In The population genomics of archaeological transition in west Iberia the authors note that “the population of Euskera speakers shows one of the maximal frequencies (87.1%) for the Y-chromosome variant, R1b-M269…” In the early 2000s the high frequency of R1b-M269 among the Basques, a non-Indo-European linguistic isolate, was taken to be suggestive of the possibility that R1b-M269 reflected ancestry from European hunter-gatherers present when farmers and pastoralists pushed into the continent.
The paper above shows that the reality is that the Basque people have higher fractions of Neolithic farmer ancestry than any other Iberian people. Additionally, they have lower fractions of the steppe pastoralist ancestry than other Iberian groups. This, despite the fact that we also know from ancient DNA that R1b-M269 does seem to have spread with steppe pastoralists, likely Indo-Europeans.
Obviously the relationship between Y chromosomes and genome-wide ancestry is complex. The pattern here for the indicates that Indo-European male lineages were assimilated into the Basques. Perhaps the Basque were matrilineal? One can’t know. But, these men did not impose their culture. Instead, they were assimilated into the Basque. This is entirely not shocking. There history of contact between different peoples in the recent past shows plenty of cases where individuals have “gone native.” In some cases, many individuals.
I was thinking this when looking at South Asian Y chromosome frequencies. Though R1a1a is correlated with higher castes and Indo-European speakers, its frequency is quite high in some ASI-enriched groups. I suspect that the period after 2000 BC down to the Common Era witness a dynamic where particular patrilineal societies were quite successful in maintain their status over generations. Additionally, the ethnogenesis of “Indo-Aryan” and “Dravidian” India was occurring over this period, in some cases through a process of expansion, integration, and conflict. It seems some pre-Aryan paternal lineages were assimilated into Brahmin communities. For example, Y haplogroup R2, whose origin is almost certainly in the Indus Valley Civilization society.
Some population genetic models are stylized and elegant. They have to be to be tractable. But we always need to remember that real history and prehistory were complex, and exhibited a richer and more chaotic texture.
For South Asia we even have historical examples like defeated Rajput warriors taking refuge in the forests and mixing with tribals.
Such stories of male refugees are actually quite common.
Under such circumstances they were usually not dominant, but their offspring became integrated in the local folk. After that the lineages of the refugees could become the dominant ones.
Defeated male warriors are the most likely source, strong enough for making their imprint, but not for a complete cultural shift in a foreign environment.
Mountains in Iberia, jungles in India.
Reich, back in 2009, found some often pretty loose correlations between the ANI measure and what was then deemed to be ANI characteristic y-chromosome: https://i.imgur.com/AH0kFCM.png / https://i.imgur.com/Oa7BRhH.png.
(Table of y chromosomes and classification: https://i.imgur.com/yUwSM7D.png)
It’d be really useful, today, to see what they could do with an explicit model with all the populations in the Narasimhan (including larger, more representative populations), and with a finer scale understanding of how South Asian ancestry fits into at least three proto-populations that we can discern (one Steppe_MLBA like, one akin to Iran_Neolithic with enriched North Eurasian ancestry, one AASI and East Non-African in the cladistic sense), in additional to the Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman clines. Wikipedia’s useful, but I’m a bit wary of their data quality on this subject… It really needs the academics to gather large sample sets, systematically and make comparisons. Reich’s group could probably do it quite easily with their massive modern sample set.
On the subject of y-chromosome assimilation across different groups, though probably the most sensationalist scenario, a random, perhaps relevant quote I came across when looking at information on the Avars:
“Each year, the Huns [Avars] came to the Slavs, to spend the winter with them; then they took the wives and daughters of the Slavs and slept with them, and among the other mistreatments [already mentioned] the Slavs were also forced to pay levies to the Huns.
But the sons of the Huns, who were [then] raised with the wives and daughters of these Wends [Slavs] could not finally endure this oppression anymore and refused obedience to the Huns and began, as already mentioned, a rebellion.”
— Chronicle of Fredegar, Book IV, Section 48, written circa 642
There is the story in Herodotus of the Scythian women having children with their slaves while the men were invading Media for 28 years. That one ended badly for the slaves, but surely other times circumstances led to let’s say nonstandard genetic outcomes.
What is the current “TL;DR” on the Basques? Would one say that due to geographic isolation they preserve a language that predates the arrival of the Indo-European group in Europe, but that genetically they are largely “assimilated” into the Indo-European background?
War rape could be another scenario (there is any study about the prevalence of Slavic variants of Y-chromosomes at the Germans of former GDR?)
