Genetic data on the migration of steppes people into Bronze Age Europe, which probably spread Indo-European languages, has always emphasized men. The Y chromosome lineages of northwestern Europe are more than 80 percent steppes derived, while female mitochondrial DNA lineages are more mixed. But the details of how this happened remain obscure. A 2018 paper by
Juras et al., which I just read, presents some data. They sampled mitochondrial DNA from nine people of the Corded Ware culture, which spread across Europe from France to Poland in the early Bronze Age. They find that in the east (Poland, the Czech Republic) the mitochondrial DNA is derived from the steppes, but in Germany it was derived from earlier Neolithic populations.
It's a small sample but it suggests a tweak to the model of Indo-European expansion. Perhaps the first invaders into the settled lands of Europe were complete tribes, men, women and children. But once they had established themselves in the new environment, perhaps it was mostly male war bands that spread the conquest farther west; and perhaps this change went along with the change from a nomadic model, in which whole communities were on the move, to a settled model in which most people stayed home and only armies marched to conquer new lands.
Perhaps the first invaders into the settled lands of Europe were complete tribes, men, women and children. But once they had established themselves in the new environment, perhaps it was mostly male war bands that spread the conquest farther west; and perhaps this change went along with the change from a nomadic model, in which whole communities were on the move, to a settled model in which most people stayed home and only armies marched to conquer new lands.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps scholars are making the mistake of thinking that just because pottery styles and burial practices spread across an area, that must automatically mean entire peoples and ethnicities did too?
Why assume that the western regions were "conquered" by "war bands"? Suppose they were instead proselytized by religious bands? Or suppose they were syncretized by merchant bands? Or why not both? History is full of trade being a transmission vector for religion, introducing new cultural practices as well as new methods of production.
If we have the graves and the pottery (and other items like axe heads), but we don't have the genetic markers, isn't the simplest explanation that certain cultural elements spread to new peoples, with the reduced genetic influences being the product of traders or missionaries living within, and intermixing with, the local populations?
"we don't have the genetic markers"
ReplyDeleteWe have.
The men of the British Isles are about 90% R1A in their Y chromosomes, which is completely absent in Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe. So far as we can tell, it comes from the steppes. In the male line, northwestern Europe is overwhelmingly descended from Bronze Age invaders.
ReplyDeletePaleogenetics is still a new field and we shouldn't be certain about any of this, but the science we have shows that the people of Europe are at least 25% descended from steppes invaders, concentrated on the male side.