origin of the Germanic tribes

[PDHOTLEN]

R1a(1) ancestral homelands

My FTDNA website explians my R1a & R1a1 as originating north of the Black and Caspians Seas. The Kurgan Culture is given; both the earliest speakers of Indo-European and domesticators of the horse, apparently. FTDNA gives the same explanation for both R1a & R1a1. I don't know what it says about R1b.

The horse may have been domesticated in more than one place, in my opinion. It may have come along naturally at a certain point in the evolution of the herding cultures scattered over Eurasia.

[Eki]

The rather colorful suggestion of IE speaking R men on horseback, either capturing or seducing European women, may prove to be fanciful. I think the timing is off, if the horse was domesticated as late as 4,000 BC. But the genetic evidence suggests that something like that clearly did happen.

Why do you think the timing is off, if the horse was domesticated as late as 4,000 BC? Have they found skeletal remains older than 6000 years belonging to hg R in Europe?

[Hando]

We know that in Europe today & probably for the last few millenia, we find a mixture of blond haired/ blue eyed types (or at least those with what has come to be called a fair complexion). The further east one travels across Eurasia, the scarcer the types wotha "fair" complexion become. When one gets to East Asia, one finds a different trait complex, that could be described as Asiatic.

When one looks at mitochondrial DNA, one finds a fairly neat divide between European types (H, V, J, T, U, K, etc) and Asian types (A, B, C, D, etc). With the exception of X, which comprises a tiny minority in both the European & Asian ends of the continent, there isn't hardly any overlap.

When it comes y-DNA, the picture is totally different. Throughout Europe & the Middle East, one finds a minority of haplogroups that are almost non-existent in Asia (F, G, I, J, and E3b), especially north of the Himalayan divide. But one finds a majority in Europe, and to a lesser extent in the Indo-European speaking parts of the Middle East, of the R haplogroup, which as we know is most closely related to Q (Native Americans & northern Siberians), N (found among Turanians), O (majority haplogroup in East Asia), etc.

Thus, we have an anomaly. R is clearly part of the Asian supercluster. So what's it doing in Europe? When R migrated west, the population did NOT bring any identifiable mtDNA with it, with the possible exception of X.

Moreover, the Indo-European language family is considered by some linguists to be more closely related to the Turanian languages (Uralic, Altaic, Turkic, Manchu, etc.) than to any languages in Europe or the Middle East.

The rather colorful suggestion of IE speaking R men on horseback, either capturing or seducing European women, may prove to be fanciful. I think the timing is off, if the horse was domesticated as late as 4,000 BC. But the genetic evidence suggests that something like that clearly did happen.

And when the R folk migrated from central/ eastern Asia, they apparently completely swamped the European y-DNA gene pool, while at the same time leaving behind descendants that look more European, than they do Asian. This is an anomaly that has got to be explained.

For the record, my y-DNA is R1b1c10 (my great grandfather was from Switzerland) and my mtDNA is T1.

Timothy Peterman

Thank you for that explanation Mr. Peterman.

[PDHOTLEN]

Geno maps & etc.

I haven't studied the Genographic map of "R" closely enough, but it looked like "R" migrated westward into Europe when the Neanderthals were still alive and kicking. So maybe R1b evolved in situ in western Europe.

Looking again at my FTDNA personal page, it says that R1a(1) sprang from a population of the Kurgans (who may have already been of mixed ancestry overall). The large grave mounds for their chiefs required much labor, hinting at slave labor acquired thru their raiding on horseback (my guess).

My 12 marker test shows several 4 step markers away from persons in western China, and even one from Tibet! Also from India. The only three step shown from the east is an Altai Siberian. Ashkenazi jews are also in the 4 step range, with one a 3 step. Two steps were all Europeans.

R1a1 & U5b2

[T E Peterman]

The one thing that we can be certain of is that R is derived from the Central/ East Asian group of K. At some point, the R folk migrated westward & didn't take many women with Asian mtDNA with them. The question really is one of timing. Depending on WHEN the migration took place, the implications are quite different for a number of different historical issues: 1) the origin of IE languages, 2) the origin of agriculture, 3) horse domestication, 4) the origin of fair complexions, etc.

