asia), this kind of argument is based on a complete phallacy which is basically "if something was true for one continent (Eurasia is just one landmass) then it must be true for the entire world".

Also, you're wrong that in Eurasia it all traces back to the Middle East. The East Asian Neolithic was, until any strong amount of contrary evidences are found, developed independently and based on different plant domesticates and techniques. Not even in Eurasia, which is one easily interconnected mass, does agriculture seem to have been created just once. In West Africa and in Papua New Guinea, there are also significant evidences that agriculture may have been developed from scratch, independently, with different domestication and cultivation processes, even though we can't be sure that they hadn't learned about the existence of some peoples who lived as farmers and emulated them. And that's in the Old World, easily linked to the Middle East.

And you want us to assume that both agriculture AND metallurgy (you know those two inventions in the Americas appeared thousands of years apart from each, right?) came with the same group of Near Eastern explorers? How on earth would they have done that feat if we all know that agriculture started in the Americas in Peru, in the Pacific Coast, and spread initially along the Andean region and the adjacent coast, so the Canary Current couldn't have played absolutely no role in that development for the obvious fact that that region can't be reached at all by the Atlantic ocean? There are so many holes in your "story" that it's even tiresome to address all of them.

Besides, for very obvious reasons that I won't bother discussing exactly because of their being self-evident, there is no way the American Neolithic would've been triggered at circa 5000 BC by an expansion that supposedly was just beginning around that time or even later (as per your hypothesis focused on Halaf/Hassuna-Samarra) in the Middle East itself, but that's not even my main point, which is: how the heck would agriculture be spread in South America by a Middle Eastern population, yet they brought absolutely no domesticated plant to the Americas, and agriculture there had nothing to do with the food staples and techniques used in the Middle East and instead was completely based on local plants that had to be domesticated and even artificially developed from scratch (e.g. potato, maize)? Did Native Americans depend on an "idea", that can obviously happen, along thousands of years, in any sufficiently complex and dense tribal population, brought to them by foreigners who somehow made no direct economic impact at all, instead relying entirely on plants that they didn't even know and had been known and gathered by the American natives for milennia? That's just nonsense. 

Oh, and it's not just that. Did you notice that, apart from those still very controversial and highly inconclusive samples of Chincohorro mummies, there is absolutely no sign of European-like or more broadly West Eurasian-like ancestry at all in any part of the Americas, much less so in South America, among ancient Pre-Columbian samples and full-blooded Amerindians these days? Of course you did, but the Chinchorro mummies somehow (maybe because they're supposedly oh so European) seem to matter much more than hundreds and thousands of other data. We are now led to believe that somehow the Chinchorro mummies represent this "original" farmer and metal-working population, they just vanished from history elsewhere and later, and curiously enough all the great civilizations of the Americas were created by 100% native hunter-gatherer ancestry. Funny, those explorers were apparently very unsucessful there.

So, let's recap everything that was speculated in this thread about the Americas: R1b explorers came from West Asia to South America along the Canary currents, but nonetheless they miraculously arrived in the Pacific coast, spread agriculture AND metallurgy from there (two highly advanced technologies for the Amerindian natives that would've given these explorers and their allies an extremely important competitive advantage) and left some European DNA in a few Chincorro mummies... and, well, and they basically, unlike any other pioneer farmer and metal-working population, vanished without a trace in South America or North America and were completely replaced by those primitive hunter-gatherers to whom they so kindly taught agriculture and metallurgy. Is that even remotely believable?

Since you like to make comparisons about Eurasia and the Americas as if the dynamics were necessarily the same everywhere, let's just investigate this basic thing: where in Eurasia did a population that brought farming AND metallurgy to some region fail to expand, spread ther genes and leave some long-term genetic influence in the regional population, instead being completely engulfed by the earlier hunter-gatherer population to the point that they had virtually zero genetic impact in the very region where they were so advanced, and their males apparently had no advantage at all over the hunter-gatherer aboriginals, leaving virtually no sign of R1b in Pre-Columbian South America and North America (R1b, instead, is found among tribal Native Americans only in the northeastern part of North America). Honestly, it sounds completely unrealistic - and to say that there is a "mountain of evidence" based on one myth and a few mummies that haven't even had any conclusive study by a reknown professional lab of paleogenetics (sorry, Genetiker) is, frankly, just wishful thinking.

