# Humanities & Anthropology > History & Civilisations >  Origins of the Indo-Europeans: the Uruk expansion and Cucuteni-Trypillian culture

## Maciamo

The history of the Indo-Europeans is relatively clear from the Maykop and Yamna periods onwards, as I have described in the R1b and R1a pages on this site. The biggest question marks in my head at the moment are:

- When did the R1a and R1b lineages arrive in the Pontic Steppe and North Caucasus ?
- Where did they come from before that ?
- What were the influence of older neighbouring cultures, notably on agriculture, cattle and woolly sheep herding, and metal working ?


In his book The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia, Philip L. Kohl claims that the Yamna-era steppe culture originated in the *Cucuteni-Trypillian culture*, and more specifically when the huge towns of the Late Trypillian culture (3500-3000 BCE) in Central Ukraine were abandoned and their inhabitants took up a semi-nomadic lifestyle, herding cattle and moving in wheeled wagons. 

Based on the genetic make-up of the Balkans and Carpathians, it is hard to see how the Cucuteni-Trypillian people could have been almost exclusively R1a or R1b people. I had always supported the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas, in which the steppe people destroyed the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture and its people got dispersed around western Ukraine and towards southern Belarus. Like all Neolithic cultures in Europe, the Cucuteni-Trypillian would have been composed essentially of Near Eastern lineages like G2a, E1b, J and T, but probably also of assimilated Mesolithic Europeans (I2a). If they had been the source of semi-nomadic cattle breeders as Kohl believes, the Indo-Europeans would not have been spreading almost exclusively R1a and R1b lineages around Central and South Asia. Another problem is that of the timing, since the Trypillian culture lasted until circa 3000 BCE, over 700 years after the start of the Maykop culture and 500 years after Yamna.

However it is not entirely impossible that the Trypillian settlements in Ukraine were R1a or R1b people descended from the Bug-Dniester culture, a culture that is remarkable in its continuity from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Another scenario is that a minority of Cucuteni-Trypillian people belonging to such lineages as G2a3b1 and J2b migrated to the steppe with their cattle and wagons, and been assimilated by the local R1a and R1b tribes. I have long noticed that G2a3b1 and J2b (and perhaps some E1b and T) were minor lineages found alongside the two major Indo-European haplogroups (R1a and R1b). I have not yet resolved whether these G2a and J2b lineages came to the Pontic Steppe from the west (Balkans/Carpathians) or from the south (eastern Anatolia or Mesopotamia) across the Caucasus.

This leads us to the *Uruk expansion*. From 3700 to 3100 BCE, there appeared to have been a sudden large-scale colonisation of East Anatolia and the Caucasus region by southern Mesopotamians (Sumerians). Recent studies found a level of development at least as high in northern Mesopotamia, so the term of "Uruk" may be misleading. The archaeological culture of this vast region then suddenly collapsed around 3200-3100 BCE when the Bronze-Age Kura-Araxes culture expanded from the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia). 

The Bronze Age, which seems to have started in the Maykop culture circa 3700 BCE, spread to the Kura-Araxes culture around 3500 BCE, and only started in Mesopotamia after the Kura-Araxes expansion, from 3100 BCE.

It has been suggested that the Chalcolithic Uruk expansion was responsible for the establishment of the advanced Maykop culture in the Northwest Caucasus around 3700 BCE. This hypothesis does not rely only on timing, but also clear cultural affinities and the appearance of woolly sheep in both regions at the same time. Kohl explains that the herding of sheep for wool liberated a lot of fertile land that had until then been used to grow flax for clothing, and that this allowed big surpluses in cereal cultivation, which caused a population boom. That is what may have caused the Uruk expansion.

Unfortunately we do not know what haplogroup those Uruk settlers carried, although I would list G2a, J2, T and R1b among the top candidates. One possibility is that the Uruk contingent that founded Maykop (if indeed it was them) belonged primarily to R1b (at least 80%, through a founder effect) and that they were accompanied by G2a3b1, J2b and T lineages. Another possibility is that these Mesopotamian settlers only carried G2a3b1, J2b and T and mixed with R1b people who were already present in the Pontic Steppe and North Caucasus. 


In the two above hypotheses (Uruk and Cucuteni-Trypillian), it is of course possible that G2a3b1 came from one culture and J2b from the other, while both R1a and R1b had been in the Steppe long before. I would think that J2b came from the Balkans/Carpathians to the Steppe, then was brought by the Indo-Europeans to Central and South Asia. T would be a prime candidate for the Uruk settlers. G2a3b1 could have come from S-E Europe, the Caucasus, Anatolia or even Mesopotamia. Only ancient DNA tests can confirm how things really happened. Let's wait and see.

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## MOESAN

some anthropological metric and not metric surveys seem confirming this southern not only cultural but also demic influence of southern people North the Caucasus upon steppic population (who were the first I-E'ans ?) 
*Craniological and dental signatures of Out-of-Armenia*


From the paper on the craniological results:One can see *a clear link between the Armenian highlands samples and the* *Western** Europe samples* (the Arcvakar sample - 17 close phenetic links are revealed). The samples from the Georgia (Samtavro /Late Bronze Age - II period) and Iran (Tepe Gissar III), Uzbekistan (Sapallitepe) are identified as the samples with closest affinities samples from Ukraine (Shirochanski) and Poland, Germany (Corded Ware culture) in particular (figure 3). This suggests that some of the European genes do actually stem from this area. *So, mediterranean connections from Armenian highlands, Georgia and Central Asia are distinctly fixed in Western Europe and in the Middle-Late Bronze Age.* &: erreur ? Eastern Europe ???... non !!! Cordés d' Allemagne !If true, *it is suggested that the dispersal of the Indo-European languages have been accompanied by migration* *and some gene flow from the Armenian highlands homeland to the various historical seats of the Indo-European languages.* The different rates of genetic drift and external gene flow may have contributed to the morphological differentiation and diversification amongst the different Eurasian populations. *Cluster analysis has revealed a craniological series having analogies (on a complex of craniometric, odontologic characters) with representatives of the population of the Armenian highlands, the Caucasus, the Near East and Central Asia.* *The initial starting area (or one of the intermediate areas), as indicated by the anthropological data, would seem to be the Armenian highlands, and the Caucasus as a whole (Figure 7).*
_Asian Culture and History_ Vol. 4, No. 2; July 2012
doi:10.5539/ach.v4n2p48

*Bioarchaeological Analysis Mutual Relations of Populations Armenian Highlands and Eurasia Using Craniological and Dental Nonmetric Traits* 

Anahit Yu. Khudaverdyan1 Institute of Archaeology and Еthnography National Academy of Science, Republic of Armenia 
metric surveys estimate a so called "armenian highlands" population (physical componant) were present among the steppic north-Caucasus cultures like Maikop, leaving traces among all I-E population of Western Europe, AND TOO, among the Tripolje-Cucuteni culture settlements

here this abstract from Dienekes blog I think









here an other abstracts (from Dienekes blog I think). *June 27, 2013*

*Analysis of Maikop crania (Kazarnitsky 2010)*


From the paper, first a survey of other studies:*The Maikop cranium from Mandzhikiny I in Kalmykia was measured by A.A. Khokhlov.* In his view, it resembles the previously published Maikop and Novosvobodnaya specimens. Khokhlov pointed to certain features common to the Maikop and Novosvobodnaya people and opposing them to the Pit Grave people. *He questioned the resemblance between the Maikop crania from Evdyk I and those from Syezzheye and Zadono-Avilovsky; and he believed the former to resemble crania from the Caucasus, the Near East, and Southwestern Central Asia, being closest to those from Samtavro, Georgia, and Ginchi, Dagestan (Khokhlov, 2002).* In a brief note, M.M Gerasimova, D.V. Pezhemsky, and L.T. Yablonsky (2002) described several *Maikop crania from burial grounds on the Kalaus River in the Stavropol Region. The series is diverse and, judging by the results of multivariate analysis, is closest to the Chalcolithic group from Khvalynsk in the Samara Region.* T.I. Alekseyeva (2004) measured *a male skull from mound 13 burial 5 at Nezhinskaya near Kislovodsk (the plastic reconstruction of this individual’s appearance was made by L.T. Yablonsky), as well as two crania (male and female) from mound 70 burial 1 at Zamankul in Northern Ossetia. All these crania came from “Maikop– Novosvobodnaya” burials and were attributed to the Mediterranean variety of the Southern Caucasoid type which was distributed in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Mesopotamia during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age.* The heterogeneity of the Maikop group in Alexeyeva’s opinion may be due to individual variability, but also to admixture with the natives of the southeastern European steppes (Alekseyeva, 2004).Later, Gerasimova, Pezhemsky, and Yablonsky (2007) published a large article where *crania from burial grounds on the Kalaus River were described in detail. They noted that the Maikop series is heterogeneous but on average it represented the Eastern Mediterranean trait combination. The latter is quite dissimilar to the Cromagnoid combination typical of certain Bronze Age groups of the Eastern European steppes. The idea that at least some Maikop people were descendants of immigrants from the Near East was deemed probable; however the role of the steppe admixture, possibly accounting for a somewhat greater robustness of Maikop crania compared to Mediterranean ones, was not excluded either.*And the author's own conclusions:In sum, *the results of the multivariate analysis suggest that Maikop people are distinct from all the contemporary and later Eastern European groups of the steppe and forest-steppe zones.* This provides an additional argument in favor of the hypothesis that Maikop burials in Kalmykia attest not merely to the cultural impact of the Maikop community on the steppe tribes (Munchaev, 1994: 168); rather, they were left by a separate group which

