Why R1b couldn't have been spread around Western Europe by the Bell Beaker people

Maciamo

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Introduction

One of the hottest controversies of the last few years in European prehistory and population genetics has been the origins and dispersal of haplogroup R1b. As recently as 2008 almost everybody thought that R1b had been in Western Europe since the Palaeolithic and re-expanded from the Franco-Cantabrian refugium after the Last Glacial Maximum. 23andMe still describes R1b as the male lineage descending from Cro-Magnon. I have argued for an Indo-European origin of R1b and a Bronze Age invasion of Europe since early 2009. In January 2010, Balaresque et al. published a paper claiming that R1b came to Europe with Neolithic farmers, a theory vehemently supported by Dienekes Pontikos. Ancient DNA tests have since disproved that Neolithic farmers belonged to R1b.

In August 2012, a paper by Lee et al. announced that they had found a sample of R1b1b2 at a site in Kromsdorf, Thuringia, dating from circa 2550 BCE. They attributed the site to the Bell Beaker culture. I immediately doubted the association of R1b with the Bell Beaker culture, and still do. Most people, however, have since taken to believe that the Bell Beaker people are the ones responsible for the diffusion of R1b from Iberia to the rest of Western and Central Europe. It has been brought to my attention that the company BritainsDNA had just argued in their blog a few days ago in favour of a Beaker dispersal of R1b. I have ample reason to believe that this is false though, and I will demonstrate it in this thread.


Why the Beaker people could not have been the source of European R1b


1) Geography & Chronology : R1b indubitably originated in Asia, like R1a and R2. R1b1b1 (M73) and R1b1b2 (M269) most likely arose in the Middle East, either in Mesopotamia or Eastern Anatolia. L23, the oldest subclades of R1b1b2, are found around the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Anatolia. The next subclades in the R1b phylogeny are L51 and L11, which are found mostly in Central Europe, especially in and around Germany, not in Iberia. The Bell Beaker culture, however, clearly originated in central Portugal, then spread from Iberia northward and eastward. The oldest European subclades of R1b (L51 and L11) should all be found in western Iberia to support a Beaker dispersal. That is however not the case, as they are found between Hungary and Scandinavia.

2) R1b-U106. It could be envisaged that L11 crossed by sea from the Balkans to western Iberia, and that the Proto-Celtic R1b-P312 (aka S116) first appeared in south-western Iberia and spread with the Beaker folk from there. But then what of the other main subclade of L11, namely the Proto-Germanic U106 (S21) ? How did it end up in northern Europe if R1b-L11 migrated by sea to Iberia ? The centre of genetic diversity of R1b-U106 clearly lies between the Benelux and Denmark.

3) Steppe pastoralists do not suddenly become maritime traders. It is rather far-fetched that the R1b people stopped following the Danube and instead crossed the Alps, made thousands of boats to migrate to Corsica, then Sardinia, then all the way to Portugal and Galicia to start a new culture. How do steppe tribe with a long pastoralist tradition and riding on horses suddenly turn into a maritime people ? Additionally both Portugal and Galicia have the lowest frequency of R1b in Iberia, but plenty of E1b1b, G2a and J2.

4) A successful large-scale, organised maritime invasion of Iberia from the Balkans is highly improbable. It would take thousands of well-armed soldiers to invade a densely settled place like the Atlantic coast of Neolithic Iberia. If the R1b people were numerous and powerful enough to do it, why not continue to Central Europe or even take over the whole Italian peninsula ? Why seek the furthest possible place as a launching pad to conquer all Western Europe ? That just doesn't make any sense.

