My first thought as well.
Posted on 03/15/2019 2:20:44 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The largest-ever study of ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) suggests that the Iberian male lineages were almost completely replaced between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago by newcomers originating on the Russian steppe...
Most striking was an influx of new people during the later Copper Age, otherwise known as the Beaker period because of the ubiquitous presence in burials of large drinking vessels, from about 4,500 years ago. By the Early Bronze Age, 500 years later, these newcomers represented about 40% of Iberia's genetic pool - but virtually 100% of their male lineages...
This is an extraordinary example of sex bias - a phenomenon described previously by Huddersfield's Leverhulme Trust doctoral scholar Marina Silva for India. What is even more striking now is that both Iberia and India had a similar source - a population of early metal-using stock breeders, who lived to the north of the Black Sea on Russian steppe lands, 5,000 years ago. They fanned out in both directions, west across Europe and east into Asia, their pastoralist economy, domesticated horses and wheeled wagons giving them a crucial advantage over the indigenous farming populations. Moreover, they are also thought to have brought the Indo-European languages spoken across Europe and India today...
Marina Silva added: "It's an intriguing situation, because the Beaker culture originated in Portugal and spread across Europe from there - but at the same time, or shortly after, men who probably spoke Indo-European languages were moving in the opposite direction. Resolving the population dynamics in western Europe during the Copper and Bronze Ages is a big step towards understanding the origins of the Celtic languages, which were spoken across western Europe before the rise of the Roman Empire."
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
I think it more likely that the newcomers were not exactly welcomed, and wars/battles ensued, and the newcomers had superior means and ways of battle, and many majorities of the “native” men were killed. Then, after that, the newcomers became “in charge” and because they had that standing local woman were more likely to chose them as mates than to seek the native men who did not have standing.
What if the beakers carried malt spirits? The indigenous at the time had zero tolerence for alcohol. The local men had very poor fortunes, even personal disaster, at the social events, and the beaker men sowed their oats.
For those, like me, than wanted to see where the Russian steppes are:
“The Eurasian Steppe extends thousands of miles from near the mouth of the Danube almost to the Pacific Ocean. It is bounded on the north by the forests of European Russia, Siberia and Asian Russia. There is no clear southern boundary although the land becomes increasingly dry as one moves south.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Steppe
As for the “mouth of the Danube”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube
Seeing the European range of what linguists call the Indo-European languages, which they say entered Europe and the Indian subcontinent from some common source, and seeing the course of the Danube (from Germany into the Black Sea), it would not seem unlikely to me that the Danube and its course were part of the routes by which the Indo-European speaking people entered western Europe. I bet there is a trail of ancient DNA from the steppes all along the route of the Danube. And the headwaters of the Danube are not far from the headwaters of the Rhone, which flows south to the Mediterranean Sea just northeast of Iberia.
Obviously Conan the Barbarian explained it best....
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”
“The newcomers replaced about 90% of the existing gene pool in Britain in the space of just a few centuries. The reasons for this are not known, but it is thought factors such as climate change, disease and ecological disaster might all have played a role.”
No honest intellectual thinking there, because an equally plausible explanation was (a) the “beaker” people were very successful and (b) success can lead to more abundance (c) and greater population, which (d) can lead folks in the expanded population to seek new lands; and (e) which introduces their customs and language to the new lands they settle in. That plausible scenario requires no climate change or ecological disaster - just some folks who were very successful and more so than the “natives” of lands they move into.
Mead would have been more suited to people on the move.
No crops needed.
Beer/malt spirits might have come into play after conquest.
Apparently, the Beaker People also conquered Persia and India, and established the caste system in the latter to minimize socializing and interbreeding between rulers and ruled.
ping
reminded me of your Western Shooters story about The Moliorch Way, somewhat like the story of the Maori, it seemed.
My first thought as well.
Rush Limbaugh’s Undeniable Truth of Life #6: Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.
Hey, that's part of the joy of just bein' a FReeper, I've done the same thing probably thousands of times. :^) I was actually searching for Book of Invasions references, and found those two nice links.
If it was diseases that came with the newcomers, I’d expect them to hit men and women equally. The big difference between men and women seems like it must have been by choice.
Thanks BeauBo, well put.
LOL! To say the least, the complete (or nearly complete) replacement was unlikely to have been 100% kumbaya. The complete disappearance of those earlier male lines suggests a small initial population, and/or a smaller male population (due to polygamy) in the earlier population. It also speaks to the general kookiness of the now abandoned conclusion that so-called mitochondrial Eve was 50K to 100K years older than Y-Adam.
Sidebars from the FRchives:
Goats and sheep are probably the best animals for sparse vegetation as feed. They eat down to the roots. And they don’t need as much feed to live on since they are smaller animals.
Cattle and horses will starve to death where goats and sheep can live.
“LOL! To say the least, the complete (or nearly complete) replacement was unlikely to have been 100% kumbaya. The complete disappearance of those earlier male lines suggests a small initial population, and/or a smaller male population (due to polygamy)”
Not necessarily true.
A. Small only needed to be much smaller than the waves of new settlers.
B. Neither is warfare between settlers and natives out of the question as far as the number of “native” procreating males, or over time, the number of procreating males from the settler population as much much higher due to greater status as part of the new dominant class.
C. Nothing requires that polygamy HAD TO BE part of the reason for a smaller ratio of native males to settler males. The inmigrating population could have been vastly larger.
I thought the mitochondrial Eve was caused by theToba supervolcano eruption of 75000 years ago. Narrowing the human population down to a few thousand
Nah. But here are the Toba topics I left out, because I didn't want another discussion about the myth of the Toba bottleneck.
Polygamy doesn't have to, didn't say that anyway, the point is, it is one possible reason that the earlier male population was too small to withstand the replacement by the newcomers. Since the newcomers definitely did replace them, it probably wasn't just due to differential breeding rates.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.