R1a wanted
 

I was looking at the statistics on Ysearch.org, noticing how few people with R1a are from Western Europe, a geographical area in which today live the decendants of indo-european speakers, such as Celts, Romans, Germans.

This seems to be a contradiction to me, since the first indo-european language speakers are identified as R1a peoples.
I find it hard to understand how few R1as coming from the steppes could impose their language and traditions on Western Europe's R1bs.
And what the hell happened to R1as in France and Spain? Their progeny is almost inexistent!

I know that associating one people to only one haplogroup is usually a crude generalization, but I think that this modus operandi is applicable when we take into consideration the much more homogeneus peoples living thousends of years ago.

Francesco

Elite dominance. The Kurgans were extremely warlike and aided by chariotry and advanced weaponry and a ruthless, dominating, patriarchal, "solar" spirituality. Think of the system of the estates-general in pre-revolutionary monarchic France: extremely small aristocratic minority predominating. Eventually, the Kurgan-descended folk were probably swamped by their R1b Paleo-Atlantid brothers, surviving only in rare isolated pockets of certain aristocratic lines. If we somehow could test the ancient and modern aristocratic families of Western Europe, I'm sure we would see more signs of the Kurgan blood than in the plebeian generality.

R1b came from the east. It seems that when people think of the cavemen they think these people could not communicate at all. Can you measure how old a language is like dna? No, and since both R1b and R1a came from the same root.

IMO, the only people to be in that region in the ice age were the Basques whose language was and is a isolate.

ALL OTHERS ARE INDO EUROPEAN. And ALL, CELTIC (ENGLISH, GERMANS, GAUL, ROMANS, CELTIBERIANS, SCOTS, PICTS, ETC.ETC.) have oral traditions of there origins coming from the East.

People never upsurp completely and what you have today is a mix of several Indo-Europeans peoples across Europe.

Hi Blackwolf,
when you say they were all Indo European what do you exactly mean?
Was their CULTURE Indo European? Or were they "GENETICALLY" Indo-Europeans?

In this second case the National Geographic don't seem to agree with you:

Indoeuropeans=Kurgans

Kurgans=R1a

Indoeuropeans=R1a

Indoeuropean
 

FEC,
I dont think National geographic is saying Indoeuropean=R1a.

It only says that R1a is responsible for the origin of the current set of Indoeuropean languages.

If you are talking about Indoeuropean people, then it goes beyond R1a and R1b.

For purposes of clarfication: Apparently my postings are widely perceived as unbearably offensive by the intensity of private correspondence received.

I should clarify that:

1. Spencer Wells and the Genographic Project both consider R1a a diagnostic Indo-Iranian marker and link it to the broader category of proto-Indo-Europeans and the archaeological Kurgan culture. Mainstream anthropologists consider the Kurgan culture, and its antecedent, the Samara culture, as the primal root of all Indo-Europeans. The Kurgans are believed to have been the first domesticators of the horse and first advanced charioteers, innovative metallurgists, and patriarchal practitioners of a "solar" religion, as evidenced by the solar religious motifs on their pottery and graves. (That is what I meant when I said "solar spirituality".) See the following for details:

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

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

2. I am NOT implying that the Kurgan R1a's SHOULD be the elite in every human society. Who else would attribute this position to me but guilty-minded ideologues? The fact that R1a's are prominent in the old Viking-Norman nobility of Europe and also prominent in the Israelite Levitical caste is a matter of EMPIRICAL HISTORY, not my own ideological judgements or wishes. I am interested purely in explaining and understanding such facts.

Source-the NG, on the Genographic Project pages:

"M17 carriers (R1a) may have also been THE FIRST SPEAKERS OF PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES, THE KURGAN PEOPLE, the linguistic root of a family that includes English, Farsi, and various Indian languages."

Maybe, with my sillogism, I put it down in a simplistic way, but...hey I really can't interpret it in any different way...
It seems to me that they' re identifying R1a to Kurgan people and, consequently, to Indo-Europeans (in short Indoeuropean=R1a ;) )

Anyway thanks for your posts, I'm open to any correction.
I'm just a newbie who's trying to understand something more.

Franceco

Difference between people and language
 

Like I said, I agree that National Geographic is identifying R1a as Kurgan, and as the carriers of the Langugage.

However National Geographic is not saying that Kurgan were the ONLY Indo-European people during their time.

There is a difference between people and language. A subset of the Indo-Europeans evolved the language and spread it to the rest of the Indo-European people.

Hi, the language is Indo-European. See, I seriously doubt that the R1b Basques would develop a completely isolate language in regards to the rest of the R1b population during this time. It is hard to tell at what time R1b entered into Europe but the first were the Basques. Latter came the rest of R1b speaking Indo European languages.

R1a and R1b must have devloped in the same general area.