European Genetics/IE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/16/2001 1:12:27 AM, philjennings at juno.com writes:
<< I have read Steve Long's reasoned and temperate remarks on the "urheimat
animals" issue and I'd be interested in his take, or anyone else's, regarding
the work of Dr. Martin Richards as reported in the NY Times 11/14/2000 under
the title "The Origin of the Europeans."  Since Dr. Renfrew is quoted in this
article, I take it that the Anatolian-originists have grown comfortable with
Richards' findings:... I assume from my reading of Renfrew that the
Anatolian-wave-of-advance theorists would have preferred the ratios to have
been otherwise,...

A couple of things to be aware of:
1. Back in 1987, Renfrew was coming off of Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza (1984)
"The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe."  In
that work, Cavalli-Sforza proposed that the European genetic population
structure was determined mainly by population dispersal in the Neolithic, by
a process called in that book "Neolithic demic diffusion."

The mass migration of agriculturalists described by Cavalli-Sforza and
adopted by Renfrew does not seem to fit the picture anymore.  Not that the
coming of the neolithic and Near Eastern practices did not completely revamp
every aspect of life for Europeans during that time (including possibly
language.)  It's just that it is looking like neolithization was mainly a
"conversion," not a migration.

Renfrew has repeatedly said that his ideas work either way and I suppose so.
More importantly, at least that means he's not out of sync with many of the
archaeologists (e.g., Zwelbil, Bogucki) who have there hands in the dirt - as
Renfrew once did - who are finding strong evidence that large mesolithic
populations adopted agriculture, sometimes slowly, well after
agriculturalists showed up.  And that those converting agriculturalists may
often have been natives themselves.

Good updates are "Europe's First Farmers", ed by T. Douglas Price, (Cambridge
UP 2000) and "The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eu
rasia", ed by D. Harris (Smithsonian 1996).  There is some big news that just
broke about an LBK settlement found out of the way in northern Germany, which
seems to confirm that vigorous mesolithic cultures came around only after a
period of direct exposure.

Interestingly, there is a lot of evidence that these mesolithic peoples
adopted neolithic styles and rituals before they actually started herding
domesticated animals and raising domesticated plants.  In Britain, they
appear to be honoring cattle and grains and building neolithic-style houses,
but still living on wild game and fish.  This jives with Sheratt's suggestion
that conversion to the Near Eastern style may have less to do with economic
productivity and more to do with the introduction of beer and such.

2. Aside from Richards, there is an important report to be aware of and that
is "The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in Extant
Europeans: A Y Chromosome Perspective",  Semino, Passarino, Oefner, Lin,
Arbuzova, Beckman, Benedictis, Francalacci, Kouvatsi, Limborska, Marciki,
Mika,  Primorac, Santachiara-Benerecetti, Cavalli-Sforza, Underhill,
published in SCIENCE (November 10, 2000).  I have a PDF of this report if
anyone would like to see it.

In that report, the Y chromosome approach appears to produce a slightly
larger ancient heritage from the Near East among modern Europeans.  There is
also a small window left open for the Kurgan hypothesis due to a more recent
gene variant.  The report states:

"Haplotype Eu19 has been also observed at substantial frequency in northern
India and Pakistan as well as in Central Asia. Its spread may have been
magnified by the expansion of the Yamnaia culture from the 'Kurgan culture'
area (present-day southern Ukraine) into Europe and eastward, resulting in
the spread of the Indo-European language. An alternative hypothesis of a
Middle Eastern origin of Indo-European languages was proposed on the basis of
archaeological data." (citing Mallory and Renfrew).

It SHOULD be noted though that this 'Kurgan' gene moving west practically
stops dead in Poland and Hungary and as the reports says, "is virtually
non-existent in Western Europe" as well as rare in Greece.

Also, Cavalli-Sforza has not been very good at archaeological data and is
apparently unaware of strong evidence of the massive Scythian incursions into
eastern Europe starting about 600BC that practically wipe out Halstatt east
of the Tisza River and in most of Poland and create a virtual no-man's land
in that area for a few centuries.  Obviously no genes can be carried in empty
territory and that would suggest that Eu19 reflects later "Indo-Iranian"
migrations (e.g., Scythian and Sarmatian) into eastern Europe as well as it
does anything to do with Yama (which of course is also "archaeological data"
and currently seems to be dating no earlier than 2000BC.)

3. In, "Genetics and the population history of Europe,"  PNAS January 2, 2001,
Barbujani and Bertorelle argue that Richards data actually supports the mass
migration of neolithic agriculturalists as the main origin of the modern
European population.  They argue that variations attributed to the
paleolithic are actually more recent development and due to local founder
effect.  I also have a PDF of this paper.

4. In the archives of this list you'll find a theory, best articulated by
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, that pre-dates Renfrew's, and that originates the
earlier ancestor of IE languages in Anatolia, but I believe places PIE or
*PIE on the Danube in connection with Tripolye culture.  Renfrew, who did
brilliant work many decades ago, does not always seem to be up-to-date on
many of these issues, either genetic, linguistic or archaeological.  What
seems to drive the Anatolian theory is not any particular theorist or
spokesperson, but rather it seems the continuous accumulation of evidence
from various sources that seem to support it, whether or not those sources
are aware of it.

philjennings at juno.com also writes:
<<Once this concession is made (if it is made) how does one argue
intelligently that the language transferred completely?  If there are no
evidences of PIE ever being a creole, as some people say they can
demonstrate, doesn't that make it likely that PIE was the language of the
indigenous post-Gravettians, rather than the language they learned from their
agricultural tutors?  Part-time hunters living in isolated Balkan family
homesteads did not, after all, make the total life-style conversion to
farming villages/pueblos.  These same scattered living arrangements must have
made it difficult to learn a new language well or completely.>>

Remember that with the Anatolian hypothesis, you are talking about 3500 years
between the IE's expansion across Europe and the first written evidence of an
IE language in Europe.  That would be, at 5 generations per hundred years,
about 700 generations for the language family to win someone over in the
family.  Another factor is the unifying effect of neolithization.  No other
single event in European cultural pre-history covered anywhere close to so
much of Europe and created trade networks anything like it.  Paleolithic
migrations arguably did not end up bringing people from a core source into
Europe and mesolithic cultures were relatively localized.  Finally, scattered
living arrangements don't seem to be the rule.  It seems that close
settlements along rivers and other trade routes were true for the great
majority of the population in mesolithic and neolithic times.

hope this helps

Regards,
Steve Long