You ask if metallurgy and agriculture could've spread in the Americas except by influence of other people. Of course it couldn't. The problem is that you seem to be forgetting that an indigenous American population could well have been and most probably was that "other people" who influenced others and spread those innovations that actually were developed more than once in the history of humankind because they're in fact not as "unbelievable" and impossible to be conceived as you seem to think. Unless you demonstrate to me not only that long-distance navigation between the Middle East and PACIFIC (yes, that's where agriculture and later metallurgy appeared and spread from here in the Americas) South/Meso America, but that and how it is conceivable that an advanced foreign civilization left a huge cultural/ideological impact but somehow brought no Middle Eastern food staples and had no big genetic expanion in the continent, it all sounds like a very wild speculation, even more so than the other points you claim.

As for Ramesses II and his red hair, well, honestly I do not see any reason to suppose that there would still be any significant correlation between R1b-majority tribes (they wouldn't even exist anymore, not in heavily unmixed form, by the Late Bronze Age) and having red hair by the time Ramesses II lived. So I think his red hair is actually a quite irrelevant issue, especially if you end up being correct about your Halaf/Hassuna-Samarra hypothesis, since that would mean that the bulk of that R1b "ginger" expansion would have happened around 3000-4000 years before Ramesses II lived and would have meant a wide dispersal of those peoples and eventually thousands of years of gradual mixing with the natives they conquered. Besides, there were of course later expansions in the same region (Uruk, Semites, Hurrians), diluting that earlier R1b genetic impact in the region. Ramesses II lived in a time when any such relation, if it ever existed, would be masked by milennia of mixing, population displacements, migrations, with the genes fo red hair spreading to other populations, being perhaps subject to local selective sweeps and becoming unconnected with just one specific R1b-dominant population. In other words, that is to say that if Ramesses II was red-haired that of course does not mean he has anything to do with that supposed R1b expansion of a long time before he was born.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> This is just not true, nor is it a historically sound argument. You need to demonstrate that it must have happened, not that it "could've happened" this way. Unless you have at least a modicum of evidence that there was Eurasian-American contacts, let alone in South America and not in North America (which is much closer to Asia), this kind of argument is based on a complete phallacy which is basically "if something was true for one continent (Eurasia is just one landmass) then it must be true for the entire world".
> 
> Also, you're wrong that in Eurasia it all traces back to the Middle East. The East Asian Neolithic was, until any strong amount of contrary evidences are found, developed independently and based on different plant domesticates and techniques. Not even in Eurasia, which is one easily interconnected mass, does agriculture seem to have been created just once. In West Africa and in Papua New Guinea, there are also significant evidences that agriculture may have been developed from scratch, independently, with different domestication and cultivation processes, even though we can't be sure that they hadn't learned about the existence of some peoples who lived as farmers and emulated them. And that's in the Old World, easily linked to the Middle East.
> 
> And you want us to assume that both agriculture AND metallurgy (you know those two inventions in the Americas appeared thousands of years apart from each, right?) came with the same group of Near Eastern explorers? How on earth would they have done that feat if we all know that agriculture started in the Americas in Peru, in the Pacific Coast, and spread initially along the Andean region and the adjacent coast, so the Canary Current couldn't have played absolutely no role in that development for the obvious fact that that region can't be reached at all by the Atlantic ocean? There are so many holes in your "story" that it's even tiresome to address all of them.
> 
> Besides, for very obvious reasons that I won't bother discussing exactly because of their being self-evident, there is no way the American Neolithic would've been triggered at circa 5000 BC by an expansion that supposedly was just beginning around that time or even later (as per your hypothesis focused on Halaf/Hassuna-Samarra) in the Middle East itself, but that's not even my main point, which is: how the heck would agriculture be spread in South America by a Middle Eastern population, yet they brought absolutely no domesticated plant to the Americas, and agriculture there had nothing to do with the food staples and techniques used in the Middle East and instead was completely based on local plants that had to be domesticated and even artificially developed from scratch (e.g. potato, maize)? Did Native Americans depend on an "idea", that can obviously happen, along thousands of years, in any sufficiently complex and dense tribal population, brought to them by foreigners who somehow made no direct economic impact at all, instead relying entirely on plants that they didn't even know and had been known and gathered by the American natives for milennia? That's just nonsense. 
> 
> Oh, and it's not just that. Did you notice that, apart from those still very controversial and highly inconclusive samples of Chincohorro mummies, there is absolutely no sign of European-like or more broadly West Eurasian-like ancestry at all in any part of the Americas, much less so in South America, among ancient Pre-Columbian samples and full-blooded Amerindians these days? Of course you did, but the Chinchorro mummies somehow (maybe because they're supposedly oh so European) seem to matter much more than hundreds and thousands of other data. We are now led to believe that somehow the Chinchorro mummies represent this "original" farmer and metal-working population, they just vanished from history elsewhere and later, and curiously enough all the great civilizations of the Americas were created by 100% native hunter-gatherer ancestry. Funny, those explorers were apparently very unsucessful there.
> ...


