The Spread of the Beaker culture and the Spread of Mitochondrial DNA H with Dale Drinnon

What is becoming clear is that the beaker culture was an immigrant community that brought copper and other metal technology and most ceertainly controled the trade itself. Thus we are looking at the proto Atlantean trade culture that continously supplied fresh manpower and settlers from the early bronze age through the end of the atlantean age in 1159 BC.

This sea borne trade empire, known at the time of its demise as the sea peoples matured around 2400 BC as it responded to peak demand for its copper. Once we undersrtand the sheer volume of this actuvity and it multiple palace like trade factories it is easy to understand that we are looking at a rapid population buildout that submerged resident tribes in the same way that first nations throughout north america are been absorbed through hybridization.

Our mistake has been to miss the size and real scale of all this because we are dealing with hinterlands of a civilization whose centers were lost abruptly along with most of the population. After that collapse remnants already established as forward bases found themselves without support and forced into movement and dispersion.

What is important is that this DNA signature conforms completely to our knowledge of Atlantean colonization and presence. That include the West Coast of India and the Indus valley and as we are dealing with a seaborne society it explains Madagasscar which acted as a genetic refugia. South Africa was heavily mined during this era but it was heavily populated and could not act as a DNA refugia.

The Spread of the Beaker culture and the Spread of Mitochondrial DNA H

Saturday, July 19, 2014

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-spread-of-beaker-culture-and-spread.html

National Geographic: "Modern Europe's Genetic History Starts in Stone Age"

Family tree of much of modern European population has Stone Age roots.

Analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 39 ancient skeletons from central Germany has shown that several distinct waves of people swept across ancient Europe. Anthropologists noted that today’s western European population is genetically dominated by a mid-Stone Age (Neolithic) population conventionally dated 4,000 to 4,500 years ago, though contributions from Early Neolithic, Late Neolithic, and later Bronze Age groups.

Researchers report the correlation of genomic markers with dated skeletons has allowed them to "reconstruct the recent evolutionary history" of European people.

Skeletons such as that of the "Beaker folk," late Neolithic people named for their waisted pottery, belong to the same genomic grouping as much of the native population of Spain and Portugal.

Anthropologists had thought that Europe, after the demise of Neanderthals and infiltration by the first early modern humans (conventionally dated about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago), was populated by only few or even just one migratory event. But findings suggest successive waves swept western Europe, though the reasons remain completely unknown. Each group left its genetic footprint in the modern population. Furthermore, those genetically distinct groups correspond to archaeological changes, showing that cultural changes in Europe were not a matter of changes among people themselves but rather the influx or upsurgence of different people groups.

Researchers were gratified to note that the changes in DNA haplogroups do correlate with archaeological differences such as different sorts of pottery and artifacts suggesting different lifestyles, explains Spencer Wells, the National Geographic representative involved with the study. "In this study we show that changes in the European archaeological record are accompanied by genetic changes, suggesting that cultural shifts were accompanied by the migration of people and their DNA." Archaeologists have long debated whether cultural changes—such as being hunter-gatherers versus being farmers—represent an influx of new people or a change in the characteristics of existing populations. Many anthropologists view farmers as more evolutionarily advanced.

"This is the first high-resolution genetic record of these lineages through time, and it is fascinating that we can directly observe both human DNA evolving in ‘real-time,’ and the dramatic population changes that have taken place in Europe," says joint lead author Wolfgang Haak. "We can follow over 4,000 years of prehistory, from the earliest farmers through the early Bronze Age to modern times."11

"The record of this maternally inherited [mitochondrial] genetic group, called Haplogroup H," explains another of the joint lead authors, Paul Brotherton, "shows that the first farmers in Central Europe resulted from a wholesale cultural and genetic input via migration, beginning in Turkey and the Near East where farming originated and arriving in Germany around 7,500 years ago."

