Euro R1bs not Indoeuropeans?

[F.E.C.]

I' m missing something
Now and then people say that today the predominant haplogroup in Europe is R1b because Indoeuropean tribes that stormed across the continent roughly 5000 years ago were composed by R1b individuals as well as R1a.

Now, since the M269 marker (R1b1c) downstream of the M343 marker (R1b) is much older than 5000 years and is indigenous to Europe, can we say that R1b1cs, that is almost ALL R1bs living in Europe, are NOT the descendents of those peoples coming from the Asian steppes only in a subsequent time?

I hope I was clear.

Francesco

[T E Peterman]

Since R1b1c & its parent haplogroups (R1b1, R1b, R1, & R) are derived from P (which is found primarily among Turkic speakers in Siberia), and since R is a "brother" haplogroup to Q (which is found primarily among Native Americans), it seems obvious that R was Siberian. I consider them to be ancient (by that I mean Paleolithic) settlers from the Asian steppes.

Timothy Peterman

[Stevo]

Since R1b1c & its parent haplogroups (R1b1, R1b, R1, & R) are derived from P (which is found primarily among Turkic speakers in Siberia), and since R is a "brother" haplogroup to Q (which is found primarily among Native Americans), it seems obvious that R was Siberian. I consider them to be ancient (by that I mean Paleolithic) settlers from the Asian steppes.

Timothy Peterman

I agree.

I have seen research that indicates that, as one travels from east to west, R1b gets younger. That would indicate east-to-west movement, at least initially.

There are several competing theories as to who the original Proto-Indo-Europeans were. No one knows for sure.

My own seriously humble and open-to-correction opinion is that R1b spread IE languages in the West, and R1a (perhaps accompanied by some other types of Rs) spread them in the East.

[F.E.C.]

I consider them to be ancient (by that I mean Paleolithic) settlers from the Asian steppes.

Right Timothy. As you say M269, that is the marker for R1b1c, is much older than the Indoeuropean movements towards West.

So are we R1b1cs all descendents of PALEOLITHIC settlers from the steppes? I think I understood that your answer is yes.

So what about the Indoeuropean peoples who came to Europe thousands and thousands of years later? Was their contribution to the Western European genes so minimal?

[F.E.C.]

I have seen research that indicates that, as one travels from east to west, R1b gets younger. That would indicate east-to-west movement, at least initially.

Yes Stevo, that's right: as one travels from east to west R1b gets younger and that implies there was a east-to-west movement.

The point is this movement has nothing to do with the Indoeuropean or proto-Indoeuropean migrations because, if I'm correct, it occurred thousands years earlier than them.

[M.O'Connor]

So did people become R1B1c from R1B while isolated in Southern France or Spain .....during the last Ice Age?

.. was R1B carried there from the east?, or south (Italy)Alps afterwards?

I thought R1B was the Western Europe's Cro magnon Man?
Or was Cro Magnon Man(sp?) the R1B carrier to western Europe?

I'm R1B1 and I have a couple 12 matches in Chinese Urghur area, out of 600 tested.

i've seen big jig-saw puzzles in my time..but this one takes the cake!.

There must be some changing views that I am not aware of.?

I can't wait to see my SNP results.

[lgmayka]

The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language lived only about 6000 years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans
---
The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical group of people whose existence from around 4000 BCE is inferred from their language.
---

The Indo-European languages are simply too closely related to date from much earlier than that. The comparative linguistics indications are simply too strong.

The rather recent spread of the Indo-European languages is not all that mysterious. We know who spread these languages: the speakers of Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Slavic, etc. These various ancient groups and their movements are at least to some extent recorded; and their common origin in Eastern Europe is pretty well established.

The only real open issue is, Why did these languages supersede the earlier languages of Europe (except in Basque territory)? Was this supersession accomplished by chariots, agriculture, or trade? In other words, why did an Indo-European language become more convenient or desirable than a native's own?

[T E Peterman]

Have any of you read "Before the Dawn..." by Nicholas Wade? This book is an assessment of the impact that DNA analysis is having in our understanding of human prehistory. He states that new models by linguists suggest that PIE was spoken ca. 8,000 BC & that the closest language families to Indo European are those containing Mongolian, Turkic, Altaic, Korean, Japanese, & Chuchi-Eskimo. These are called the Eurasiatic superfamily by some. One degree more distant is the group that Greenberg called Amerind.