5) The R1b sample from Kromsdorf did not belong to Beaker people, but to Proto-Indo-European from the Unetice culture or its immediate predecessor. Both culture co-existed side-by-side in that region until about 2200 BCE. The maternal lineage recovered from the Kromsdorf site look nothing like the typical Beaker mtDNA (heavy from haplogroup H). They actually look typically Indo-European, a mixture or Caucasian (K1, I1, T1a) and Northeast European (U2e, U5a1, W5a). The very detailed summary of ancient European mtDNA compiled by Brandt et al. (2013) is unequivocal on this matter. Haplogroups I and U2 were not found on any other Beaker site not any Neolithic site in Europe. They both first appear with the Indo-European Corded Ware and Unetice cultures (see Supplementary Materials page 30/87).

6) The most important argument is that Bronze Age and Indo-European values & lifestyle were not present in Iberia during the Beaker period. The Bell Beaker culture started as a late Neolithic or early Chalcolithic society. The R1b cultures of the Balkans were already in the Bronze Age. It is only because R1b had bronze weapons that they could overthrow the rich, advanced and populous Chalcolithic cultures of south-east Europe. They would have needed their bronze weapons to conquer Iberia too. So how comes that the early Beakers of Iberia had no knowledge of bronze working ? This argument alone is enough to destroy the hypothesis that R1b steppe people founded the Beaker culture in Iberia.

I have read Robert Chapman's book, Emerging complexity: The latter prehistory of south-east Spain, Iberia and the western Mediterranean, and the whole book confirms that Neolithic and Chalcolithic Iberia, including the Beaker culture, could not have been Indo-European. There is a clear continuity from the Megalithic to the Beaker culture, and a clear rupture with the past with the advent of the Bronze Age, which started in Iberia circa 1800 BCE with the El Argar culture around modern Murcia. The Bronze Age society progressively replaced the Beaker culture from west to east over the next centuries.

A few notes from the book:

Neolithic roots of the Beaker culture

- Anthopomorphic idols, also known as fecundity figurines, were found throughout Iberia in Megalithic and Beaker times (p.37). They represent the Mother Goddess, which traces its origins back in the Early Neolithic Levant. The oldest specimens in Iberia date back to 4000 BCE (p.47).

- Beaker tombs, like Megalithic tombs, were communal passage tombs without ascribed status (pp. 82, 190-192). Individuals were typically disarticulated (p.215-6) and bones of various individuals mixed together until the Late Copper Age. No social stratification or prestige items were found in late Beaker sites (p. 236). This contrasts with the single graves of the Indo-Europeans and the elite tumulus/kurgan filled with prestige goods, even for upper class children.

- Radical change of mortuary practice from the Chalcolithic Los Millares culture to the Bronze Age El argar culture (p.195), passing from collective monumental tombs to individual invisible tombs under houses (pit graves).

- Neolithic and Chalcolithic production of finely decorated pottery, stone vessels, idols, etc. come to an end in the Bronze Age (p.168).

- The Tagus Estuary (cradle of the Beaker culture) during the Copper Age had an economy dominated by cereals, olives, vines, cattle and pigs, but hardly any horses.


Indo-European roots of the Argaric culture

- Faïence beans from the Argaric Bronze Age have a similar composition to those found in Bronze Age Wessex (p.34).

- The Bronze Age brings a whole new lifestyle, including new pottery style (less decorated), new burial customs (individual instead of collective), new architecture (multiple-room rectilinear dwellings replace individual circular ones), and new settlement pattern (acropolis defended by high stone walls) (pp. 84, 151, 159, 172).

- The earliest wheeled vehicles in Galicia date from 1720 BCE (p.122), i.e. after the Beaker period ended.

- Horses were used for heavy work and transport in Bronze Age Iberia (p.136), as opposed to meat in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic.

- The first stables in south-east Spain date from the Argaric Bronze Age (p.138), hinting that horses were not ridden before that. Increased frequency of horse bones from the Early Bronze Age, but NOT during the Beaker period (p. 217).

- No evidence of silver working before the Bronze Age in Iberia (p.160).