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## Sile

[QUOTE]


> The history of the Indo-Europeans is relatively clear from the Maykop and Yamna periods onwards, as I have described in the R1b and R1a pages on this site. The biggest question marks in my head at the moment are:
> 
> - When did the R1a and R1b lineages arrive in the Pontic Steppe and North Caucasus ?
> - Where did they come from before that ?
> - What were the influence of older neighbouring cultures, notably on agriculture, cattle and woolly sheep herding, and metal working ?
> 
> 
> In his book The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia, Philip L. Kohl claims that the Yamna-era steppe culture originated in the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, and more specifically when the huge towns of the Late Trypillian culture (3500-3000 BCE) in Central Ukraine were abandoned and their inhabitants took up a semi-nomadic lifestyle, herding cattle and moving in wheeled wagons. 
> 
> ...


Another paper on the same subject
http://www.science.org.ge/moambe/6-2...tskhelauri.pdf




> Unfortunately we do not know what haplogroup those Uruk settlers carried, although I would list G2a, J2, T and R1b among the top candidates. One possibility is that the Uruk contingent that founded Maykop (if indeed it was them) belonged primarily to R1b (at least 80%, through a founder effect) and that they were accompanied by G2a3b1, J2b and T lineages. Another possibility is that these Mesopotamian settlers only carried G2a3b1, J2b and T and mixed with R1b people who were already present in the Pontic Steppe and North Caucasus. 
> 
> 
> In the two above hypotheses (Uruk and Cucuteni-Trypillian), it is of course possible that G2a3b1 came from one culture and J2b from the other, while both R1a and R1b had been in the Steppe long before. Only ancient DNA tests can confirm how things really happened.


Could this Uruk migration into the north causasus created the R1b mutation once they got there, that is, R1? was already present in the pontic? somewhere in these vast ancient lands R1a and R1b split before moving west into Europe.

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## Maciamo

> From the paper on the craniological results:One can see *a clear link between the Armenian highlands samples and the* *Western** Europe samples* (the Arcvakar sample - 17 close phenetic links are revealed). The samples from the Georgia (Samtavro /Late Bronze Age - II period) and Iran (Tepe Gissar III), Uzbekistan (Sapallitepe) are identified as the samples with closest affinities samples from Ukraine (Shirochanski) and Poland, Germany (Corded Ware culture) in particular (figure 3). This suggests that some of the European genes do actually stem from this area. *So, mediterranean connections from Armenian highlands, Georgia and Central Asia are distinctly fixed in Western Europe and in the Middle-Late Bronze Age.*


The R1b connection with the Caucasus is evident since R1b reaches frequencies of 30% in Armenia, 22% among the Lezgins of southern Daghestan, 20% among the Kumyks of eastern Daghestan, and 10% in Georgia and Ossetia (with one reported peak of over 40% in North Ossetia). 

But there it isn't obvious at all that R1b came from the Caucasus (as opposed to Mesopotamia or Anatolia) to the Pontic Steppe. My original hunch was that R1b crossed from eastern Anatolia to the steppes a few millennia before Maykop and Yamna. In that scenario, R1b only came to the Caucasus towards the end of the Early Bronze Age and throughout the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2500-1900 BCE), when incursions of steppe cattle herders became increasingly frequent in the region and kurgan burials (e.g. Martkopi, Bedeni, Trialeti, Karashamb) started to replace Kura-Araxes burials. At the same time steppe pottery (grey and incised) and battle-axes made their appearance. The amount of metalwork (bronze, silver and gold) increasingly spectacularly in elite burials, which also included four-wheeled wagons now. Old settlements were abandoned or reduced in size, and new ones became heavily fortified, with "Cyclopean stone architecture, perched on inaccessible, easily defended promontories, or on the steep slopes of mountains", as Kohl explains. Here is an interesting read on the subject.

All this happened first in central and eastern Georgia, then in southern Daghestan (e.g. Velikent), then in the Armenian Highlands - exactly the places where R1b is the most common around the Caucasus. Velikent is located just at the boundary between the areas inhabited by the Kumyks and the Lezgins. Armenia has even higher levels of R1b because of the Proto-Armenian migration from the Balkans to Armenia circa 1200 BCE.

This leaves very little doubt in my eyes that those Middle Bronze Age steppe people who invaded the Caucasus were essentially R1b people (rather than R1a). They might however have been pushed south by the expansion of the Catacomb culture (presumably R1a-dominant) from the forest-steppe into the open steppe.

It is also noteworthy that the Maykop culture was very similar to the contemporaneous steppe cultures in the Kuban and Dnieper-Don region.

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## Maciamo

> Could this Uruk migration into the north causasus created the R1b mutation once they got there, that is, R1? was already present in the pontic? somewhere in these vast ancient lands R1a and R1b split before moving west into Europe.


No, R1a* and R1b* are much too old (15 to 20,000 years) to date from the Uruk expansion.

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## toyomotor

> No, R1a* and R1b* are much too old (15 to 20,000 years) to date from the Uruk expansion.


Eupedia quotes the time line for R at about 30,000 ybp and R1b at about 22000 ybp, not to split hairs. But imho scientist have placed far less interest in the transcaucasian region than it deserves. No one has yet identified the birth place of R or its subclades, although must research has been done into the westward movement into the Iberian Peninsula, and eventually the British Isles. R1b has also been found in the Tarim Basin in modern day north west China. And what of the Cumman people from near the Yellow River in China. An ancient people, phenotypically European. Could their ancestors have been the originators of R?

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## Maciamo

> Eupedia quotes the time line for R at about 30,000 ybp and R1b at about 22000 ybp, not to split hairs.


I will revise that because the Mal'ta boy was still R* 24,000 years ago, so I doubt that R1b already existed 22,000 years ago as some population geneticists had calculated a few years ago based on STR variances.

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## bicicleur

> I will revise that because the Mal'ta boy was still R* 24,000 years ago, so I doubt that R1b already existed 22,000 years ago as some population geneticists had calculated a few years ago based on STR variances.


Is it possible that R1b and R1a came from Mal'ta after LGM?
R1b : mammouth dwellings Ukraïne (as in Mal'ta during LGM) , now redated to 14-15000 years ago
R1a : Khvalynsk, Samara culture , bringing pottery 10000 years ago 
Both settled on the Pontic steppe.

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## bicicleur

> The R1b connection with the Caucasus is evident since R1b reaches frequencies of 30% in Armenia, 22% among the Lezgins of southern Daghestan, 20% among the Kumyks of eastern Daghestan, and 10% in Georgia and Ossetia (with one reported peak of over 40% in North Ossetia). 
> 
> But there it isn't obvious at all that R1b came from the Caucasus (as opposed to Mesopotamia or Anatolia) to the Pontic Steppe. My original hunch was that R1b crossed from eastern Anatolia to the steppes a few millennia before Maykop and Yamna. In that scenario, R1b only came to the Caucasus towards the end of the Early Bronze Age and throughout the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2500-1900 BCE), when incursions of steppe cattle herders became increasingly frequent in the region and kurgan burials (e.g. Martkopi, Bedeni, Trialeti, Karashamb) started to replace Kura-Araxes burials. At the same time steppe pottery (grey and incised) and battle-axes made their appearance. The amount of metalwork (bronze, silver and gold) increasingly spectacularly in elite burials, which also included four-wheeled wagons now. Old settlements were abandoned or reduced in size, and new ones became heavily fortified, with "Cyclopean stone architecture, perched on inaccessible, easily defended promontories, or on the steep slopes of mountains", as Kohl explains. Here is an interesting read on the subject.
> 
> All this happened first in central and eastern Georgia, then in southern Daghestan (e.g. Velikent), then in the Armenian Highlands - exactly the places where R1b is the most common around the Caucasus. Velikent is located just at the boundary between the areas inhabited by the Kumyks and the Lezgins. Armenia has even higher levels of R1b because of the Proto-Armenian migration from the Balkans to Armenia circa 1200 BCE.
> 
> This leaves very little doubt in my eyes that those Middle Bronze Age steppe people who invaded the Caucasus were essentially R1b people (rather than R1a). They might however have been pushed south by the expansion of the Catacomb culture (presumably R1a-dominant) from the forest-steppe into the open steppe.
> 
> It is also noteworthy that the Maykop culture was very similar to the contemporaneous steppe cultures in the Kuban and Dnieper-Don region.