You skip over all my strong points and attack my weak ones that don’t actually compromise my strong ones, but okay, I’ll try and answer...

I based my answer of the spread of Eurasian agriculture on various maps I’d seen (from reliable sources), but a quick Google search yields many other maps that indeed show the Papuans and East Asians independently came up with agriculture. This indicates a split opinion, and I don’t know enough about this particular area to comment, but I will just say - why does agriculture all around the world seem to spring up at roughly the same time all at once (humans had been hunter-gatherers for many tens of thousands of years, yet only in the space of 5,000 years suddenly multiple peoples learnt agriculture? And why only in four locations, why not a lot more (in this multiple inventions theory, it’s in the Middle East, East Asia, Papua New Guinea and the America’s (some seem to split the Americas into three separate inventions in North America, Mesoamerica, and South America respectively)))? This is a valid question that puts doubt into the idea of multiple inventions of agriculture, BUT, I agree, it is very far from evidence. I see that as likely, but it’s just a calculated hunch based on the line of questioning I outlined above - nothing more, so yes, point taken.

Agriculture and metallurgy seems to be separated by about 1,000 years based on recent speculation, more conservatively at roughly 2,000 years or more. Now assuming (!) this idea of foreign influence is correct, this leaves two possibilities - either we are missing archaeological evidence, or there have been multiple crossings of the Pacific/Atlantic. Again, just speculation. Agreed.

BUT, you still have to explain the Chinchorro mummies (there are other mummies, but these are the best) and the Swastikas. That’s the only hard evidence I really have, and you’re right, I was speculating heavily, and I admit that.

But clearly partially Caucasoid mummies, with potential DNA evidence (Genetiker’s analysis has rarely been incorrect) that match no modern European profile (ruling out contamination), and the Swastika is enough evidence for me. This kind of topic, based on truth or simply misunderstanding, is too controversial to be held to scientific scrutiny, so we won’t ever have scientific consensus, but until the mummies and the Swastika can be accounted for, I will continue to believe in some form of pre-Norse contact with the Americas. They could have spread from South East Asia, as not only have very old subclades of R1(b?) been found in that area, but Genetiker’s analysis showed Indonesian admixture in the mummies.

Besides, many people (including Reich, based on some DNA evidence) accept the Polynesians made it, so I don’t see why it’s so outrageous a more advanced group from Western Eurasia could have. But Swastika and mummies, basically. Other things (e.g. local legends and Colonial reports) should really be considered too, but they’re no way near as strong as these two points.

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## Ygorcs

> You skip over all my strong points and attack my weak ones that don’t actually compromise my strong ones, but okay, I’ll try and answer...