- Few variations in styles of swords in Spain during the Bronze Age compared to Central Europe (p.164), confirming that bronze working started earlier and was more advanced in Central Europe than in Iberia. Even Ireland produced three times more halberds than the whole of Iberia during the Bronze Age (p. 165). All copper produced in south-east Spain during the Bronze Age amounts to 12 times less than the copper mined daily at Mitterberg in Austria at the time ! (p.165) Metallurgical innovations were much slower in the West Mediterranean than in the Aegean and north-west Europe during the Bronze Age.

- Tin and copper were little exploited in Iberia, Sardinia and Etruria until approximately 1000 BCE, towards the end of the Bronze Age in the rest of Europe (p.166).

- Bronze swords from south-east and northern Spain could have been made in the same place (p.173), hinting that they could have been imported from abroad rather than made locally.

- Separation of the elite from productive activities during the Bronze Age, and beginning of class division (p.174).

- Argaric society (Bronze Age) was stratified with hereditary leadership and ascribed status (pp. 197, 206, 218), unlike Neolithic and Chalcolithic/Beaker societies. The richest Argaric burials date from 1650-1400 BCE.
 
Doesn't R-L11 peak in south-central England? It's basically only found there; so you are believing that G2a people built Stonehenge? I seriously need more convincing to believe bell beaker wasn't spread by R1b men; certainly gravettian and Aurignacian cultures saw the introduction of the hg I men to Europe. I was always under the impression that the Halstatt/la tene and bell beaker derived cultures where propelled very predominantly by R1b men.
 
Well, Maciamo, you obviously know vastly more about this stuff than I do. But how many examples of ancient R1b can we look at in order to form an opinion about this? And why does R1b have to have been Indo-European when it first arrived in Iberia? There is some R in Asia among people that don't speak an IE language, I believe, and there are still some non-IE R1b folk in Iberia. Could a pre-IE R1b group not have travelled along the Mediterranean to Iberia, created the Beaker Bell culture and expanded outward to the east, only to have some R1bs come into contact with the Indo-Europeans, learn their language, culture and technology, then back migrate into western Europe? If not, what was the Y haplotype of Beaker Bell culture and where did the Beaker Bells originate from?
 
If the Argaric (Bronze-age) culture was Indo-European; Than what exactly happened to these Indo-Europeans?

The civs. that emerged out of El Argar were all non Indo-European (Tartessian/Iberian) with Basques and Aquitani being equally non Indo-European; And Iberians and Aquitani were described as clearly different to Indo-Europeans; The only Indo-European presence in Iberia came ~900BC when the Kelts migrated to the eastern half and inter-mixed with the Iberians (Celt-Iberians); Keeping in mind that R1b is still stronger in the non Keltic (Indo-European) areas;

Archaeologically - the entire Atlantic Bronze-age had no links and clear diffs. to the proper Indo-European (Bronze-age) cultures [Unetice > Tumulus > Urnfield] further east;

Doesnt convince me;
Im sticking to R1b being both Indo-European as well as non-Indo-European depending on the lineage;
pre-Indo-European on the Atlantic fringe doesnt mean Neolithic it also clearly means Chalcolithic and early Bronze-age;
 
Wow; Aberdeen lol.....you've totally misunderstood; the R branches of y-DNA WERE the indo-Europeans; the ONLY indo-Europeans (R1, R2 probably as well) both R1a and R1b are indo-European,vthe men of hg I though were the PRE-indo-European colonizers of Europe; the overwhelming majority of y-DNA I today is found within the confines of Europe, 20% of all European men are I (note that the I men were not necessarily the only men in Europe before the indo-Europeans arrived; there were an amalgamy of other haplogroups as well as research has shown, found at varying frequencies).
 
The Tartessians and Turdetanians were certainly non-indo-European being linked to Phoenician and/or Greek colonizers. But in terms of the basque and Aquitani; what if they experienced a later language shift that changed their language, but of course, their genetics were preserved...has anyone given thought to that?
 
I think you know more about the sublect than me, Maciamo.
Nevertheless I'd like to give my opinion.
Please correct if I'm wrong.