I believe R1b moved the other way : from the Pontic steppe to Anatolia and Mesopotamia , during the Maykop period.
They would have been traders, connecting Uruk with Maykop.
Maybe the Gutians, who overran Mesopotamia after the collapse of the Akkadians where descending from them.

Also, later +/- 1100 BCE, the Phrygians came to Anatolia, along with the Armenians. They probably came from the Balkans.

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## bicicleur

> However it is not entirely impossible that the Trypillian settlements in Ukraine were R1a or R1b people descended from the Bug-Dniester culture, a culture that is remarkable in its continuity from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Another scenario is that a minority of Cucuteni-Trypillian people belonging to such lineages as G2a3b1 and J2b migrated to the steppe with their cattle and wagons, and been assimilated by the local R1a and R1b tribes. I have long noticed that G2a3b1 and J2b (and perhaps some E1b and T) were minor lineages found alongside the two major Indo-European haplogroups (R1a and R1b). I have not yet resolved whether these G2a and J2b lineages came to the Pontic Steppe from the west (Balkans/Carpathians) or from the south (eastern Anatolia or Mesopotamia) across the Caucasus.
> 
> Only ancient DNA tests can confirm how things really happened. Let's wait and see.


That is the theory I would favour.
Indeed the Indo-Europeans were mainly R1a and R1b.
The Neolithic in the Balkans would have started with J2b, later joined by G2a.
They would also have introduced agriculture east of the Carpaths, but the steppe remaind R1a and R1b.
Nalchik culture would be G2a farmers coming from the Carpaths.
Nalchik evolved to Maykop culture.
As for I2a2 , they would have lived in the forests north and northwest of the Pontic steppe.
Their expansions came later with Thracians, Illyrians, Dacians and south-Slavs.

As you say :

Only ancient DNA tests can confirm how things really happened. Let's wait and see.

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## adamo

Your I2a theory is incorrect in my opinion, I challenge it. I believe I2a was once found all across Europe with a center of weight/origin in Central Europe before some type of environmental/natural phenomenon pushed them into the Bosnian refuge where they are still most numerous today. Early European cultures such as Aurignacian have been linked to the men of y-DNA I.

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## bicicleur

> Your I2a theory is incorrect in my opinion, I challenge it. I believe I2a was once found all across Europe with a center of weight/origin in Central Europe before some type of environmental/natural phenomenon pushed them into the Bosnian refuge where they are still most numerous today. Early European cultures such as Aurignacian have been linked to the men of y-DNA I.


I admit, this is just a guess.
Placing I2a2 in the forests north of the Pontic steppe 5000 years ago and subsequent migrations could explain todays spread of I2a2. My point is, I2a2 was not in the steppe, this was taken by R1a and R1b, and not in Balkan and Moldavia neolithic, this was J2b and G2a.

I agree with you , Aurignacian in Europa was probably I.
The challenge is, which of them did survive the LGM and in what parts of Europe?
I know about survivors in Iberia and southern France. (this was I1)
There were survivors in Italy too.
The Balkans were depopulated, except the southern coast area (like Franchthi cave).
Where other people survived, it is guesswork.

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## Maciamo

> Is it possible that R1b and R1a came from Mal'ta after LGM?
> R1b : mammouth dwellings Ukraïne (as in Mal'ta during LGM) , now redated to 14-15000 years ago
> R1a : Khvalynsk, Samara culture , bringing pottery 10000 years ago 
> Both settled on the Pontic steppe.


Doubtful since R1b-V88, one of the oldest branches of R1b is found in the Levant and Africa. R1a* is also found in the Middle East. I would say that both R1a and R1b roamed West Asia as small tribes of hunter-gatherers until the end of the last Ice Age, then they moved north to the Pontic Steppe as the climate warmed up. R1a was probably the first to arrive during the Mesolithic (between 10,000 and 7000 BCE). R1b would have followed during the Neolithic or Chalcolithic, some time between 7000 and 3700 BCE.

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## Twilight

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/neolit...rope_map.shtml It appears that in the Neolithic, it appears that the R1b tribes came into contact with the Hassuna, Anatolian Neolithic and Caucasian Neolithic. Is there any chance that since the other haplogroups are a minority that the Three Cultures intermingled with eachother?

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## MOESAN

> *Analysis of Maikop crania (Kazarnitsky 2010)*
> And the author's own conclusions:In sum, *the results of the multivariate analysis suggest that Maikop people are distinct from all the contemporary and later Eastern European groups of the steppe and forest-steppe zones.* This provides an additional argument in favor of the hypothesis that Maikop burials in Kalmykia attest not merely to the cultural impact of the Maikop community on the steppe tribes (Munchaev, 1994: 168); rather, they were left by a separate group which


I'm sorry, I cut the end of the abstract (it changes very few it's true): here:
And the author's own conclusions:In sum, *the results of the multivariate analysis suggest that Maikop people are distinct from all the contemporary and later Eastern European groups of the steppe and forest-steppe zones.* This provides an additional argument in favor of the hypothesis that Maikop burials in Kalmykia attest not merely to the cultural impact of the Maikop community on the steppe tribes (Munchaev, 1994: 168); rather, they were left by a separate group which was *unrelated to the local Pit Grave population by origin. The Southern Caucasoid trait combination revealed by the Maikop series is somewhat similar to that shown by the contemporaneous groups of the Northern Caucasus and southern Turkmenia. Clearly, this does not imply a direct connection with any of these regions.* *The Near Eastern parallels are no less suggestive* (Bunak, 1947: 77). Thus, a small series from Al-Ubaid in southern Mesopotamia, dating from the 4th millennium BC, is characterized by dolichocrany (cranial index, 72.6), a high face, medium wide, high and sharply protruding nose, and wide palate (Keith, 1931: 239–241). Regrettably, the number of measurements is too small to warrant a reliable comparison with the Maikop series. *However, the isolated position of the Maikop group in Eastern Europe, its vague resemblance to the Southern Caucasoids of the Caucasus and Southwestern Central Asia, and the Near Eastern cultural affinities of Maikop and Novosvobodnaya (Munchaev, 1994: 170) indirectly point to Near Eastern provenance.*

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## bicicleur

> Doubtful since R1b-V88, one of the oldest branches of R1b is found in the Levant and Africa. R1a* is also found in the Middle East. I would say that both R1a and R1b roamed West Asia as small tribes of hunter-gatherers until the end of the last Ice Age, then they moved north to the Pontic Steppe as the climate warmed up. R1a was probably the first to arrive during the Mesolithic (between 10,000 and 7000 BCE). R1b would have followed during the Neolithic or Chalcolithic, some time between 7000 and 3700 BCE.


I would explain M335 and V88 as the Anatolian branch, splitting from Indo-Europeans 6000 years ago. That would be when Gumelnitça and other cities were burnt.
some 1000 year later this group would have entered Anatolia : Luwians, Hettites etc , the speakers of Anatolian languages.
After the invasion of the Sea Peoples, 1200 BCE there were some Neo-Hittite kingdoms founded along the northern Levant.
They were soon to be threatened by the Assyrians, and maybe they had to flee further.
At the same time others may have joined the Phoenicians, and also some might have gone further into Africa.