Of course, my dear. That's what is to be expected in any debate about a certain hypothesis: the strong points that seem plausible or correct are accepted or at least assumed to be worthy of being considered correct until more evidence is found, but the focus must be on the weak and probably incorrect points because if they are too many and too then the whole hypothesis needs to be reformulated and improved. If a hypothesis has strong points but is also full of holes and even some very evident missteps, then it's not a good hypothesis - not yet. Are you trying to present your hypothesis, discuss it and hopefully improve it to make it closer to the truth and a more serious contender, or are you just trying to receive uncritical compliments and naive acceptance of everything you say? Sorry, but that probably won't happen here. You have some really nice points in your hypothesis as far as the earliest period of Middle East Neolithic cultures is concerned, but after that there is a lot of baseless speculation, leaps of logic and even wrong assumptions. You can improve on what you have if you make a self-critical review of your hypothesis and get rid of undemonstrated speculations and some biases.

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## Ygorcs

> Besides, many people (including Reich, based on some DNA evidence) accept the Polynesians made it, so I don’t see why it’s so outrageous a more advanced group from Western Eurasia could have. But Swastika and mummies, basically. Other things (e.g. local legends and Colonial reports) should really be considered too, but they’re no way near as strong as these two points.


What's your source that they accept the Polynesians made it? AFAIK the latest genetic studies have ruled that possibility out. What was really found out and confirmed by the latest and more advanced analysis of ancient and modern American DNA is that there is a Melanesian (Onge-related) element in some parts of South America, but only in the Amazon and not in the Pacific Coast, which is where we'd expect any direct contact with Polynesians. Of course, that minor Melanesian element is also very distinct from the Polynesian DNA makeup. Also, a recent study on the ancient DNA of the Polynesian population of Easter Island again debunked that hypothesis because they found absolutely zero Native American-related ancestry in those early individuals (unlike modern natives of Easter Island, what indicates that the Native American introgression happened after European colonization). As for R1 in Southeast Asia, the haplogroup P is assumed to have appeared in Southeast Asia, and some very old subclades may have been found, but it just can't be those Neolithic R1b explorers from the Near East exactly because they are very diverged and old subclades that are dozens of thousands of years apart. So, again, there is no direct correlation at all.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> What's your source that they accept the Polynesians made it? AFAIK the latest genetic studies have ruled that possibility out. What was really found out and confirmed by the latest and more advanced analysis of ancient and modern American DNA is that there is a Melanesian (Onge-related) element in some parts of South America, but only in the Amazon and not in the Pacific Coast, which is where we'd expect any direct contact with Polynesians. Of course, that minor Melanesian element is also very distinct from the Polynesian DNA makeup. Also, a recent study on the ancient DNA of the Polynesian population of Easter Island again debunked that hypothesis because they found absolutely zero Native American-related ancestry in those early individuals (unlike modern natives of Easter Island, what indicates that the Native American introgression happened after European colonization). As for R1 in Southeast Asia, the haplogroup P is assumed to have appeared in Southeast Asia, and some very old subclades may have been found, but it just can't be those Neolithic R1b explorers from the Near East exactly because they are very diverged and old subclades that are dozens of thousands of years apart. So, again, there is no direct correlation at all.


That was a tidbit in what I wrote, point being you can't explain the Swastika and Chinchorro mummies as they're solid evidence.

All it shows without further evidence is that they were elites in the society, or just outsiders, as "commoners" wouldn't have been mummified.

Almost everything else is speculative, but that these (presumably R1b) folk were there - I think there's enough evidence to accept it. 

But if you disagree, feel free to explain the Swastika and the Chinchorro mummies, as they're my two strongest pieces of evidence.

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## Ygorcs

> That was a tidbit in what I wrote, point being you can't explain the Swastika and Chinchorro mummies as they're solid evidence.
> 
> All it shows without further evidence is that they were elites in the society, or just outsiders, as "commoners" wouldn't have been mummified.
> 
> Almost everything else is speculative, but that these (presumably R1b) folk were there - I think there's enough evidence to accept it. 
> 
> But if you disagree, feel free to explain the Swastika and the Chinchorro mummies, as they're my two strongest pieces of evidence.