I suspect there was an invasion by sea that founded Los Milares, but not Indo-European. I think it was J2 and they founded a small settlement on the eastcoast of Corscia just before founding Los Millares, where they started smelting arsenical bronze just before Los Millares.
They were looking for places to herd cattle, but they found copper. It started a war for copper, but also for good space to herd cattle.
The Bell Beaker phenomen goes in 2 dircetions, not only south to north, but also north to south. It looks more like a trading zone than a migration going on.
El Argar seems to have been founded after they found tin in Spain. This was a war for tin.
I don't know who founded El Argar, but I don't think they were allready Indo-European.
I think first Indo-Europeans in Spain were Las Cogotas, first 'pre-Halstatt Celts' in Spain were Urnfeld.
 
El Argar seems to have been founded after they found tin in Spain. This was a war for tin.
I don't know who founded El Argar, but I don't think they were allready Indo-European.
I think first Indo-Europeans in Spain were Las Cogotas, first 'pre-Halstatt Celts' in Spain were Urnfeld.

Las Cogotas was Urnfield???
You might be surprised to hear that - but a vital part of Urnfield was Cremation and Las Cogotas still practised Inhumation;
So Las Cogotas even lacks the basic fundamentals of Urnfield apart from all other aspects;
 
Wow; Aberdeen lol.....you've totally misunderstood; the R branches of y-DNA WERE the indo-Europeans; the ONLY indo-Europeans (R1, R2 probably as well) both R1a and R1b are indo-European,vthe men of hg I though were the PRE-indo-European colonizers of Europe; the overwhelming majority of y-DNA I today is found within the confines of Europe, 20% of all European men are I (note that the I men were not necessarily the only men in Europe before the indo-Europeans arrived; there were an amalgamy of other haplogroups as well as research has shown, found at varying frequencies).

Thank you for clarifying that for me, adamo, but at this point I remain unconvinced. I think more data about early Y haplotypes in western Europe is needed, so I"m looking forward to more information relating to this little tidbit that Dienekes posted on his blog today.

"A currently not available preprint that has important implications about the Neolithic of Europe.

A late Neolithic Iberian farmer exhibits genetic affinity to Neolithic Scandinavian farmers and a Bronze Age central European farmer

Sverrisdóttir, Oddný Ósk et al.

The spread of farming, the neolithisation process, swept over Europe after the advent of the farming lifestyle in the near east approximately 11,000 years ago. However the mode of transmission and its impact on the demographic patterns of Europe remains largely unknown. In this study we obtained : 66,476,944 bp of genomic DNA from the remains of a 4000 year old Neolithic farmer from the site of El Portalón, 15 km east of Burgos, Spain. We compared the genomic signature of this individual to modern-day populations as well as the few Neolithic individuals that has produced large-scale autosomal data. The Neolithic Portalón individual is genetically most similar to southern Europeans, similar to a Scandinavian Neolithic farmer and the Tyrolean Iceman. In contrast, the Neolithic Portalón individual displays little affinity to two Mesolithic samples from the near-by area, La Brana, demonstrating a distinct change in population history between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago for the northern Iberian Peninsula."
 
Doesn't R-L11 peak in south-central England? It's basically only found there; so you are believing that G2a people built Stonehenge? I seriously need more convincing to believe bell beaker wasn't spread by R1b men; certainly gravettian and Aurignacian cultures saw the introduction of the hg I men to Europe. I was always under the impression that the Halstatt/la tene and bell beaker derived cultures where propelled very predominantly by R1b men.

R1b-L11 isn't found only in south-central England. It is present in Switzerland, Germany, Poland, southern Sweden and Denmark and was surely brought to England by the Anglo-Saxons.
 
Well, Maciamo, you obviously know vastly more about this stuff than I do. But how many examples of ancient R1b can we look at in order to form an opinion about this? And why does R1b have to have been Indo-European when it first arrived in Iberia? There is some R in Asia among people that don't speak an IE language, I believe, and there are still some non-IE R1b folk in Iberia. Could a pre-IE R1b group not have travelled along the Mediterranean to Iberia, created the Beaker Bell culture and expanded outward to the east, only to have some R1bs come into contact with the Indo-Europeans, learn their language, culture and technology, then back migrate into western Europe? If not, what was the Y haplotype of Beaker Bell culture and where did the Beaker Bells originate from?

