Brother From Another Mother?

I have no way to verify, but some commentors are saying that two Bell Beakers in Barcelona (I0257 and I0261) in the Nature paper are R1b-V88 or slightly ancestral.  Neither of them have Steppe-related ancestry.

Freeze! 

Beaker inspired Kerma Ware? (1900 BC Nubia, Jan Turek?)

Over a week ago, Razib Khan talked about this new paper "The peopling of the last Green Saraha revealed by high-coverage resequencing of trans-Saharan patrilineages" by D'Atanasio et al, 2018.

In it, the authors attribute the star-like explosion of R1b-V88 in the Green Sahara to a rather recent coalescence period about 5,000 ago with an entrance from Sardinia (or S. Europe) ranging between this coalescence age and something up to two thousand years earlier.  I previously called the curious presence of R1b in the circum-Sahara a "grass fire pattern" phenomenon.

Here's what the D'Antanasio authors wrote:

"The peculiar topology of the R-V88 sequenced samples suggests that the diffusion of this haplogroup was quite rapid and possibly triggered by the Saharan favourable climate"

After this back-coalescence date, the Sahara began a rapid desiccation with some fairly strong pulses of catastrophic and permanent drought.  That event is revealed in the structure of V88's African phylogeny.  The D'Antanasio people rightly figure that the remnant of this dead zone can be partially re-created by looking at moderns in the peripheries.  Very clearly they believe that R1b-V88, now common among certain cattle pastoralist nations across the Sahel, are partially descended from populations that once populated this region.

 Before jumping through the computer with a retort, a commentor on Anthrogenica asks this very reasonable question in response (translated):

"The question remains unanswered, where did [V88] cross the Mediterranean and why is it the only one of the old [European] haplogroups to have done it with success...?"

If D'Antanasio is correct that African V88 plugs into a larger European phylogeny of a certain age, then why is this one child clade found dominating certain cattle communities in Africa, but not a single one from the alphabet of European or Near Eastern lineages?  From an archaeological standpoint, at what point in the Holocene is this directionality in either direction possible?

Let me ask directly.  Does African V88 find its source in the Beaker communities of Iberia and the Mediterranean Islands?  Does it find its source in Southwest Iberia in the centuries before this?

This comment is not to suggest any direct relationship with the following culture, but it does ask if the stylistic influences of the Bell Beakers were close enough in proximity that their decoration was recognizable to distant others.  Here, in a paper entitled "The Beaker World and Otherness of the Early Civilizations", Jan Turek makes this comment:

"...in Nubia (namely in the present-day Sudan) began at this time, the development of Kerma Culture (Early Kerma, group C, Phase Ia-b 2500-2050 BC).  Ceramic of the Kerma culture has a remarkably similar ornaments as the Late Neolithic Saharan pottery and Bell Beaker in Northwestern Africa and Europe."

The last quote was added partly because of the convenience of having a convenient graphic available, but also it shows that beyond permanent settlements and pit graves that Beaker traders, long hunters and family bands could be found in the reaches.  Some people of the Saraha at this time are V88; connecting too many dots?

Honestly, I do not know the answer to the V88 question.  Right now it could still be partially associated with the Cardium expansion, but the window of possibilities continues to narrow.

Beaker Enigma No More?

Here's a media round-up from this week.

A good article at Haaretz by Ruth Schuster "For Whom the 'Bell Beaker' Tolls: One of Archaeology's Longest Running Mysteries Finally Solved" whose title is a play on a paper by Vander Linden.

Solved?  It did clarify some central questions, some that had obvious answers based on physical anthropology.  Relationship to Corded Ware?  Answer that.

Beaker Double Burial at Trumpington Meadows, Cambridge (Dave Webb, Cambridge Archaeological Unit)

In the Guardian article "Arrival of Beaker Folk Changed Britain for ever, Ancient DNA Study Shows", Ian Armit of the University of Bradford makes this comment:

“It’s not necessarily a story of violent conquest,” Armit said. “There is some evidence of a declining population and increased growth of forests, suggesting that agriculture was in decline. We could be looking at climate change, or even an epidemic of imported disease to which they had no resistance. But we certainly now have the evidence that they were replaced – and they never came back.”