The next branch to split went to Bashkortarstan (M73 and some M269) 

L11 , the father of the Celtic and the Italic branch is probably not much older than 5000 years

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## bicicleur

> Doubtful since R1b-V88, one of the oldest branches of R1b is found in the Levant and Africa. R1a* is also found in the Middle East. I would say that both R1a and R1b roamed West Asia as small tribes of hunter-gatherers until the end of the last Ice Age, then they moved north to the Pontic Steppe as the climate warmed up. R1a was probably the first to arrive during the Mesolithic (between 10,000 and 7000 BCE). R1b would have followed during the Neolithic or Chalcolithic, some time between 7000 and 3700 BCE.



what to think about these mammouth ivory bracelets with some figures described as an early form of swastika, found in a mammoth hunting camp along a tributary of the Dnjepr , 12000 years old :

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

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## Maciamo

> what to think about these mammouth ivory bracelets with some figures described as an early form of swastika, found in a mammoth hunting camp along a tributary of the Dnjepr , 12000 years old :
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezine


That's the first time I see that, but if it is indeed a precursor to the Indo-European swastika that would mean that would confirm that cultural traits, and perhaps also linguistics ones, could be transmitted for many millennia even before the development of civilisations. Fascinating.

What also piqued my interest is that the *sub-Saharan African R1b1c (V88)* is found essentially among the Fula people, who are *nomadic, pastoralist cattle herders, just like Bronze Age Indo-Europeans in the steppe*. That is a pretty amazing coincidence since R1b-V88 is thought to have split from the branch of R1b1a (P297, the ancestor of the Proto-Indo-European M269) approximately 15,000 years ago, i.e. a few millennia before the domestication of cattle in the Near East. Now both dates could be wrong. Cattle domestication could have taken place a bit earlier and the split between the two R1b branches could have happened later, in which case it would be possible that *the very first people to domesticate and herd cattle were R1b1 (P25) people*, who then split in three groups: V88 in the Levant and Africa, M335 in Anatolia, and P297 (M269 + M73) in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. R1b1-P25 is found around eastern Anatolia and Armenia, where cattle are thought to have been domesticated. It would make perfect sense.

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## Alan

> That's the first time I see that, but if it is indeed a precursor to the Indo-European swastika that would mean that would confirm that cultural traits, and perhaps also linguistics ones, could be transmitted for many millennia even before the development of civilisations. Fascinating.
> 
> What also piqued my interest is that the *sub-Saharan African R1b1c (V88)* is found essentially among the Fula people, who are *nomadic, pastoralist cattle herders, just like Bronze Age Indo-Europeans in the steppe*. That is a pretty amazing coincidence since R1b-V88 is thought to have split from the branch of R1b1a (P297, the ancestor of the Proto-Indo-European M269) approximately 15,000 years ago, i.e. a few millennia before the domestication of cattle in the Near East. Now both dates could be wrong. Cattle domestication could have taken place a bit earlier and the split between the two R1b branches could have happened later, in which case it would be possible that *the very first people to domesticate and herd cattle were R1b1 (P25) people*, who then split in three groups: V88 in the Levant and Africa, M335 in Anatolia, and P297 (M269 + M73) in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. R1b1-P25 is found around eastern Anatolia and Armenia, where cattle are thought to have been domesticated. It would make perfect sense.


Interestingly there are two types of my people. The classic half nomadic herder(most common), domesticating cattle and sheep/goat by traveling into the hills/mountains, and the "more settled" plantation farmer(second most common).

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## bicicleur

> That's the first time I see that, but if it is indeed a precursor to the Indo-European swastika that would mean that would confirm that cultural traits, and perhaps also linguistics ones, could be transmitted for many millennia even before the development of civilisations. Fascinating.
> 
> What also piqued my interest is that the *sub-Saharan African R1b1c (V88)* is found essentially among the Fula people, who are *nomadic, pastoralist cattle herders, just like Bronze Age Indo-Europeans in the steppe*. That is a pretty amazing coincidence since R1b-V88 is thought to have split from the branch of R1b1a (P297, the ancestor of the Proto-Indo-European M269) approximately 15,000 years ago, i.e. a few millennia before the domestication of cattle in the Near East. Now both dates could be wrong. Cattle domestication could have taken place a bit earlier and the split between the two R1b branches could have happened later, in which case it would be possible that *the very first people to domesticate and herd cattle were R1b1 (P25) people*, who then split in three groups: V88 in the Levant and Africa, M335 in Anatolia, and P297 (M269 + M73) in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. R1b1-P25 is found around eastern Anatolia and Armenia, where cattle are thought to have been domesticated. It would make perfect sense.


Hello Maciamo,

1/ re age estimates of y-DNA , I must admit I know and understand very little about that. But at the same time I'm very sceptical : I see sometimes 2 sources produces completely different age estimates
If V88 is estimated 15000 yo, what is the age estimate for M73 and L11 then?

2/ catlle in Africa :

according to : http://www.amazon.com/After-Ice-Glob.../dp/0674019997

there was cattle in the eastern Sahara 11.000 years ago , slightly before Asian cattle
the common ancestor of Asian cattle and this 'Sahara cattle' is some 28000 years old, so they were 2 independant branches
by around 8800 year ago, this cattle arrived in the Acacus (SW-Algeria)

the Sahara became 'wet' from 14000 years ago onwards
the maximum expansion of the wet Sahara was around 9000 years ago
by 5500 years ago the Sahara was as arid as it is now

the 'Asian package' : sheep, goat, Asian cattle, mudbrick building, weaving and spinning arrived very late in Africa (througth the Nile Valley) : only 7800 years ago
the imported Asian cattle would have replaced the 'Sahara' cattle

I've read somewhere else Italian and Iberian cattle contain some DNA from 'African' cattle.
Wether this 'African' cattle is the same like the 'Sahara' cattle is not clear to me.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

I will comment only briefly, first is the mention of the swastika on mammoth ivory..

Originally, I meant to mention this (swastika symbology) in my P-M45 post on mound building and burial practices that are similar between West Asian peoples (R1, R2) and Amerindian peoples (Q-242).
It is a symbol found widely among Native American cultures, the Navajo being one example.
It makes sense that it would be found among Siberian Mammoth hunters given that its occurence everywhere it is found (Asia, Africa, Americas, Europe and the Levant) can be traced to contact between one of its two descendant R* or Q* peoples or their religions. It's presence in Vinca culture of the Balkans, Naqadans of Egypt or the Samarran culture can all be reduced to movements of West Asian peoples IMHO.
It probably belonged to a fairly standard set of preliterate linear symbols that were scratched on ivories very early. R* took is West and South, Q* took it North and East across Beringa.

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## Tabaccus Maximus

> When did the R1a and R1b lineages arrive in the Pontic Steppe and North Caucasus?


I think the transition from the Near Eastern Pre-Pottery Neolithic is the first trickle of R1* lineages in the West. It should be pointed out that this movement almost coincides or is subsequent to the extinction of the mammoth and bison on the Asian steppe. Plus, we now know for certain that at least some (probably all) R* peoples were mammoth hunters in the distant past. Apparently, they were very good at exploiting large game, which was probably also accompanied by a growning human population. 

It may be the case that as mammoth herds dwindled they shifted to bison, which were also brought to extinction, again within the same time period. They may have begun moving South to try and exploit other large game, like elephants or wild aurochs. Forced to change their livelihoods, they may resorted to more radical strategies such as 'game management' of animals like the Taurus (cow) whose taming appears to have been attempted in several locations. (probably by the same people). If they gradually shifted from mammoth to bison then a transition to other bovine is reasonable and the attempt at 'managing cattle' may have come from the realization that their killing machine strategy was unsustainable. I still favor a Near Eastern full domestication of cattle, but obviously it had a long history.

There really is no other candidate people that I can think of that would bring Eastern cultural elements (ie. burial patterns, patriarchy, utility pottery, swastikas, infant swaddling, diapering and new religious beliefs) into the West other than R* peoples during the PPNB phase.




> Where did they come from before that?


Probably in the vicinity of modern Khazakstan. We know they were in the Yenesian region 24k ybp, also the R* diversity is pretty high in the nearby Khazastanian plain across to Bashkorostan.

If you look a topographical map of modern Khazakstan, what you will note that the 'corners' of this area are roughly:
1. Bashkirostan [NW] (high R* diversity) 
2. Yesenesian valley [NE] (Mal'ta and Afontova R*=oldest recorded R)
3. Tarim Basin [SE] (unusual R1a, R1b diversity Xianjiang
4. Turkmenistan [SW] (Caspain, 
...to the south the Sar-i Sang mines (lapiz) in Badakhstan which I rate as an important feature for a homeland.
The whole area much later became the Androvono horizon.




> What were the influence of older neighbouring cultures, notably on agriculture, cattle and woolly sheep herding, and metal working?


I think modern West Asians (whites) are probably a racial mixture of immigrant R* men and native Middle Eastern women (HV*<). (over-simpified for that equal numbers of men and women of both sets may have contributed genetically but is less evident from uni-parental markers.)