R1b men entered Europe from the steppes as Indo-European speakers. All the cultures they founded were archaeologically linked to the Yamna and Maykop cultures, and evolved into Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Albanian, Greek, Armenian and Anatolian branches of the Indo-Europeans. I don't see how any R1b could have entered Europe without being part of that Indo-European movement. Besides, almost all Western European belong to P312 and U106, two branches that were founded by only two men who lived only about 5000 to 6000 years ago, during the Early Bronze Age, and probably after R1b left the Pontic Steppe. The phylogeny leaves no doubt that the progression of R1b from the Balkans to Western Europe was very linear: M269 > L23 > L51 > L11 > P312 and U106. There are no known side branches between M269 and L11 in Western Europe, and if one were to be found it would represent a ridiculously small fraction of the population (less than 0.1%). Even outside Europe the only known side branch is Z2103 (downstream of L51) in Anatolia, representing the migration of the Armenians, Phrygians, Lydians, etc. from the Balkans to Anatolia.

Some R1b became acculturated over time, losing their Indo-European language, notably in the Middle East. But the only examples in Western Europe are found in eastern Iberia, and the only surviving examples are the Basques. I have explained how this came to be here.
 
If the Argaric (Bronze-age) culture was Indo-European; Than what exactly happened to these Indo-Europeans?

The civs. that emerged out of El Argar were all non Indo-European (Tartessian/Iberian) with Basques and Aquitani being equally non Indo-European; And Iberians and Aquitani were described as clearly different to Indo-Europeans; The only Indo-European presence in Iberia came ~900BC when the Kelts migrated to the eastern half and inter-mixed with the Iberians (Celt-Iberians); Keeping in mind that R1b is still stronger in the non Keltic (Indo-European) areas;

Archaeologically - the entire Atlantic Bronze-age had no links and clear diffs. to the proper Indo-European (Bronze-age) cultures [Unetice > Tumulus > Urnfield] further east;

Doesnt convince me;
Im sticking to R1b being both Indo-European as well as non-Indo-European depending on the lineage;
pre-Indo-European on the Atlantic fringe doesnt mean Neolithic it also clearly means Chalcolithic and early Bronze-age;

The Argaric culture was archaeologically Indo-European, meaning that they had a stratified society with an ruling elite, individual tombs, used horses for transportation, etc. It is possible however that they lost their Indo-European language simply because the R1b men came as adventurers (like the conquistadors in the Americas) without their wives, took power, ruled as a small elite, but married local women (as Iberian mtDNA lineages show), and eventually adopted the local language. This is not the first time this happened in history. Most of the Germanic tribes who invaded the Roman Empire gave up their language for Latin. The invaders need to represent a minimum percentage of population to be able to impose their language. Usually this minimum is about 15% of the population, but ideally the invaders should be both men and women.

As I have mentioned above, bronze weapons in Bronze Age Iberia displayed little diversity and could just have been brought by the invaders from abroad. Once new land had been conquered, R1b men would probably have been too few in numbers to keep blacksmith among them. They would have concentrated on politics, and as conquered local didn't have the skills to make and work bronze, the production would have remained very tiny, and most of the weapons would have been imported from Gaul or beyond.

The Bronze Age in Iberia spread very late (from 1800 BCE) and very slowly, affecting only a few regions (Murcia, Castile, Extremadura, central and southern Portugal, parts of Galicia) over the first 500 years. It is only from 1300-1200 BCE that the Bronze Age finally spread more evenly across the peninsula.