The earliest explanation, which I adhered to for a long time, was that the R folk moved into Europe quite early (say 35,000 BC), that they did not speak an IE language, that Basque is probably a remnant of their language, that they comprised the indigenous post-Neanderthal population of Europe & were hunter gatherers, until agriculturalists from the Near East settled among them.

Why did students of y-DNA arrive at this conclusion? I think the answer can be found in the Founder Effect, which states that, everything else being equal, the oldest DNA component will be the most widespread in the descendant population. R outnumbers I, which together far outnumber J & other groups in the European population. Therefore, R must have been there first & the others are newcomers. The key phrase here is "everything else being equal". If one studied North American y-DNA today, knowing nothing of the history of the continent, one could conclude that the R haplogroup was by far the oldest in North America & that Q came later -just a minor group of immigrants. Of course, we know this didn't happen. Q became established in North America some 12,000 years ago, if not earlier, while R has only been here for 400 years. The sad story from the Native American perspective is that, because the R folk had the technological & immunological advantage, they managed to overwhelm the local population in numbers & took over the continent. Could the same thing have happened in prehistoric Europe?

Another indication that a population is old is that it contains deep genetic divisions. "I" clearly has easily identifiable divisons that appear to date back to the close of the Ice Age, if not earlier. What about R? The division between R1a & R1b is quite old & has been known for a long time. But it is specifically R1b that numerically dominates western Europe. Most of these turn out to be R1b1c [old nomenclature], which has been extremely difficult to divide, either by SNP, or by modal clustering. I think it was John McEwan who estimated that all R1b1c men are descended from a common patrilineal ancestor who lived maybe 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, which is a lot more recent than the various subgroups of "I". Thus, the overwhelming numbers of R1b1c in western Europe do NOT indicate that the haplogroup has been there for a long time, just that the population has been amplified.

The assumption early on was that this near-extinction population bottleneck associated with the founding of R1b1c must have occurred when something nearly wiped out the population that was living in Iberia. Those making this suggestion still retained a bias that R1b was old in Europe because it numerically dominates western Europe & must have lived in the Iberian refugia during the last Ice Age. The founders of R1b1c could have lived in Iberia, or some other place. The discovery of the population bottleneck proves, however, that the numerical dominance of R1b1c in western Europe was NOT caused by the Founder Effect.

What caused the amplification of the R1b1c population? Consider the timing: The amplification probably occurred around the time when Neolithic farmers were beginning to spread into Europe. Perhaps R1b1c, rather than J, was the haplogroup that brought agriculture into Europe. Someone has suggested that the oldest branches of R1b1c are actually found in Anatolia, rather than Iberia -so what does that tell us? The common ancestor of R1b1c, who lived maybe 8,000 years ago, lived in Anatolia. So... what exciting things were going on in Anatolia 8,000+ years ago???

I will put this out there as an "off the cuff" theory that Cavalli-Sforza would love, namely that most western Europeans are NOT descended from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, but are actually descended from R1b1c carrying Neolithic farmers that carried early agriculture from Anatolia across the European continent. Better food supplies amplified the R1b1c population. They encountered hunter-gatherer "I" folk & rather than making war, shared food & exchanged wives. The "I" folk were peacefully assimilated & today, you can't tell any difference between the two populations.

I will also make a shell shocking prediction that these early agriculturalists were not only R1b1c, but spoke an early IE language, probably ancestral to the centum branch (Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Macedonian, Hittite, etc).

What about the Basque anomaly? They are something like 90% R1b1c & 10% "I", but don't speak an IE language. How did that happen? The expanding agricultural population from Anatolia did bring women with them & most were from the typical European groups (H, V, J, T, U, K, and even X). The mtDNA group J is said to be found in every IE speaking population, but Bryan Sykes reported that J was absent among the Basque. J also clearly came from the Near East.

In normal circumstances, husband & wife speak the same language & the child learns their language; but what if they speak different languages? Moreover, what if the father isn't even around? The child learns to speak the mother's language only.

The rise of agriculture probably led to the development or enhancement of a warring class of men -these people protected the farmers from the threat of marauders. Remember, hunter-gatherers just saw crops & livestock as additional items to hunt and gather.