Two of the Harvard samples, 18 year old male, 16 year old female, same grave (Dave Webb)

Another by the Daily Mail "How the builders of Stonehenge 5,000 years ago were almost completely wiped out by mysterious 'Beaker people' from the continent whose blood runs in Brit veins to this day"

Basically.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the moment we know next to nothing of the other islands, Ireland in particular.

A number of universities report the findings.

Hungarian Academy of Sciences "Practically the entire population of the British Isles was replaced"

Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen "Pots, people and knowledge transfer"

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona "Ancient DNA reveals impact of the "Beaker Phenomenon" on prehistoric Europeans"

University of Cambridge "Ancient DNA reveals impact of the "Beaker Phenomenon" on Prehistoric Europeans"

Looking at Supp Info

Started looking at the Supplementary Info from the "Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe".

Extended data (this paper)

Look at these numbers for the percentage of R1b.  Significant that of 34 British Neolithic, 0% are R1b 

- 27/27 Czech Beakers (whaaat)
- 20/21 British Beakers
- 6/6     French
- 8/9     Polish 
- 6/15   Spaniards are R1b
- 2/2     Swiss
- 7/7     Netherlands

- 23/26 Germany
- 1/1     Italy

Several of the above non-R1b lineages of Beakers are labeled P1, CT, CF, BT and F and then labeled as negative for this and that.  I imagine that's as far as they could be read with damage.  Any guesses as to what they would likely be?

- 6/13   Hungary

Hungary is a mixed bag and should be.

- 0/2     Portugal

Kind of ironic for a stylistic tradition that synthesizes contact between Portugal and Morocco.  But as the new Spaniards in the final paper show, every new genome adds a twist to the story.  Speaking of Portugal, two papers are out on Portuguese Bell Beaker and those explain a lot. 

1,000 Ancient Brits

Poster Dan sends this Science Daily article with comments by Reich and Cunliffe.

David Reich:

"the orthodoxy -- the assumption that present-day people are directly descended from the people who always lived in that same area -- is wrong almost everywhere."

"There was a sudden change in the population of Britain," says Reich. "It was an almost complete replacement." [Early Bronze Age]

Barry Cunliffe:

"absolutely sort of mind-blowing...They are going to upset people, but that is part of the excitement of it."

The article continues: 

For example, Reich's team is working with Cunliffe and others to study more than 1,000 samples from Britain to more accurately measure the replacement of the island's existing gene pool by the steppe-related DNA from the Bell Beaker people. "The evidence we have for a 90 percent replacement is very, very suggestive, but we need to test it a bit more to see how much of the pre-Beaker population really survived," explains Cunliffe.

"Amesbury Archer" Jane Brayne

Here's something interesting. The graph shows the population estimates for England and Wales over several thousand years.  Neolithic Britain had just started recovering from an apocalyptic crash before diving again on the eve of the Beaker invasion.  The population explodes during the Beaker centuries.

Looks like the Neolithics were already having big problems.  Plague?

Nature Supplement SI (Heyd, Fokkens, Kristiansen, Sjogren)

Here's the freely accessible seven page supplement to the Nature paper entitled "Archaeological background of the Beaker Complex"

It's only seven pages so click on the Academia link.

"Jan van Oostwoud" The Earliest Beaker Skeleton 575 (Fred Gijbels)

One thing they comment on is that houses of the Beakers Complex continue in the traditions of those regions.  Even when the genetic turnover was nearly total, such as in Britain, houses continue to be constructed as before.

I imagine this means that efficiency, building materials, and proven designs have a lot to do with house architecture rather than who builds them.  Also, well built houses can survive hundreds of years, so it's not as if the wheel needs to be constantly reinvented.

Three more Beaker papers in the queue concerning population movements.  Should have at least one tomorrow morning.