It's also this scenario that best explains why European Neolithic farmers appear Middle-Eastern rather than European. This is because the earliest Neolithic immigrants were PPNA and PPNB.


It's in this post PPNB period that I see the nucleus that became pre-Proto-Indo-European beginning to develop. I'll go out on a limb and say the initial phases PIE developed somewhere in the vicinity of Northern Iraq, Syria, Anatolia, Western Iran from there spread into the Balkans.

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## srbo

Hallo. This is a very interesting thread. I was deply thinking about this topic. Before i start with my theory i want to know how old an what branch I2 in settlements of kurdish area of belong

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## Aberdeen

> I will comment only briefly, first is the mention of the swastika on mammoth ivory..
> 
> Originally, I meant to mention this (swastika symbology) in my P-M45 post on mound building and burial practices that are similar between West Asian peoples (R1, R2) and Amerindian peoples (Q-242).
> It is a symbol found widely among Native American cultures, the Navajo being one example.
> It makes sense that it would be found among Siberian Mammoth hunters given that its occurence everywhere it is found (Asia, Africa, Americas, Europe and the Levant) can be traced to contact between one of its two descendant R* or Q* peoples or their religions. It's presence in Vinca culture of the Balkans, Naqadans of Egypt or the Samarran culture can all be reduced to movements of West Asian peoples IMHO.
> It probably belonged to a fairly standard set of preliterate linear symbols that were scratched on ivories very early. R* took is West and South, Q* took it North and East across Beringa.


I haven't previously heard of Native Americans using the swastika symbol and I was wondering if you know whether this is something that's common to all tribes or just some. You mentioned that the symbol is used by the Navaho, who happen to be one of the tribes that speak a Dene language. This may be relevant because although the first wave of people in the Americas apparently arrived about 15,000 years ago, some archeologists believe that the Dene arrived in a second wave, about 8,000 years ago. So certain symbols and practices could be common to both Eurasia and the Americas without necessarily having to be +15,000 years ago. However, if these symbols and customs go back to the ancient mammoth hunters, one would expect to find them among most Native American tribes.

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## Twilight

@Adberdeen: As a step-son of a Chinook, I can assure you that oral tradition is how we presented history instead of writing it.

Although it appears watching documentaries in Native Latin America over the years that symbols were written

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## LeBrok

> @Adberdeen: As a step-son of a Chinook, I can assure you that oral tradition is how we presented history instead of writing it.
> 
> Although it appears watching documentaries in Native Latin America over the years that symbols were written


But it is also preserved in symbols "printed" on cloths and comforters. Almost like writing.

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## Twilight

Perhaps the Swastika has a map or it could be of an earlier date, who knows for now :/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#North_America

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## Tabaccus Maximus

> I haven't previously heard of Native Americans using the swastika symbol and I was wondering if you know whether this is something that's common to all tribes or just some. You mentioned that the symbol is used by the Navaho, who happen to be one of the tribes that speak a Dene language. This may be relevant because although the first wave of people in the Americas apparently arrived about 15,000 years ago, some archeologists believe that the Dene arrived in a second wave, about 8,000 years ago. So certain symbols and practices could be common to both Eurasia and the Americas without necessarily having to be +15,000 years ago. However, if these symbols and customs go back to the ancient mammoth hunters, one would expect to find them among most Native American tribes.



It was used widely among the Mississippian Cultures, Woodland Culture and throughout the Southwest. It was also used in some Meso-American cultures but I'm not sure which or how clearly depicted. You mention a possible later migration about 8,000 or so, I have also thought that a possibility and I suppose that would have to be true to show a genetic relationship between Na-Dene and Yenesian, which I think has been shown.

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## bicicleur

> That's the first time I see that, but if it is indeed a precursor to the Indo-European swastika that would mean that would confirm that cultural traits, and perhaps also linguistics ones, could be transmitted for many millennia even before the development of civilisations. Fascinating.
> 
> What also piqued my interest is that the *sub-Saharan African R1b1c (V88)* is found essentially among the Fula people, who are *nomadic, pastoralist cattle herders, just like Bronze Age Indo-Europeans in the steppe*. That is a pretty amazing coincidence since R1b-V88 is thought to have split from the branch of R1b1a (P297, the ancestor of the Proto-Indo-European M269) approximately 15,000 years ago, i.e. a few millennia before the domestication of cattle in the Near East. Now both dates could be wrong. Cattle domestication could have taken place a bit earlier and the split between the two R1b branches could have happened later, in which case it would be possible that *the very first people to domesticate and herd cattle were R1b1 (P25) people*, who then split in three groups: V88 in the Levant and Africa, M335 in Anatolia, and P297 (M269 + M73) in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. R1b1-P25 is found around eastern Anatolia and Armenia, where cattle are thought to have been domesticated. It would make perfect sense.


I stumbled onto something even more amazing :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#North_America

If all that is true, the swastika should be originating from Mal'ta people. 
There is R1 among nativ (north-) Americans.
Some ascribe all of this to contamination by early European colonizers.
But I believe this R1 is coming from Mal'ta. Some travelled northeast to follow mammoths and along the way developped the precursor of the Clovis knife (Dyuktai culture)

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## srbo

> Your I2a theory is incorrect in my opinion, I challenge it. I believe I2a was once found all across Europe with a center of weight/origin in Central Europe before some type of environmental/natural phenomenon pushed them into the Bosnian refuge where they are still most numerous today. Early European cultures such as Aurignacian have been linked to the men of y-DNA I.


Haplogroup I isn't linked to Aurignacian(45.000-31000). It is linked to the Gravettian culture (32.000-22.000). The origin of Haplogroup I cant be central Europe, because this Haplotype came from Anatolia that means this people must go first through the Balkans to come to center Europe. And there is one more important point. It is the Ice Age. People at Ice Age where centered in South and South East Europe, thats is "natural", because the north was unhabitable.

Settlement of Gravettian cultrue (Ice Age):

Sorry cant post links. Just google for it.

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## Sile

> Perhaps the Swastika has a map or it could be of an earlier date, who knows for now :/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#North_America


but the swastica was always sitting upright and never slanted like the nazis

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## srbo

Indeed the swastika is very interesting, there are many theories about it, but let look from an archeological view. The oldest swastika were found in Ukraine Mezin(10000bc). There is also a direct link to the Ice Age and mammut hunters of the stepes. 
Later we can find the swastika in neolithic Balkans.(starcevo körös cris complex). Vinca culture is the most prominent example. So where is the link between starcevo körös cris and the mezin hunters from ukraine. In my eyes the people from Mezin where the ancestors of the neolithic balkan cultures outside of greece. Sure there was a big impact of neolithic movements from south east (anatolia/levante) araound 6500-6000bc. But the people from starcevo körös cris complex adapted the tehnoligical advantage and transformed it for their self benefid. The art of starcevo körös cris complex has both sides, one is anatolian neolithic the other is european mesolithic. Just watch the art of mezin culture in ukraine. It s obvious.


So what is my conclusion?
When we say Haplogroup is pre neolithic in Europe and was "centered" in south-east europe, because of the Ace Ice. It is possible that the starcevo körös cris cultures were carriers of hapogroup I. This opens a new question for me. Where does Haplogroup I came from in kurdish area? We have some archeological facts that are linked to balkans in neolithic times. Its the time of Halaf and Hassuna Samarra Culture. The art and lifestyle was indeed similiar, because of the anatolian/levante complex. But there is artwork which isnt a part of anatolian/levante complex. As example the swastika. This Swastika is 5500-5000bcyears old. Around 5600bc there was a big flood around the black sea. Around 5500 the Ubaid time begins. Please watch the earliest ubaid artwort, it is very similiar to balkanic artwork. whatch the shoulders of their figurines and the morphological aspekt and compare them with the art of the vinca culture.
Couldn't it be that the ubaid people where people from the balkans which lived around the black sea? this could exlain how haplogroup I2 came to kurdish area where this cultures exists millenia before.

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## srbo

> The history of the Indo-Europeans is relatively clear from the Maykop and Yamna periods onwards, as I have described in the R1b and R1a pages on this site. The biggest question marks in my head at the moment are:
> 
> 
> - When did the R1a and R1b lineages arrive in the Pontic Steppe and North Caucasus ?
> - Where did they come from before that ?
> - What were the influence of older neighbouring cultures, notably on agriculture, cattle and woolly sheep herding, and metal working ?