In Iberia, the north-west became truly Indo-European speaking when the Hallstatt Celts came en masse with their family, wagons and livestock. The new settlements would have been completely Celtic and separated from the rest of society at first. As they grew the region would have become predominantly then completely Celtic speaking. This process probably never happened during the Argaric period.
 
Thank you for clarifying that for me, adamo, but at this point I remain unconvinced. I think more data about early Y haplotypes in western Europe is needed, so I"m looking forward to more information relating to this little tidbit that Dienekes posted on his blog today.

"A currently not available preprint that has important implications about the Neolithic of Europe.

A late Neolithic Iberian farmer exhibits genetic affinity to Neolithic Scandinavian farmers and a Bronze Age central European farmer

Sverrisdóttir, Oddný Ósk et al.

The spread of farming, the neolithisation process, swept over Europe after the advent of the farming lifestyle in the near east approximately 11,000 years ago. However the mode of transmission and its impact on the demographic patterns of Europe remains largely unknown. In this study we obtained : 66,476,944 bp of genomic DNA from the remains of a 4000 year old Neolithic farmer from the site of El Portalón, 15 km east of Burgos, Spain. We compared the genomic signature of this individual to modern-day populations as well as the few Neolithic individuals that has produced large-scale autosomal data. The Neolithic Portalón individual is genetically most similar to southern Europeans, similar to a Scandinavian Neolithic farmer and the Tyrolean Iceman. In contrast, the Neolithic Portalón individual displays little affinity to two Mesolithic samples from the near-by area, La Brana, demonstrating a distinct change in population history between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago for the northern Iberian Peninsula."

Well, this basically means that Late Beaker people from northern Castile were genetically closer to Neolithic farmers whose autosomal DNA has been tested so far, and who were closely to modern Sardinians, and did not have any Eastern European admixture linked to the Indo-Europeans from the steppes. In other words, this short excerpt could be a confirmation that R1b was not yet in Iberia 4000 years ago, as I had expected.
 
I think you know more about the sublect than me, Maciamo.
Nevertheless I'd like to give my opinion.
Please correct if I'm wrong.


I suspect there was an invasion by sea that founded Los Milares, but not Indo-European. I think it was J2 and they founded a small settlement on the eastcoast of Corscia just before founding Los Millares, where they started smelting arsenical bronze just before Los Millares.
They were looking for places to herd cattle, but they found copper. It started a war for copper, but also for good space to herd cattle.
The Bell Beaker phenomen goes in 2 dircetions, not only south to north, but also north to south. It looks more like a trading zone than a migration going on.
El Argar seems to have been founded after they found tin in Spain. This was a war for tin.
I don't know who founded El Argar, but I don't think they were allready Indo-European.
I think first Indo-Europeans in Spain were Las Cogotas, first 'pre-Halstatt Celts' in Spain were Urnfeld.

Los Millares was a Chalcolithic (Copper Age) culture, not a Bronze Age one. There might have been an invasion from the sea, but it wouldn't have been R1b horse-riders from Central Europe. Anyway the Los Millares culture was not very differently culturally from other Iberian Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures. The big rupture came with the Argaric culture.

J2 people might well have brought copper metallurgy to Iberia. I have explained here how the Copper Age might have originated with J2 people from the Balkans and central Anatolia.
 
The Argaric culture was archaeologically Indo-European, meaning that they had a stratified society with an ruling elite, individual tombs, used horses for transportation, etc. It is possible however that they lost their Indo-European language simply because the R1b men came as adventurers (like the conquistadors in the Americas) without their wives, took power, ruled as a small elite, but married local women (as Iberian mtDNA lineages show), and eventually adopted the local language. This is not the first time this happened in history. Most of the Germanic tribes who invaded the Roman Empire gave up their language for Latin. The invaders need to represent a minimum percentage of population to be able to impose their language. Usually this minimum is about 15% of the population, but ideally the invaders should be both men and women.