There may have been a tragic calamity between the "I" folk & the incoming farmers, defended by warriors, when this demographic wave reached the Pyrenees -no wives were exchanged, no words were exchanged; there may have been a brutal massacre in which most of the "I" men were killed in the local population & the women raped by the warriors, thus producing a generation that was overwhelmingly R1b1c, but didn't speak an IE language. These sorts of things may have happened & this would explain the Basque anomaly.

The diaspora from Anatolia may have been linked to the inundation of the Black Sea basin in say 5300 BC. I read in a book regarding this flood that, perhaps because of changing climatic conditions, many of the people in Anatolia left a thousand or so years before the inundation. Perhaps they moved into SE Europe.

Imagine for a moment the R1 population drifting westward from Central Asia. The population gets divided at the Turan basin, with some staying north of the Aral Sea, Caspian Sea, Caucasus & Black Sea; and others staying south of the same. During the last Ice Age, there was a millenia long drought north of Mongolia that presumably pushed Q to the northeast & pushed R toward the west. The obstacles that R encountered in the westward move may have split the population in two, which we see today as R1a and R1b & yes, this probably did involve the split between satem & centum languages. The women accompanying this population may have belonged to the X group. By and large, this probably was a male expansion & they tended to acquire wives from the locals. Perhaps they had coveted trade goods to offer & now for the real shell shocker...

Maybe the Number One thing that the R1b people brought were DOGS, which DNA studies show are derived from a type of wolf living in western China. Dogs were the first domesticant. That could have been the first major technological enhancement that brought R1b to the forefront of the world stage!! Long before agriculture, there were DOGS!! So what's the point?

Dogs make the world safe for agriculture... In the hunter-gatherer world, farming is foolish. Why grow crops if they will just attract a raid from a neighboring band? Before agriculture can take hold, there must be a deterrent to raids & nothing could be better than a handful of dogs barking & yapping at the sight of an intruder.

A dog possessing population of R1b folk may have settled in Anatolia among the J folk; domestication of plants & livestock begins; the population merges & then expands. A division occurs when the Anatolian drought hits. Genetic drift favors R1b1c in the population that moved into Europe & J in the population that remained in Anatolia & Mesopotamia.

I can't say that any of the above is right, but I think it offers an interesting alternative to the status quo.

Timothy Peterman

[PDHOTLEN]

tidbit to add to my earlier msg

I just looked again at my FTDNA personal page under the Haplogroup heading. Under the 4-step mutation segment (within the 12 marker stretch) is also shown one from the "Mari." Mari (east of the Urals) is a linguistic sibling of Hungarian (before the latter broke off and migrated to Hungary with all their horses).

R1a1 (Norwegian variety) & U5b2

[Haganus]

Many thanks for these interesting messages. But I should like to know:
where did the Germanic language arise? In Scandinavia or on the German
continent? I cannot believe that the Germanic languages were spokens
simultanously in Scandinavia and Germany.
Who has read about Juergen Udolph s theory about Germanic place
and rivernames? And one third of the Germanic vocabulary is not
indo-european. From an unknown language?

[T E Peterman]

No one knows exactly where the German languages arose, but I will suggest that they arose at the point of contact between R1b & R1a. They were seprated for countless generations as they drifted westward, with R1a north of the Caspian & Black Seas & R1b south of the Caspian & Black Seas.

R1b may have followed the Danube right up into southern Germany. R1a may have tracked north of the Carpathians into Poland & into northeastern Germany. Somewhere in the neighborhood of well, Germany, the Eurasian geography comes together in just the right way to have caused this point of contact.

So, the German languages may well have originated in... Germany.

Timothy Peterman

ich spreche ein bischen Deutsch

[s trangsrud]

Many thanks for these interesting messages. But I should like to know:
where did the Germanic language arise? In Scandinavia or on the German
continent? I cannot believe that the Germanic languages were spokens
simultanously in Scandinavia and Germany.

How about Denmark/Northern Germany.

Who has read about Juergen Udolph s theory about Germanic place
and rivernames? And one third of the Germanic vocabulary is not
indo-european. From an unknown language?

The I1a in would probably have spoke a non-Indoeuropean language. They may have been in the area before either of the Rs got there.

No one knows exactly where the German languages arose, but I will suggest that they arose at the point of contact between R1b & R1a.

R1b, R1a, & I1a.

[PDHOTLEN]

correction...