Maciamo. In dont thinks people of cucuteni were exclusive r1b and r1a carriers. You forgot that the cucuteni culture evolved from the starcevo körös cris. There was indeed influence from bug-dniester culture. In my eyes the cucuteni culture could be the cradle of I.E origin. The timeline fits perfect. Linguists linked I.E speakers always with the development of the car and the wheel. Archeological facts prove that the erliest evidence of "wheel" and car came from the cucuteni triplian culture, see: Cucuteni-Trypillian cow-on-wheels, 3950-3650 B.C. People from the steppes adapted it from this advanced culture. Don't forget that cucuteni was by far the most devolpet culture in the world at that time. 


But what happend beforce 4000bc? We know that there was always a peacfull exchange with cultures from the steppest. this cultures could be r1b and r1a carriert. bug dniester culture is a good example. 
before gimbuntas theory of barbaric expansion of Kurgan peoples. this people were peacufull neolithic farmes which where influenced by anatolian/levante complex and the starcevo cörös cris. so the people known for long time each others. 


The cucuteni triplian culture seems for me a perfect melting point for people from the balkans and the stepes and it could explain how the aryan movement to the "east" carriersd artwork(swastika) and religion(belief in the trinity in vedic Trimurti) from neolithic balkans to india. 
You ask youreself now: Trinity? The Vinca culture beliefed in the holy trinity. There were found many figurines with 3 fingers, 3 foods and also the geometric art of faces symbolizes the triangle. i don't know if the cucuteni culture has similiar belieft, but if they had it, it could explain "how the vedic" religion evolved.

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## MOESAN

> Haplogroup I isn't linked to Aurignacian(45.000-31000). It is linked to the Gravettian culture (32.000-22.000). The origin of Haplogroup I cant be central Europe, because this Haplotype came from Anatolia that means this people must go first through the Balkans to come to center Europe. And there is one more important point. It is the Ice Age. People at Ice Age where centered in South and South East Europe, thats is "natural", because the north was unhabitable.
> 
> Settlement of Gravettian cultrue (Ice Age):
> 
> Sorry cant post links. Just google for it.




_it is not of too much worth for this very thread but I precise (again) that there were human settlements at the latitude of southern Belgium and Moravia during the strongest of Last Glaciation - perhaps they were not permanently occupied (sommer only?) but they were! for South East Europe it is only a "good sense" statement because settlements there were very very seldom, for I know even if it seems surprising._

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## MOESAN

If we rely on N-E Romania (Bessarabia-Moldavia) Y-DNA distributions (tiny sample it is true) where Y-R1b seems very scarce (more than in other places of Romania), for previous Cucuteni culture, Y-R1b was not typical at all in this late culture (the strong elements were Y-E-V13 and Y-J2b, not even Y-R1a -

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## srbo

> _it is not of too much worth for this very thread but I precise (again) that there were human settlements at the latitude of southern Belgium and Moravia during the strongest of Last Glaciation - perhaps they were not permanently occupied (sommer only?) but they were! for South East Europe it is only a "good sense" statement because settlements there were very very seldom, for I know even if it seems surprising._


You are totally right. I didn't mean that there weren't settlements in north europe during Ice Age. But its just logical that the most living being always chose habitats that fit most to them and in human case that are warmer regions like south europe.

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## srbo

> If we rely on N-E Romania (Bessarabia-Moldavia) Y-DNA distributions (tiny sample it is true) where Y-R1b seems very scarce (more than in other places of Romania), for previous Cucuteni culture, Y-R1b was not typical at all in this late culture (the strong elements were Y-E-V13 and Y-J2b, not even Y-R1a -


And what is with I? And where is G2?

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## Twilight

I I Captain

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## Twilight

Lol, kidding. XP

On the side note, I just stumbled on a link claiming that the Pre-Maykop/Pre-Celtic Tribes called themselves the Circaesir in apparently Modern Kazistan. Just wanted to put it out there for either objections or able to produce logic. http://www.angelfire.com/home/thefaery5/

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## MOESAN

> And what is with I? And where is G2?


I think a 'southern' people (broad meaning) element was present around the Black Sea from the earlier Neolithic period and that other people of close stock later introduced metals - so I' do'nt exclude Y-G2 bearers at all but they appear being scarce enough there nowadays - Y-E1b was there with Y-G2 and with some first Y-J2 - at metals ages came maybe other Y-G2 but it is not evident - MORE (maybe other SNPs) Y-J2 came more numerous then, I think - the Cucuteni-Tripolje culture with its huge towns seems to me the result of successive Anatolia-Near-Eastern waves of geographically close enough populations even if with improving new cultural skills (we can estimate the autosomals 'sardinian' or 'west-central-mediterranean' was stronger among the first waves, 'west-asian-/'caucasian' stronger among the metals waves, as a bet) - at some stage of evolution, Cucuteni-Tripolje involved by acculturation local population of Y-I2a1 from the Carpathian highlands, but maybe the osmose never became "average" and the Y-I2a element remained stronger in North than in South (S: close the Black Sea) -
by the way I was just gaving some partial data about Bessarabia, knowing current DNA could mistake us concerning ancient DNA - just a matter for brain-strom !

(I cannot go further in details by lack of archeoligic knowledge baout western Black Sea shores)

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## Alan

the Swastika is basically symbolizing the sun. You will find this symbol anywhere where the sun was worshiped.

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## Robert6

Patterson said that linguistic evidence has tracked the ancestral language, called “late proto-Indo-European” to about 3,500 years ago in the Caucasus, among a people who had wheeled vehicles at a time when they were just being put into use.
Genetic evidence ruled out one likely related group in the region, the Yamnaya, because their DNA showed the group had hunter-gatherer ancestry, which is inconsistent with the fact that two Indo-European groups, Armenians and Indians, don’t share it, Patterson said. That made Patterson look south, to the Maikop civilization, which likely had significant contact with the Yamnaya, as a plausible culture where Indo-European languages originated. Samples have been obtained from Maikop burial sites, but the DNA work to test that proposal is pending, Patterson said.http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...-of-europeans/

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## Angela

Yes, interesting isn't it? I'm assuming, if the work on the Dna from Maikop itself is still ongoing, that the people at the Reich Lab are leaning in that direction because of their analysis of the data from Yamnaya (not yet published), and their modeling indicates this is probably the region from which "late proto-Indo-European" spread. Or, they may have preliminary results which confirm their original suspicions.

That would mean, I think, that "Indo-Europeans" or "Indo-European culture", by_ their_ definition, originated from an area between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and radiated out from there, with the Indo-Iranians, for example, having their origin very near there. Wouldn't this also place it temporally at 1500 BC?

I wonder how this sits with David Anthony, who is supposedly a co-author or consultant on their Yamnaya paper?

Certainly, there are specific quotes in Anthony's work where he places the culture _and_ language of the Indo-Europeans on the Pontic Caspian Steppe from 4000 t0 3000 BC. Granted, I had, and have, a problem with that, because that probably excludes horse riding, and certainly excludes chariots, which are much younger and further east. (2000 BC), and also because of the well known problems with "Armenian" and with the fact that there's no sign of agriculture east of the Volga until you get to Siberia. (There are also problems with the other theories, as we know.)

However, isn't that a very late date for even "late proto-Indo-European"? Patterson says linguists support that date. Does anyone know the linguists to whom he's referring?

If this should turn out to be true, would this mean that western Europeans, for example, adopted Indo-European languages at a very late date indeed? That would certainly take care of the Basque language/genetics problem.

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## Aberdeen

> Patterson said that linguistic evidence has tracked the ancestral language, called “late proto-Indo-European” to about 3,500 years ago in the Caucasus, among a people who had wheeled vehicles at a time when they were just being put into use.
> Genetic evidence ruled out one likely related group in the region, the Yamnaya, because their DNA showed the group had hunter-gatherer ancestry, which is inconsistent with the fact that two Indo-European groups, Armenians and Indians, don’t share it, Patterson said. That made Patterson look south, to the Maikop civilization, which likely had significant contact with the Yamnaya, as a plausible culture where Indo-European languages originated. Samples have been obtained from Maikop burial sites, but the DNA work to test that proposal is pending, Patterson said.http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...-of-europeans/


I can only assume the reporter badly mangled the story, because I can't imagine David Reich and friends getting it that wrong. There are written examples of Hittite, Mycenaean Greek and Vedic Sanskrit that are about 3500 years old, so it's very unlikely that Proto-IE still existed anywhere at that point. Wheeled vehicles have been around for about 6000 years and perhaps longer and chariots have been around for about 4000 years. And while I can't find any autosomal details about India, there's definitely a lot of R1a in the higher castes of Northern India. The Vedas are all about IE bros having fun invading from the west, so we know IE folk were already in India 3500 years ago.