[Actually the mtDNA haplogroup H is native to the area of Northern Spain and Southern France and is closely related to the people of Halogroup V, in the Basque country. The "First Farmers from Turkey and the Near East" were the OTHER group under discussion, the ancestors of the LBK pottery makes, and they were both genetically distinctive and overwritten by the mtDNA haplogroup H population, as this article subsequently goes on to show-DD]

"This population moves in around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, but where it came from remains a mystery, as we can't see anything like it in the areas surrounding Europe," says Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), which did the work. "The genetics show that something around that point caused the genetic signatures of previous populations to disappear. However, we don't know what happened or why, and [the mid-Neolithic] has not been previously identified as [a time] of major change." Researchers also do not know where this Neolithic population that leaves its genetic marker in over 40% of western Europeans came from. "About [4,500] years ago, you start seeing a diversity and composition of genetic signatures that are beginning to look like modern [Central] Europe," Cooper says. "This composition is then modified by subsequent cultures moving in, but it's the first point at which you see something like the modern European genetic makeup in place."

The Neolithic "linear B" pottery culture (LBK) is believed to be predominantly farmers, named for their characteristic pottery decorations. The previous inhabitants seemed to be a hunter-gatherer population, and their genetic signatures differ.

Yet the genetic turnover in western Europe’s population wasn’t finished yet. Mitochondrial DNA also suggests that this "linear B" pottery (LBK) population eventually diminished to be replaced by yet another wave of immigrants sweeping across the continent. "The extent or nature of this genetic turnover are not clear, and we don't know how widespread it is," Cooper says. "If this turnover were widespread, it could have been prompted by climate change or disease. All we know is that the descendants of the LBK farmers disappeared from Central Europe about 4,500 years ago, clearing the way for the rise of populations from elsewhere, with their own unique H signatures."

The study, published in Nature Communications, also suggested the mitochondrial DNA mutation rate was 45% higher than previously thought.

Which is to say that mtDNA group H was dispersed across Europe in the form of the native Spanish/Iberian femalesof the Beaker people or Beaker Folk trading conglomerate.

In the popularization by B. Sykes, the ancestress of mtDNA clan H is called Helena  and is closely related to V (Velda) Westward in Spain as of 15000 BC

It would appear that in the case of possible transatlantic cultural contacts to the Beaker culture, the Iberian femaleswere not involved in the transaction

Although many were in evidence in Europe where they were the female contingent in a population of wealthy merchants and metallurgists, And we have found their graves and grave goods so we can tell this.

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

Recent analyses have made significant inroads to understanding the Beaker phenomenon, mostly by analysing each of its components separately.[10][11] They have concluded that the Bell Beaker phenomenon was a synthesis of elements, representing “an idea and style uniting different regions with different cultural traditions and background.”[12]

Radiocarbon dating seems to support that the earliest "Maritime" Bell Beaker design style is encountered in Iberia, specifically in the vibrant copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary inPortugal around 2800-2700 BC and spread from there to many parts of western Europe.[3][13] An overview of all available sources from southern Germany concluded that Bell Beaker was a new and independent culture in that area, contemporary with the Corded Ware culture.[14][15]

The inspiration for the Maritime Bell Beaker is argued to have been the small and earlier Copozbeakers that have impressed decoration and which are found widely around the Tagus estuary in Portugal.[16] Turek sees late Neolithic precursors in northern Africa, arguing the Maritime style emerged as a result of seaborne contacts between Iberia and Morocco in the first half of the third millennium BCE.[17] However, radiocarbon dating from North African sites is lacking for the most part.

AOO and AOC Beakers appear to have evolved continually from pre-Beaker period in the lower Rhine and North Sea regions, at least for Northern and Central Europe.[18]

Furthermore, the burial ritual which typified Bell Beaker sites was intrusive into Western Europe. Individual burials, often under tumuli burials, with the inclusion of weapons contrast markedly to the preceding Neolithic traditions of often collective, weaponless burials in Atlantic/Western Europe. Such an arrangement is rather derivative of Corded Ware traditions,[17] although instead of ‘battle-axes’, Bell Beaker individuals used copper daggers. 

The initial moves from the Tagus estuary were maritime.[3] A southern move led to the Mediterranean where 'enclaves' were established in south-western Spain and southern France around the Golfe du Lion and into the Po valley in Italy probably via ancient western Alpine trade routes used to distribute Jadeite axes.[3] A northern move incorporated the southern coast of Armorica with further, less well defined, contacts extending to Ireland and possibly to central southern Britain.[3] The earliest copper production in Ireland, identified at Ross Island in the period 2400-2200 BC, was associated with early Beaker pottery.[3][19] Here the local sulpharsenide ores were smelted to produce the first copper axes used in Britain and Ireland.[3] The same technologies were used in the Tagus region and in the west and south of France.[3][20] The evidence is sufficient to support the suggestion that the initial spread of Maritime Bell Beakers along the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean, using sea routes that had long been in operation, was directly associated with the quest for copper and other rare raw materials

Important point, the jadeite must have come from Central America since there are no sources in Europe, We have discussed the sources of the different jade minerals earlier on this blog.-DD

Distribution of H1 subgroup, thinning out from the Atlantic seaboard headed Eastward. H2 is more common in the East

Languages most often associated with these areas Archaeologically include Basque and Celtic.