The suggestion in the book is that speakers of these proto-languages lived further south in the Old World during the last Ice Age & then surged northward as the Ice Age came to a close, following the game. I find it interesting that this superfamily plus Amerind corresponds to y-DNA R, Q, P, some of O, some of N, maybe M & L -all are nested under K.

Someone suggested that R1b shows signs of early habitation in Anatolia, which happens to be where agriculture started. Neolithic farmers, presumed to be J2, brought agriculture to Europe. But what if those Neolithic farmers were really a mixture of J2 & R1b? The Neolithic farmers could have brought huge concentrations of these haplogroups (especially R1b) to Europe, along with the Indo European langauges. I have never seen where anyone has considered this as a possibility.

I think people ruled out R1b a long time ago because of the Basques. But perhaps we are being misled here.

I still adhere to the perspective that if two parents speak different languages, the child will be more likely to speak the mother's language, especially if the father didn't stick around for long.

The Basques were reported a few years ago ("Seven Daughters of Eve") to lack mt-J, which was presumably brought to Europe by the Neolithic farmers. If that is the case, the Basques may have had mothers who were completely native, while the farmers were bringing in wives from all 7 haplogroups from Anatolia.

This subject is a mystery & I'm sure that evidence & opinions written here may soon be obsolete.

Timothy Peterman

[F.E.C.]

Here are the possible ages of R1b and some of its subclades. Draw your conclusions.

M343 (R1b): 30,000 years (estmated Geno Pr.)

downstream of M343:

M269 (R1b1c): 15-20,000 years (estimated J. McEwan)

downstr. of M269:

M167 or SRY2627 (R1b1c6): 9,000 years circa (estimated J. McEwan)

M222 (R1b1c7): 4,000 years circa (estimated J. McEwan)

S21 (R1b1c9): 9,000 years circa (estimated J. McEwan)


As you can see M269, originated in Europe, long pre-dates the Indoeuropeans' coming

[T E Peterman]

Unless dates are not properly calibrated...

Has anyone considered the possibility that R1b men in prehistoric Europe did speak PIE or a language closely related to the stem of Indo European?

Since, according to many linguists, Indo European is affiliated with other Eurasiatic languages (ie, Uralic, Altaic, Turkic, Mongolian, etc.) & considering that R is a "brother" of Q, nested under P, we could infer that the ancient R that settled in Europe in pherhistoric times would have been speaking a Eurasiatic language, and since R's descendants today speak Indo-European, one could draw an inference that R's ancient language was proto-Indo European, or one of its antecedents.

R1a may have spoken, as FTDNA & others suggest, the actual PIE. R1b may have spoken a "cousin" language. Men who are R1a & J2 innovate Neolithic farming, their population begins to grow & they spread into Europe. The R1b language may have been similar enough to R1a language, that they adopted the new language with a few R1b influences, perhaps creating the east/ west divide that some have seen in languages in Europe.

I am NOT suggesting here that R1b1c was much younger. I am suggesting that, even though the MRCA of all Indo European languages was spoken in 8000 BC to 9000 BC, the ancestral population was also speaking an antecedent language that dated to a far earlier time.

Timothy Peterman

[lgmayka]

To some extent this morphs into the Proto-World debate, the question of whether all human languages ultimately derive from a single original:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-World_language

Linguists generally find no concrete evidence that all languages are related. On the other hand, the contrary hypothesis seems to require the acceptance of one or more improbable assumptions.

[Mikey]

Though interesting, few scientists take seriously the idea that R1b accompanies the IE language spread.

I know it is difficult for modern Europeans to swallow (especially R1b bearers), but the most likely scenario, put forth by Renfrew and Cavalli-Sforza, is that the original IE Hg was J2 - that the J2s indoeuropeanized the people in the putative R1a homeland - and that these R1a bearers, which had domesticated the horse - spread over Eurasia to spread the IE language.

This theory has gained credibility because of the presence of J2 and R1a among the high castes of India. Any serious theory on IE must show an ancient presence of a Hg in India, etc.