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## bicicleur

Could there be a typo : shouldn't it say 3500 BC instead of 3500 years ago?
By that time, the wheel was invented.

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## Aberdeen

> Could there be a typo : shouldn't it say 3500 BC instead of 3500 years ago?
> By that time, the wheel was invented.


The article says "3500 years ago in the Caucasus" but 3500 years ago would make more sense. And we still don't know where IE originated - it could have started with the "Armenian" portion of the Yamnaya population, i.e., Maykop, instead of with the "Karelian" portion of Yamnaya or a mixture of the two. So if they're only talking about the language and not the cultural package, and the researchers actually said 3500 B.C. instead of 3500 BP, that might almost make sense.

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## bicicleur

> Yes, interesting isn't it? I'm assuming, if the work on the Dna from Maikop itself is still ongoing, that the people at the Reich Lab are leaning in that direction because of their analysis of the data from Yamnaya (not yet published), and their modeling indicates this is probably the region from which "late proto-Indo-European" spread. Or, they may have preliminary results which confirm their original suspicions.
> 
> That would mean, I think, that "Indo-Europeans" or "Indo-European culture", by_ their_ definition, originated from an area between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and radiated out from there, with the Indo-Iranians, for example, having their origin very near there. Wouldn't this also place it temporally at 1500 BC?
> 
> I wonder how this sits with David Anthony, who is supposedly a co-author or consultant on their Yamnaya paper?
> 
> Certainly, there are specific quotes in Anthony's work where he places the culture _and_ language of the Indo-Europeans on the Pontic Caspian Steppe from 4000 t0 3000 BC. Granted, I had, and have, a problem with that, because that probably excludes horse riding, and certainly excludes chariots, which are much younger and further east. (2000 BC), and also because of the well known problems with "Armenian" and with the fact that there's no sign of agriculture east of the Volga until you get to Siberia. (There are also problems with the other theories, as we know.)
> 
> However, isn't that a very late date for even "late proto-Indo-European"? Patterson says linguists support that date. Does anyone know the linguists to whom he's referring?
> ...


David Anthony wrote a nice story in 2007.
It seems he's convinced now and will have a new story to tell..
I hope horse riding will be told as well, although the timing will probably be dalyed.
As for 3500 years BP, I don't think it's correct.
Charriots appeared 4100 years BP near the southern Urals.
Italic tribes arrived on the Po plain 3300 years BP
Halstatt iron age culture was 2800 years BP, by then continental Celts were allready seperated from Atlantic Celts.
Nordic bronze age started 3700 years BP.

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## Aberdeen

Even apart from the date, nothing in that article makes sense to me. The information that's leaked out so far about the upcoming paper had to do with people in the Yamnaya culture being seen as IE and being a mix of "Armenian" and "Karelian". And I don't think anyone can deny the link between R1a and IE, or between IE and the European Bronze Age, even though many parts of Europe didn't become IE speaking until the Iron Age.

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## bicicleur

it doesn't make sense to me either
we should ignore it untill they come out with the full story

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## Angela

> Even apart from the date, nothing in that article makes sense to me. The information that's leaked out so far about the upcoming paper had to do with people in the Yamnaya culture being seen as IE and being a mix of "Armenian" and "Karelian". And I don't think anyone can deny the link between R1a and IE, or between IE and the European Bronze Age, even though many parts of Europe didn't become IE speaking until the Iron Age.




*Sorry,. I just got back to this:.* 

*
I don’t know precisely what Patterson means by these snippets. I don’t even know if he was talking about 3500BC or 3500 KYA, a very different time.* 

*
In so far as the genetics angle is concerned, I think we know, if early leaks are correct, that they see genetic admixture in the general area between an “Armenian like” group, which would perhaps be mostly EEF/ANE, to use those terms, and an eastern type hunter gatherer group in which the representative sample seems to have given them some difficulty in terms of getting a precise fix on how much ANE he carried, but which I have been assuming definitely had some WHG.The map to which I pointed some time ago shows a definite arrow from south of the Caucasus onto the steppe, despite the emphatic protestations of some in the internet community that the Caucasus was an absolute barrier to migration. So. that's likely the source of the "Armenian like" genes. Then there’s the snippet from Lazaridis at the genetics conference supposedly saying Yamnaya=Indo-European. Perhaps what is meant by that statement will turn out to be much more nuanced when we actually read the Yamnaya/Corded Ware paper.

Now, the members of the Reich Lab seem to be saying that the “Indo-Europeans” who went on to India, and other places, i.e. the Indo-Iranians, did not have any WHG,, which would mean that they were a strictly EEF/ANE group. Was that the case with the Samara samples? One would think not, as they carried unremarkable eastern European/northern Eurasian Mesolithic mtDna. Was that the case on the western steppe? I don’t know. Could Cucuteni have absorbed quite a bit of WHG before it mixed with a mixed Yanmaya group? I don't know that either. . I guess we’ll find out soon enough.*

As to the cultural aspects of the Yamnaya "package", *the scholarship that has been coming out in the last few years indicates to me that it is more than possible that much of what is considered to be an integral part of the Yamnaya package also came from further south, i.e. kurgans themselves, social stratification, most of the developments in metallurgy, perhaps even the wheel.*

*
Then there’s the question of language, of course. All of the work on the Indo-Europeans has seen the language and the genetics, or ethnicity, as joined. It seems a little too convenient to now wish to uncouple them because the genetics don't work out. The most “popular” theory has it arising on the Pontic Caspian steppe. Perhaps it did develop only there, from these admixed people. Does the Reich group thinks that it actually arose either close to or in or slightly south of the Caucasus, near the Caspian somewhere and, was first spoken by people who were “Armenian” like, and Yamnaya was “Indo-Europeanized” later both genetically and linguistically? I don’t know. Might this all have something to do with the Kura Axes culture and R1b is tied to that, while R1a Is more tied to Yamnaya? I don’t know that either. Ialso don’t know if David Anthony is still a consultant on one or more of these papers (or walked off in a huff!), and whether he is or he isn’t, what he would have to say about any of this, if anything.* 

I think we're just going to have to wait for the papers.

*
Maybe he and Ivanov and Mallory and Grigoriev had a virtual meeting, sat around a virtual campfire, sang Kumbaya, and decided on a two-step development of Indo-European, with the steppe being the secondary urheimat. That would be nice…thank God almighty, consensus at last!*  :Smile: 

Ed. Sorry, I don't know why some of this is coming out in bold.

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## Aberdeen

A lot of your post is coming out bold because you're taking a bold stance on the subject, Angela, and I can agree with it all except for the India part. One of the mysteries about IE is why it's a fairly structured and formal language, according to the linguists, when one would expect a nomadic culture that's probably racially mixed to speak a simplified language. Another mystery is where a group of pastoralists got some of the technology, such as bronze smelting. That's probably why some of the older threads that I've looked at here mention the probability of Yamnaya having been influenced by Maykop, with the specifical cultural traits that made the IE expansion possible being the combination of bronze working with a nomadic warrior culture. In other words, the Maycop contributed the bronze smelters and the Yamnaya contributed the aggressiveness and love of expansion. However, I do think that haplotypes did relate more to specific cultural groups back then than at present, and the association of R1a with Vedic invaders in India suggests to me that they were Yamnaya and not just "Armenian". Plus, if we still want to see Corded Ware as an early IE horizon in Europe, I can't see them as Maykop.

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## Angela

> A lot of your post is coming out bold because you're taking a bold stance on the subject, Angela, and I can agree with it all except for the India part. One of the mysteries about IE is why it's a fairly structured and formal language, according to the linguists, when one would expect a nomadic culture that's probably racially mixed to speak a simplified language. Another mystery is where a group of pastoralists got some of the technology, such as bronze smelting. That's probably why some of the older threads that I've looked at here mention the probability of Yamnaya having been influenced by Maykop, with the specifical cultural traits that made the IE expansion possible being the combination of bronze working with a nomadic warrior culture. In other words, the Maycop contributed the bronze smelters and the Yamnaya contributed the aggressiveness and love of expansion. However, I do think that haplotypes did relate more to specific cultural groups back then than at present, and the association of R1a with Vedic invaders in India suggests to me that they were Yamnaya and not just "Armenian". Plus, if we still want to see Corded Ware as an early IE horizon in Europe, I can't see them as Maykop.