According to (Learning about mtDNA haplogroup H). H2 is most frequent in eastern Europe and Caucus. And its subclade H2a about 6.5% in eastern Europe mimics the distribution of R1a in Asia(specifically R1a1a1b2 Z93). Probably from eastern European Yamna culture starting about 5,000 BP (3000 BC) which spread Indo European languages Tocharian and Indo Iranian throughout Asia (Which means the R1 males and H females were the main components of this expansion)

According to the same source, H4 and H5 seem to have originated in Europe and began diffusing to Turkey and the Mid-East about 500-6000 BC. This could have some connection to the Black Sea Flood, since the date is significant for that.

Continued spread of mtDNA H into Asia and Africa is illustrated below. The concentration in Madagascar is interesting

Consulting one of the older references on this yields the following information (Currently stated to be outmoded in most modern universities):

The evidence of the racial composition of the Copper Age sailors who reached Italy and the Italian islands is simple and direct. The moderately tall, long-headed, mid narrow-nosed Megalithic people who were implanted, during the Late Neolithic, upon the smaller Mediterranean type which had preceded them, were followed, during the Aeneolithic by other, of the same kind, in the company of equally tall brachycephals. The latter resembled the people of the same Dinaric head form in Cyprus, Crete, and the Aegean, and without doubt formed a westward extension of the same movement.

In Sicily, which probably received metal earlier than most of the mainland or the islands farther west, Copper Age skulls of one series from Isnello28 are all of general Mediterranean type, with the Megalithic variety predominant, as shown by excessive skull lengths, moderate vault heights, and narrow noses. The mean stature for twenty-four males, presumably of this type, was 169 cm. Other Sicilian series, however, do include brachycephals, as at Chiusella and Villafratti, with cranial indices ranging as high as 91.29' These form, however, no more than one-third of the total Aeneolithic series from Sicily. In the true Bronze Age which followed, the incidence of these brachycephals increased.

In Sardinia a large series of sixty-three Copper Age skulls from Anghelu Ruju30 includes sixteen per cent, or ten individuals, of the new brachycephalic type, while the others resemble the long heads of Sicily. The group as a whole, irrespective of head form, was tall.31 The racial composition of Corsica during these periods is known only through the presence of one small, short-statured, long-headed female skeleton of either Neolithic or Aeneolithic age, and two brachycephalic crania from the Bronze Age.32

It would be interesting to supplement this survey of the Italian islands with a study of the crania found in the elaborate burial chambers of Malta, of late Neolithic or early Metal Age date, but the excavators of these vaults, professional and otherwise, literally threw away what was probably the longest unified series of human crania ever found, numbering over seven thousand. We are told that these early Maltese were "Mediterraneans," and know little else about them.33

On the mainland of Italy, Aeneolithic skeletons, which are found mostly on the western side of the central portion of the peninsula, belong to the same types found on the islands, but brachycephals are more abundant, being equal in number to the dolichoand mesocephals.34 Some of the Aeneolithic Italians of the Campagna and of Latium were very tall and large headed, with both mesocephalic and brachycephalic fortes.35 In Istria, at the head of the Adriatic, the Dinaric population which is dominant in that peninsula today had begun to arrive in the Copper and Bronze Ages,36 judging by a series of six female crania which bear definite indications of this type, such as flattening of the occiput, narrow face, and projecting nasal bones. The new invaders may, therefore, have travelled up the Adriatic as well as over the Tyrrhenian Sea.37

Reviewing the Italian material, on both metrical and morphological grounds we may determine that the round-headed racial type which came into the middle Mediterranean with the introduction of metal was of a general Dinaric character, and without doubt came from Asia Minor and the Aegean, where it first appeared in the last centuries of the third millennium B.C. Since the metal ages of the middle and Nvestern Mediterranean were later than those farther east, the chronological aspect of this theory presents no contradictions.