Well, at best you can say that there were West Eurasian people there. You have no reason, not even the weakest evidence to say they were "your" R1b explorer folks. Especially if, since we're talking of R1b, you take into account the genetic evidence, because to state all of that and frame into one common narrative of "R1b explorers everywhere from Europe to Southeast Asia to Americas", you'd have first to demonstrate one very basic thing: what kind of main genetic makeup (admixtures, but even Y-DNA in the case of the more far-fetched speculations like about Southeast Asia and Americas) this people had, if and how there is a common sign of their supposedly very influential and advanced presence and genetic impact in regions as different as Western Europe and South America, Egypt and Southeast Asia (there is no common thread, you know). It's all too easy to create a lot of scenarios for this adventurous and glorious expansion without even having established what kind of population we must be looking for. If they could have been basically anything (they weren't exactly CHG, nor EHG, nor EEF, nor...), then we can't even test this hypothesis.

By the way, don't rely too much on those Chinchorro mummies: their sample had very poor quality for fine-scale analysis, and even the unreplicated and frankly fringe analysis made by Genetiker estimated that they had a European ancestry more linked to Neolithic Western Europe (that is, basically WHG-admixed ANF - EEF), yet you don't seem to think that EEF was particularly associated with this great "R1b folk".

A few mummies with red hair (not that Chinchorro mummies had it - it was brown -, anyway) are not strong evidence, sorry - and if they were, it would still be a big leap to go from there to create a whole fantastic story about "explorers who first developed metallurgy, created caste-like societies in all the world and sailed as far away as South America to bring the hunter-gatherers agriculture (without any Old World staple, curiously) and metallurgy (thousands of years later, some ships must've been too slow indeed lol) and then vanish in the thin air".

Otherwise, all you're proposing is that this people were somehow so powerful, advanced and strong, yet they vanished without a trace in a huge part of the world they conquered, and all they left were swastikas and some red hair in mummies. Not even the agricultural and metallurgical techniques and products they supposedly spread everywhere show commonalities in all those regions that would allow us to at least speculate about a common origin. Well, as you yourself seem to admit, it seems to me all you've got is an unproven assumption that R1b Middle Eastern folks were particularly more ginger than their neighbors, and swastikas (a very archetypal and, honestly, extremely simple and variable symbol - there are many distinct types of swastika, I hope you know that). That's just very insufficient to make so many categorical assumptions that go against so many other historical evidences and even common sense.

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## Rizla

It is very enticing to make all sorts of theories about the swastika and it's spread. The reality is that we find the swastika in so many different and widespread cultures, that there is no doubt that the swastika, like the triskelion, is an archetypical and basic geometric figure of humanity.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

I absolutely don't believe that just because the Swastika is a simple symbol (and yes I know there are variations), it is not unlikely that it was developed across the world independently. We have a lot of variation within the clear I-E sphere too, so that's not really a point.
There are basically infinite simple patterns that one could draw, why this one? And why always used for luck?
Also I still stick by the Chinchorro mummies thing (yes, I know most were chestnut haired - but some had red hair).
I also accept I made a lot of speculation about metallurgy and agriculture, and you're entirely correct there.
But just because there's no smoking-gun evidence that there was pre-Norse contact, doesn't mean that there isn't other evidence strongly pointing in that direction

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## Yetos

Before we move to para-science.

LETS NOTICE THIS

The 2 oldest Swastikas in the world
ARE NOT IN MESSOPOTAMIA NEITHER IN MUIDDLE EAST.
*
THEY ARE AT VINCA AND AT UKRAINE (mezine)
in Europe 
*
date from 9000-6000 BC

in fact from ancient to modern they go
* Ukraine -> Vinca -> Sintashta

*and although Mezine Ukraine's swastika looks like only for decoration
Vinca swastika seems as a symbol and not as decorationthank you

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## Rizla

> There are basically infinite simple patterns that one could draw, why this one?


No, there are an infinite number of patterns, but not an infinite number of *simple* patterns. 




> And why always used for luck?


Are you sure it is? :)

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