You're giving me way too much credit for both computer skills and subtlety. Since this site times you out so quickly, I sometimes write my posts first on Word. I must have inadvertently clicked bold on there before transferring. (I just had it de-bugged and all the programs updated, and it now has a hair trigger response! I just have to pass over a part of the screen to link to underlying icon. You should see some of the movies that I've inadvertently linked to on amazon.com lately!  :Startled: ) 

I'm also not quite sure why you think I have bold opinions on this subject. I didn't count, but I think I put an awful lot of question marks in the post, and statements that there's a lot I don't know. All I was attempting to do was put together a reasonable theory about what the Reich Lab people *might* be seeing as the pattern based on very fragmentary leaks and quotes in articles, and papers which I have read. 

I won't know whether that's what they will ultimately say, and I don't know whether I will find their analysis persuasive at that point or not, in terms of the linguistics and culture side at least. As far as the genetics are concerned, they haven't always been right, as they showed with Moorjani at all, but they seem to be not only very well versed in statistics and "computational biology", but rather circumspect in most of their conclusions, and open to, and in fact looking forward to refining their genetic models as new samples become available. They also do extraordinarily exhaustive modeling. So, *if* they do indeed say that Maykop was genetically Armenian like, and that turns out to mean EEF/ANE, *and* they have sampled, or have modeled populations like the Armenians, or Indo-Iranians, and they don't have WHG, I would be inclined to accept their conclusions about that. The make up of the people in the western steppe or the eastern steppe might very well be different, and different at different times as well. 

Now, as to culture and technical innovations, I know there is disagreement about the sources, and plenty of opposing papers, but it looks to me, and *perhaps* to them, that a lot of it came from the Caucasus or south of it. If for no other reason, let's just say that the idea of wandering pastoralists with their rough carts, one step away from living in a cave or a yurt, suddenly becoming master metal workers and dragging around huge furnaces strikes me as a little implausible, shall we say.  I wouldn't bet my house on it though. Who knows what more research will show?

So, again, *if* the upcoming papers show a match between the genetics and the source of most of the culture, what then about language? Are people so wedded to the Pontic Caspian theory suddenly going to make a 360 degree turn and say that the language was independent of the genetics and the culture? It's fine by me, but it's quite a switch. As I predicted in a prior post somewhere, if the genetics results prove unpalatable for internet types, I predict we'll see so many twists and turns of logic that pretzel shapes will seem simple!

As to the linguistic arguments about Indo-European, I find that the internet types are far more emphatic than the scholars themselves. There's an awful lot that isn't clear, as there is a lot that isn't clear about the whole topic. J.P. Mallory certainly sees issues with all the theories (I think he calls the Pontic Caspian one the "least bad" theory.) You wouldn't know that from internet posters, however. 

I'm not competent to judge some of the finer points of the linguistics debate. (One linguistics course at university absolutely doesn't count!) I think, however, that the very fact that proto-Indo-European is so structured, as you say, might be additional evidence that it indeed arose in a more settled culture like that of Maykop, which was at the same time adjacent to the steppe. In terms of India, the movement, to my understanding, was, even according to the proponents of the Pontic-Caspian theory, through Bactria, so, whatever the subsistence strategy of these people when they arrived, I'm sure it was quite different when they left and got to India. The fact that Sanskrit is such a formal, archaic language might also, perhaps, have a great deal to do with the fact that it is a ritual language. How much has Latin changed in two thousand years?

I'm rather bemused, also, by this insistence that Maykop could *not,* under any circumstances, be the center of Indo-Euroean, because of the Uralic influences on Indo-European. Maybe I'm missing something, but is it settled where and when precisely Uralic was spoken at the time in question? What if it was spoken around the Volga? Would that be close enough for some borrowing to have occurred?

(I apologize to the linguists among us if I've made a hash of this part.)

As to the haplogroups involved, we don't know yet what y lines any of these people carried. (I do wish they'd publish these darn papers so that we do, as the closer we get to Christmas, the less time I'll have for any of this!) What if the ancient hunter gatherer group way to the east in Samara was N? Or C? How do we know yet that they were R? Even if they were, how does that change anything? I think we just have to wait and see the precise subclades of the lineages carried by all of these people. At any rate, I would be surprised if all the people involved in even the* initial spread* of IE were all of the same yDna. I think of them sort of like the Vikings. Look at Rollo and his band, and the "Normans" who supposedly descended from them, and brought French to England (not that it took, given that in that case there weren't enough of them). How mixed were they by that point? My understanding is that they included men within their ranks from the "native" people of "Normandy" within a few generations, and then added men from Brittany, men from the Low Countries, eventually Anjou etc. Why couldn't the same thing have happened with the Indo-Europeans? Very large amounts of admixture are common in many "steppic groups". How many different cultures were absorbed by the Huns? How many strands of yDna were there in that "group"? All of this is separate and apart from the yDna of whatever region it is finally concluded (in our lifetimes? ) formed the heart or urheimat of proto-Indo-European. 

Anyway, none of this can be known or even seriously conjectured about until we have the ancient samples analyzed, and the more the better. I think it will be very interesting to discover the y Dna lines not only of Maykop, and Samara, and the western steppe, but of the Kura Axes people, and to find out if the Afanisievo people really did carry R1b, and the nature of their autosomal make up.

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## MOESAN

it is in and around this topic, but not linked to tightly to the last posts -
I reserve my thoughts for later if they have some value

it 's just a very controversial book written by Jean-Paul DEMOULE in frenc: "Les Indo-Européens? Le mythe d'origine de l'Occident"
"pure legend", he said, to deny the jewish origins of the european culture - glup! gargle! a glass of water, please

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## MOESAN

> A lot of your post is coming out bold because you're taking a bold stance on the subject, Angela, and I can agree with it all except for the India part. One of the mysteries about IE is why it's a fairly structured and formal language, according to the linguists, when one would expect a nomadic culture that's probably racially mixed to speak a simplified language. Another mystery is where a group of pastoralists got some of the technology, such as bronze smelting. That's probably why some of the older threads that I've looked at here mention the probability of Yamnaya having been influenced by Maykop, with the specifical cultural traits that made the IE expansion possible being the combination of bronze working with a nomadic warrior culture. In other words, the Maycop contributed the bronze smelters and the Yamnaya contributed the aggressiveness and love of expansion. However, I do think that haplotypes did relate more to specific cultural groups back then than at present, and the association of R1a with Vedic invaders in India suggests to me that they were Yamnaya and not just "Armenian". Plus, if we still want to see Corded Ware as an early IE horizon in Europe, I can't see them as Maykop.


I fid your post logical enough, Aberdeen - the PIE language doesn't seem either a franca lingua or a largely spred and mobile language or any kind of stuff like that - so I'm tempted to attach it to a firstly steady enough population, culturally already well developped - the theory of mountains and big lake is maybe true, i've not studied the question of intitial lexicon in I-E! I only know today meanings of works can very well abuse us - if I should decide to receive this theory, I could say nevertheless other regions than Caucasus-South Caspian can be convenient; not too far, but not exactly there -

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## HAYZOO

I’ve studying haplogroup for some time and it seems like in the Paleo Meso era R1b was mostly located in Eastern Europe and Siberia Stretched West until the Alpine region and East to the Altai Mountains or Lake Baikal and North of the Danube and Caucascus Mountains then when the Neolitic era began most men carrying R1b traveled with there cattle they domesticated South into Central Asia and Northern Middle East and some of those into Africa and from the Northern middle East around Anatolia into Europe and lots settled around modern Germany then R1a came in from Central Asia the Indo Europeans into Eastern Europe assimlating R1bs who moved West and the the ones in and around Germany also moved West making R1b today most common in Western Europe. Please respond with commonents or anything you disagree with

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## hrvat22

> HAYZOO





> then R1a came in from Central Asia the Indo Europeans into Eastern Europe *assimlating R1bs* who moved West and the the ones in and around Germany also moved West making R1b today most common in Western Europe. Please respond with commonents or anything you disagree with


https://cache.eupedia.com/images/con...ration-map.jpg

https://cache.eupedia.com/images/con...ration_map.jpg

According to these maps R1a and R1b tribes or peoples come from Yamnaya, it would mean that both of these peoples already speaking Indo-European language in Yamnaya and as Indo-Europeans come to Europe.

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## Mmiikkii

I also noticed the time coincidences of the arising of civilization in Mesopotamia, and the technologically advanced societies in the North Caucasus.
Both appeared at 4000BC, with evidence of trade from the Caucasus to the steppes, and advances in both peoples in agriculture/herding, as well as the Info European wagon and sword technology.

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