The Balearic Islands, Spain, and Portugal were, of course, the next stops in the westward spread of the metal-carrying seafarers through the Mediterranean. During the Early Copper Age in Spain, the distinctive Bell Beaker culture arose, which was soon to spread northward and eastward into central Europe, and eventually to Britain, as an important racial movement; and another culture of equal local importance, that of Los Millares in Almería, developed from eastern beginnings, with an emphasis on the importation of Egyptian and Near Eastern materials, such as hippopotamus ivory, ostrich egg shells, and actual Near Eastern pottery.38 The center of Early Bronze Age civilization again lay in AImeria, with el Argar as the principal site, and began about 2000 B.C. During this period, which lasted until the Iron Age, there was again much Egyptian and Aegean influence.

Unfortunately, in the Iberian Peninsula, as elsewhere, the human record is not sufficient to support the complexity of the cultural. The craniologist cannot keep pace with the archaeologist; we cannot, without more numerous and more accurately correlated skeletons, tell in all cases what physical types went with each archaeological entity.

In the Balearic Islands, for a beginning, a few dolichocephalic crania, and one brachycephal, have been found in the talayots, or corbelled stone towers resembling the Sardinian nuraghes and Scottish brochs, which were first built in the Copper Age but which were used until the advent of iron.39 Fifty-eight adult and five juvenile crania with long bones from a naveta, or long barrow, in Menorca, are said to have represented a homogeneous group of people with short stature, long-heads (all cranial indices being under 75), low faces, prominent, aquiline noses, and projecting chins. The form of the scapulae and humeri of the males showed that they had developed great shoulder and arm muscles from slinging, the activity from which the islands derived their name. Three other skulls from an ossuary at Biniatap are brachycephalic.40

In the Copper Age groups from mainland Spain and Portugal, the old long-headed types overwhelmingly prevail: out of one hundred and thirtyfour crania, which represent all that could be assembled for this survey, only fifteen, or nine per cent, were brachycephalic.41 If one includes Ariège, Basses Pyrenees, and Aveyron in the south of France, twenty-eight crania may be added, of which only two are brachycephalic.42 One of these, from a site near the city of Narbonne, possesses all of the cranial and facial features typical of the Bronze Age brachycephals of Cyprus, Italy, and the Italian islands. In few of the Spanish instances are extensive details given, but it is probable that the brachycephalic crania there are also of the same type.

Many of the dolichocephalic Copper Age skulls are of Megalithic or Long Barrow type, while others are of a smaller, less rugged, Mesolithic or Neolithic Mediterranean variety. Among the mesocephalic crania, some may again be small Mediterraneans, while others, with larger vault dimensions, may in many instances be mixtures between Megalithic and brachycephalic types. The statures of the large dolichoceplialic group average about 167 or 168 cm.; taller than most living Spaniards and as tall as the Neolithic Long Barrow population in Britain. Other dolichocephalic crania go with short stature, with a mean of about 160 cm. Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine the approximate proportions of Megalithic and Mediterranean types, but the former seem to be at least one-half of the total.

A special development of the Copper Age in Spain was the Bell Beaker culture, about which more will be said later, since its chief influence in the racial sense fell upon areas in other parts of Europe. It is at present the general belief of archaeologists that the Bell Beaker culture arose in central Spain, shortly before 2000 B.C., from local beginnings.43 A North African origin is rendered unlikely by the supposed absence of a Bronze Age south of Gibraltar, although recent work in Morocco has revealed some supposedly early metal.44 Where Bell Beaker burials are found in central Europe, the skeletons are almost always of the same tall brachycephalic type which we have already studied in the eastern Mediterranean and Italy. In Spain, however, they are frequently of the Megalithic race. The basis for the belief that the Bell Beaker people of Spain were Dinarics rests largely upon three cranial fragments from the type site of this culture at Ciempozuelos, near Madrid, and upon one complete mesocephalic skull from Cerro de Tomillo some forty miles away.45

The measurements of the three fragments are uncertain, and their allocation to a definite type impossible.46 However, all three fragments appear to be brachycephalic, and one to have a high vault. One has strong, another weak, browridges. One seems to have a slight lambdoid flattening. In the only fragment which possesses facial bones, the orbits are high and the nose narrow. The Cerro de Tomillo skull is not, however, a pure dolichocephal, and does resemble, in a partial sense, the Dinaric brachycephalic variety which was common in the Mediterranean at that time.