“Basque people have higher fractions of Neolithic farmer ancestry than any other Iberian people. Additionally, they have lower fractions of the steppe pastoralist ancestry than other Iberian groups. This, despite the fact that we also know from ancient DNA that R1b-M269 does seem to have spread with steppe pastoralists, likely Indo-Europeans.
Obviously the relationship between Y chromosomes and genome-wide ancestry is complex. The pattern here for the indicates that Indo-European male lineages were assimilated into the Basques. Perhaps the Basque were matrilineal? One can’t know. But, these men did not impose their culture. Instead, they were assimilated into the Basque. This is entirely not shocking. There history of contact between different peoples in the recent past shows plenty of cases where individuals have “gone native.” In some cases, many individuals.”
Certainly possible. One could imagine a modest number of Bronze and tin metallurgist men with R1b-M269 moving to Iberia (with rich resources), having a lot of cultural impact (possibly formative in the Bell Beaker Culture) and having successful sons, but not being replenished and eventually being diluted with local women.
Another possibility is that R1b-M269 were not Indo-European even though there R1a peers to the north, who also have steppe autosomal ancestry were Indo-European language speakers and the the strong R1a v. R1b-M269 sorting in ancient DNA reflects a language/culture divide that was almost invisible in autosomal genetics and is subtle in archaeology.
There is pretty good archaeological and linguistic evidence that Celtic and Italic languages dispersed in Western Europe post-Bronze Age. And, we have no direct attestation of the languages that were spoken in Western Europe (where R1b-M269 is found) pre-Bronze Age. We know almost nothing about Bronze Age linguistics in Western Europe.
We do know that there is a lot of population continuity from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in this period, however, so a transition would have to be via cultural diffusion, rather than population replacement.
@Miguel Madeira
“War rape could be another scenario (there is any study about the prevalence of Slavic variants of Y-chromosomes at the Germans of former GDR?)”
This could account for some of the Y-DNA, but wouldn’t explain how it became the dominant Y-DNA haplogroup. The percentage of women experiencing war rape and having children in any one war has to be a pretty pronounced minority and usually war rape results in a decline in the fortunes of those children and not their ascendancy to cultural dominance.
What is the current “TL;DR” on the Basques? Would one say that due to geographic isolation they preserve a language that predates the arrival of the Indo-European group in Europe, but that genetically they are largely “assimilated” into the Indo-European background?
the southern european peninsulas seem more like india.
a substantial, but not majority, steppe influx. so the indo-europeans genetically assimilated, but culturally groups like the basques persisted down to the historical period (the ‘iberian’ languages may not have been indo-european).
Imagine, in some hypothetical universe, before the discovery of the Americas, that Basque speakers somehow expand to the Americas, colonizing new lands, migrating and diversifying, forming a large language family over the millennia that follow, and imagine Basque-R1b diversifying into gigantic new clusters each with a territory of its own.
Centuries later people will conclude that Basque-R1b is the original male lineage of the new Vasconic language family, not I2 or G2a, gene flow from G2a and I2 people was female-mediated and they didn’t transfer any language.
A lot of the Conquistadores and Spanish settlers who followed seem to have been Basques. I don’t know what proportion, but my impression is that they were over represented. That’s tangential to your comment, I know.
“Obviously the relationship between Y chromosomes and genome-wide ancestry is complex. The pattern here for the indicates that Indo-European male lineages were assimilated into the Basques. Perhaps the Basque were matrilineal? One can’t know. But, these men did not impose their culture. Instead, they were assimilated into the Basque. This is entirely not shocking. There history of contact between different peoples in the recent past shows plenty of cases where individuals have “gone native.” In some cases, many individuals”
According to the basque traditional anthropologists, basques were matrilineal. Women were highly respected, and the maternal family is as important as the paternal family. Women inherited the land with the same right as men.
I can say that because in my own family happened many times and still happens.
I belong to a basque family, and the moral and formal authority of the mother is astonishing.
Basque society was one of pastoralists, fishers and farmers. Usually women took care of the farm, and men went away fishing or with the flocks.
Perhaps in the Bronze Age when the haplogroup R1b shows up, groups of men with metallurgical knowledge wandered through Europe, looking for copper or tin mines. Some of them came by boat, some came on horses bringing all kind of exotic news.
The vasconic group must have lived in a fringe both sides of the Pyrenees the right place to look for mines.
The newcomers brought new technologies but also new diseases. Perhaps mumps was one of the diseases.
Lots of men became sterile but not the metalurgists. The rate of birth went down, and the only couples that were fertile were the mixed ones.
As women inherited land, men came to live in her farm. Some of these men stayed and fathered lots of healthy sons with immunological defenses against mumps that survivre and became dominant.
So women kept the language, the land and the old traditions.
It is a possibility and quite less sordid than rape or slavery.