Archaeologically - in comparison to the contemporary Indo-European Unetice/Tumulus complex there is nothing Indo-European about El Argar; The changes and shifts in El Argar (Industrial/Social) are due to the new Bronze-age era itself and not invading Indo-Europeans stemming from a diff. culture zone;

If El Argar is the product of an early Bronze-age Indo-European Invasion/Migration than it naturally must stem from a previous to 1800 BC existing Indo-European culture;
Which one? And what are the clear links and continuity to it?

And most of all; The folks that emerged from El Argar were non-Indo-European (Iberians/Tartessians) in every respect; And the Horse was already domesticated in Bell-beaker (Chalcolithic) times;
 
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Sverrisdóttir, Oddný Ósk et al.

The spread of farming, the neolithisation process, swept over Europe after the advent of the farming lifestyle in the near east approximately 11,000 years ago. However the mode of transmission and its impact on the demographic patterns of Europe remains largely unknown. In this study we obtained : 66,476,944 bp of genomic DNA from the remains of a 4000 year old Neolithic farmer from the site of El Portalón, 15 km east of Burgos, Spain. We compared the genomic signature of this individual to modern-day populations as well as the few Neolithic individuals that has produced large-scale autosomal data. The Neolithic Portalón individual is genetically most similar to southern Europeans, similar to a Scandinavian Neolithic farmer and the Tyrolean Iceman. In contrast, the Neolithic Portalón individual displays little affinity to two Mesolithic samples from the near-by area, La Brana, demonstrating a distinct change in population history between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago for the northern Iberian Peninsula."

not sure what this has to do with R1b or Hg's in general;
But this (once more) shows that the Neolithic expansion was not an expansion of ideas but of migrations;

And all Neolithic corpses [Ötzi, Gök4 and now Portalon] are closest still to modern-day South Europeans and from them the closest to Sardinians - who are along with the Finns the most isolated modern-day Europeans;
 
Las Cogotas was Urnfield???
You might be surprised to hear that - but a vital part of Urnfield was Cremation and Las Cogotas still practised Inhumation;
So Las Cogotas even lacks the basic fundamentals of Urnfield apart from all other aspects;

I didn't say Las Cogotas was Urnfield.
I just told Las Cogotas was Indo-European and I suspect Urnfield was a precursor of Halstatt.
 
Los Millares was a Chalcolithic (Copper Age) culture, not a Bronze Age one. There might have been an invasion from the sea, but it wouldn't have been R1b horse-riders from Central Europe. Anyway the Los Millares culture was not very differently culturally from other Iberian Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures. The big rupture came with the Argaric culture.

J2 people might well have brought copper metallurgy to Iberia. I have explained here how the Copper Age might have originated with J2 people from the Balkans and central Anatolia.

Thank you for sharing your view and the link to the Copper Age diffusion map.
I have a question re the Khvalynsk culture though : were they actually producing copper or did they merely posses copper artefacts which they had received as prestige gifts from Cucuteni-Tripolye people?

As for Los Millares, I know they didn't produce proper bronze, but didn't they produce copper-arsenic alloys next to pure copper?
 
I didn't say Las Cogotas was Urnfield.
I just told Las Cogotas was Indo-European and I suspect Urnfield was a precursor of Halstatt.

Thats the same game of randomly choosing out a Culture zone and designated it to be Indo-European;

At least one of two basic/simple criterias must be fulfilled:
To which Indo-European culture is there a continuity - i.e. from what culture does it stem from;
To which distinctive Indo-European culture zone does it belong;

Neither Los Cogotas nor El Arger stem from an Indo-European complex (no continuity) nor do they belong to any distinctive Indo-European culture zone; So what makes them Indo-European if there are no links to anything Indo-European to begin with;

If you know better than clealry mention the Indo-European culture (by name) from which Los Cogotas stems from or belonged to;
 
Weren't Bell Beakers mostly of the "Dinaric" racial type? If it turns out that their Y haplogroup was I instead of R1b, this would explain fairly well the high frequency of Dinarics found in the Western Balkans. I always knew Dinarics were descendants of paleolithic Cro-Magnons.
 
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