Although there seems to be little doubt in the minds of the archaeologists that the Bell Beaker culture developed in Spain, and although eastern Mediterranean brachycephals came there at about the same time, the manner in which the physical type and the culture became identified with each other is still obscure. 

During the Early Bronze Age, after the efflorescence of the Bell Beaker people, Spain became a great center of metallurgy and trading activity, rivalling the Aegean in importance. The colonists from the east, who had originally located themselves in Spain merely as miners and forwarding agents of metal, now settled down to producing the finished products of the Bronze Age in Spain itself, for local sale, since disorders in the Mycenaean and Minoan realms had apparently cut them off from their homelands.47 Furthermore, the introduction of fresh cultural elements from the east suggests that new people had joined them. 

The principal site of the Early Bronze Age, el Argar in the province of Almeria, is located near the silver mines of Herrerias, which were worked in ancient times. From some thirteen hundred flexed urn burials, seventy skulls have been recovered, of which twenty-nine are those of adult males, and forty of adult females.48 The el Argar series shows quite definitely that the Early Bronze Age people of Almeria were not descendants of previous inhabitants, but to a large extent a new population, with definite Near Eastern relationships, as one might suppose from the cultural indications.

The series as a whole is one of small people, with a mean male stature of 158 to 160 cm.; the earlier Copper Age immigrants, for the most part, were ten centimeters taller. The skulls gravitate around the indices of 76 and 77; for sixty per cent of male and fifty-eight per cent of female crania are mesocephalic. Of the remaining skulls, long heads outnumber round heads two to one. The series is not very homogeneous, and the cranial index and most other criteria of form show modalities which make it certain that the el Argar people included at least two types which had not become completely amalgamated.

The principal cranial element is a normal, rather small variety of Mediterranean, which seems to resemble, both metrically and in description, predynastic or early dynastic Egyptian forms, or at the same time, elements which entered Spain in the Neolithic. Prominence of the browridges at glabella, and a considerable nasion depression, make this type of Mediterranean rather unlike the Cappadocian variety common in Asia Minor, although metrically there is nothing to prevent such a relationship.

The second type is the new brachycephalic element, which seems to have been the dominant one politically, in that two female skulls found wearing silver crowns both belonged to it. It was apparently some form of Near Eastern brachycephal with which we are already in a General way familiar - the skull is short, rather than broad; the vault is medium or low; the forehead is narrow, the lambdoid region often flattened, while the greatest breadth of the vault comes well to the rear. The nose is high and narrow, and the nasal bones join the frontal with little depression, while a smooth glabella heightens the impression of a high-bridged Near Eastern type of nose. Although the units are high and rounded, the face is rather low, but the mandible is surprisingly broad, often with everted gonial angles. There is also a perceptible amount of alveolar prognathism.

Although this is not exactly the brachycephalic type which we met in the Copper Age, and which became identified with the Bell Beaker people, it is, nevertheless, definitely a Near Eastern variety of brachycephal which is familiar in Asia Minor and Syria today. The el Argar people represent a mixture of elements which could be duplicated in the modern Near East, but not one with which, in our ignorance of most of that end of the Mediterranean, we are already familiar. Some of the Mediterranean racial contingent may well have been of earlier Spanish derivation, but if so the absence of Megalithic and Copper Age forms is surprising.

In other parts of Spain no such change of population as that of Almeria is manifest. Mediterraneans, both large and small, are carried over from the Neolithic and Copper Ages, while the larger variety of brachycephal also continues." Out in Mallorca and Menorca, the dolichocephalic element seems to remain as the exclusive or predominant one, for the most part tall and of Long Barrow vault form.50

The westward migrations of peoples from the Aegean and the eastern end of the Mediterranean, during the Late Neolithic, the Aeneolithic, and the Early Bronze Age, must have affected the populations of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearics, and the Iberian Peninsula to a considerable degree. These were real colonizations which added new racial elements to the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Mediterranean sub-stratum. By the middle of the Bronze Age, the central and western N-fediterranean lands had assumed the racial characteristics which they still, for the most part, bear. Except for northern and central Italy, later migrations were to bring little that was new.