I made a mistake about the close relationship of Mari to Hungarian (Magyar). I should've checked first. I guess I was thinking of the Mansi. Anyway, my 4-step Mari connection is to a Finnish group on the west side of the Urals. I pulled out an old National Geographic map of the Soviet Union with ethnicities shown on the back. So here I am making the correction. But it goes to show that not all R1a's spoke Indo-European. (My Mari connection was only identified to R1a level).

R1a1 & U5b2

[Johnserrat]

I have a few comments based on recent posts:

The Germanic substrate hypothesis has been largely abandoned by linguists as more and more words believed to be from a non-IE language have been identified as IE. I should also note that there is no scientific evidence Is ever spoke a non-IE language.

Peterman's idea that R1bs could have brought agriculture to europe from anatolia is interesting. Could be part of the Black Sea deluge theory? I expect that this would have involved travel by boat and settling in areas near coasts and on rivers. Much of europe was densely forested during the time of the expansion of farming and made subsistence very difficult until farmers started to slash and burn the forests.

Is appear to have come from the balkans. There could have been separate waves of people resettling europe after the LGM going to different places. There is clearly a mixing of R1b and I1 in northern europe but not really in southern europe. My best guess is that this was through contact rather than conquest because otherwise it would show in the archeological record.

In terms of the origin of proto-germanic, most linguists do point to northern germany and Denmark. Scandinavian languages are clearly a later development, although there is no reason why the people in the area had to speak mutually unintelligible languages during this time. Specific dialects are known to develop over time and could have resulted in the current situation over a relatively short period of time (just a few thousand years).

This area of debate will continue to be highly speculative until geneticists, archeologists and linguists are able to marry their respective timelines. For example, who were those pesky cro-magnons?

John

[Paul_Johnsen]

I suppose it would be nice to get an explanation as to why I1a appears to have equal (or maybe even lower) STR-diversity to the supposed IE newcomers (R1a/R1b). With an estimate of MCRA 6,000 years I1a hardly goes back to the last ice age itself. Would this mean that the supposed Non-IE element in Germanic came after IE? Or could the high frequency of I1a in Northern Europe simply be a "fluke"?

[Haganus]

But there is in Scandinavia no clear substratum in place- and
riviernames of a non (Indo)-European language. How is possible
to explain that originally no Indo-European languages were
spoken there?

Where did arise haplogroup II a, the most important haplogroup
of the Scandinavians?

[T E Peterman]

One thing that we can be sure of is that there was no I1a in Scandinavia dyring the last Ice Age. The climate must have been about like that of Greenland or even Antarctica today. The "I" folk are said to have wintered in the Balkans during the last Ice Age. Perhaps they were still there as hunter-gatherers when the Neolithic farmers (? R1b1c) showed up from Anatolia.

They may have peacefully assimilated with the farmers & then joined with them in the trek up the Danube, across Germany & into Sweden.

One thing for certain, the "I" folk are nested under an SNP along with the "J" folk in a clade that could be called IJ. None of the IJ folk were ever in Central Asia.

"J" is thought to have lived in the region of Anatolia & Mesopotamia during the last Ice Age. The Balkans aren't really that far away. The Caucasus is fairly close as well & that is where IJ's "brother" G settled. IJ & G had a "brother" H, who migrated to India. IJ & G had another "brother" K, who migrated to the northeast, travelling north of the Himalayas & he was the ancestor of L, M, NO, P (including Q & R), S, and T. I suspect that L, M, S, and T broke off while still in Iran & travelled SE into India & beyond. NO & P were the only ones that were likely to have been truly Central Asian.

I don't know of any evidence that really says that I1a was spread across Europe before R. The Neolithic farmers that left Anatolia for the Balkans may have simply outnumbered the local "I" folk they found & that ratio may persist to this day.

I really am inclined to believe that the Cro-Magnons were descended from F, but can't speculate as to which clade they were part of.

Timothy Peterman

[PDHOTLEN]

Some Celts migrated into Anatolia

In a paperback book on languages ("Empires of the Word"), under the Celtic chapter, is shown that there was a Celtic influx into Anatolia. An example was given that some tribe or other asked someone to intervene with the Celts there to stop predation by Celts in a Western Europe location, or vice versa. Anyway, R1b research in Anatolia should keep that in mind.

R1a1 & U5b2