Don't take these things personally. Europe's history is a series of migrations, conquests and assimilation. Here's the dominant theory: R1bs "conquered" the Neanderthals. Then the megalithic builders (likes I1b2s) conquered those populations. Later, the R1as and some J2s indoeuropeanized those populations. Much later (in modern times) - other groups of largely R1b bearers (the modern "Spanish" and "English") conquered much of the world.

It's all a cycle. And no one Hg will be present as the "conquering" or "European" Hg over ALL millennia.

Why did the R1bs begin speaking IE? Cavalli-Sforza did extensive modeling of the theory in Africa, where hunter-gatherer pygmies began speaking the language of farming Bantus. He proposes a similar connection - the hunter-gatherers needed to learn the farmer's toungues, so they could trade for food. After all, a farmer can still hunt - but baking bread is not so easy to the hunter-gatherer.

If you think the contribution of R1a and J2 is tiny on the western fringes of Europe, you should realize that the mitochondrial DNA contributions of the Neolithic farmers (which, unlike Y Hgs, can be tested) is even tinier. I believe the invaders bore the exceedingly rare N3 - something like that.

Are these theories troubling? A few months back, a very long thread debated this precise topic. I posted that the tiny numbers of putative IE HGs in Western Europe MUST indicate that another HG was responsible for the spread of IEs. My candidate was HG I, for several reasons (even distribution, autochthonous to Europe, original homeland consistent with original PIE homeland, etc.). Now I am not so sure.

But I don't think R1b has been seriously linked to the spread of IEs.

[Stevo]

All of this is highly speculative.

I've read Renfrew's Archaeology & Language. It's interesting but not all that convincing.

People do not switch languages easily. There has to be some real good reason.

I1b2s conquered the R1bs?

Where is the evidence of that? There is more indication that things were the other way around.

J2s spread IE languages? What evidence is there of that?

Don't most of the world's J2s speak Semitic languages?

It seems to me that one must assume a constant rate of language change to arrive at the current estimates for the beginnings of Indo-European.

What if those rates are not constant?

I don't even know my own haplogroup yet, so I have no personal investment in who was or was not a Proto-Indo-European.

I just find it hard to account for the spread and complete triumph of IE in Western Europe unless R1bs were in some sense native speakers of it.

Here's another thought.

Why look for the origin of IE among one particular y-haplogroup?

If IE developed as late as some say, then perhaps its original speakers were already a mixed people.

[F.E.C.]

Mikey,
though I'm not so convinced on some of your points (i.e. J2 as peculiar Indoeuropean marker), I agree with you that R1bs (in particular M269 carriers) have inhabited Europe long before the proto-Indoeuropeans came. IMHO this can safely be inferred by what we have learned thanks to this science.

Stevo,
obviously I don't think that Indoeuropean peoples were composed by individuals of only one Hg, still my thought is that we're talking about people who lived in a time in which there was a certain degree of homogeneity, thus it could easily be that the bulk of them were R1as and R1bs (plain M343 carriers, with no M269 marker).

[Stevo]

Mikey,
though I'm not so convinced on some of your points (i.e. J2 as peculiar Indoeuropean marker), I agree with you that R1bs (in particular M269 carriers) have inhabited Europe long before the proto-Indoeuropeans came. IMHO this can safely be inferred by what we have learned thanks to this science.

Stevo,
obviously I don't think that Indoeuropean peoples were composed by individuals of only one Hg, still my thought is that we're talking about people who lived in a time in which there was a certain degree of homogeneity, thus it could easily be that the bulk of them were R1as and R1bs (plain M343 carriers, with no M269 marker).

You're probably right, Francesco. R1a looks like a good candidate. It seems pretty obvious, if that is the case, that they didn't spread their languages to Western Europe via conquest.

I just wonder how IE did spread. Usually people don't switch languages without some really compelling reason.

I agree with you about J2. It seems a very unlikely candidate.

Haplogroup I occurred to me, but they didn't get far enough east . . . unless I, as a sort of central clearinghouse, spread IE languages by diffusion both east and west: to R1bs on their western side and to R1as on the their eastern side. Those R1as could have then spread those languages to the east.

Who knows?

It was probably R1as.

Damned Russians!

(My wife is Russian.)