Tag: tartessian

North-West Indo-Europeans of Iberian Beaker descent and haplogroup R1b-P312

iron-age-early-mediterranean

The recent data on ancient DNA from Iberia published by Olalde et al. (2019) was interesting for many different reasons, but I still have the impression that the authors – and consequently many readers – focused on not-so-relevant information about more recent population movements, or even highlighted the least interesting details related to historical events.

I have already written about the relevance of its findings for the Indo-European question in an initial assessment, then in a more detailed post about its consequences, then about the arrival of Celtic languages with hg. R1b-M167, and later in combination with … Read the rest “North-West Indo-Europeans of Iberian Beaker descent and haplogroup R1b-P312”

European hydrotoponymy (II): Basques and Iberians after Lusitanians and “Ligurians”

bronze-age-languages-western-europe

The first layer in hydrotoponymy of Iberia is clearly Indo-European, in territories that were occupied by Indo-Europeans when Romans arrived, but also in most of those occupied by non-Indo-Europeans.

Among Indo-European peoples, the traditional paradigm – carried around in Wikipedia-like texts until our days – has been to classify their languages as “Pre-Celtic” despite the non-Celtic phonetics (especially the initial -p-), because the same toponyms appear in areas occupied by Celts (e.g. Parisii, Pictones, Pelendones, Palantia); or – even worse – just as “Celtic”, because of the famous -briga and related components. This was evidently not tenable at the … Read the rest “European hydrotoponymy (II): Basques and Iberians after Lusitanians and “Ligurians””

European hydrotoponymy (I): Old European substrate and its relative chronology

old-european-hydronymy-toponymy

These first two posts on Old European hydro-toponymy contain excerpts mainly from Indoeuropeos, iberos, vascos y sus parientes, by Francisco Villar, Universidad de Salmanca (2014), but also from materials of Lenguas, genes y culturas en la Prehistoria de Europa y Asia suroccidental, by Villar et al. Universidad de Salamanca (2007). I can’t recommend both books hardly enough for anyone interested in the history of Pre-Roman peoples in Iberia and Western Europe.

NOTE. Both books also contain detailed information on hydrotoponymy of other regions, like Northern Europe, the Aegean and the Middle East, with some information about Asia, apart … Read the rest “European hydrotoponymy (I): Old European substrate and its relative chronology”

Aquitanians and Iberians of haplogroup R1b are exactly like Indo-Iranians and Balto-Slavs of haplogroup R1a

eba-indo-iranian-balto-slavs

The final paper on Indo-Iranian peoples, by Narasimhan and Patterson (see preprint), is soon to be published, according to the first author’s Twitter account.

One of the interesting details of the development of Bronze Age Iberian ethnolinguistic landscape was the making of Proto-Iberian and Proto-Basque communities, which we already knew were going to show R1b-P312 lineages, a haplogroup clearly associated during the Bell Beaker period with expanding North-West Indo-Europeans:

From the Bronze Age (~2200–900 BCE), we increase the available dataset from 7 to 60 individuals and show how ancestry from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (Steppe ancestry) appeared throughout Iberia

… Read the rest “Aquitanians and Iberians of haplogroup R1b are exactly like Indo-Iranians and Balto-Slavs of haplogroup R1a”

Haplogroup R1b-M167/SRY2627 linked to Celts expanding with the Urnfield culture

bronze-age-late-urnfield

As you can see from my interest in the recently published Olalde et al. (2019) Iberia paper, once you accept that East Bell Beakers expanded North-West Indo-European, the most important question becomes how did its known dialects spread to their known historic areas.

We already had a good idea about the expansion of Celts, based on proto-historical accounts, fragmentary languages, and linguistic guesstimates, but the connection of Celtic with either Urnfield or slightly later Hallstatt/La Tène was always blurred, due to the lack of precise data on population movements.

The latest paper on Iberia is interesting for many … Read the rest “Haplogroup R1b-M167/SRY2627 linked to Celts expanding with the Urnfield culture”

Iberia: East Bell Beakers spread Indo-European languages; Celts expanded later

iberia-migrations-celts

New paper (behind paywall), The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years, by Olalde et al. Science (2019).

NOTE. Access to article from Reich Lab: main paper and supplementary materials.

Abstract:

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement

… Read the rest “Iberia: East Bell Beakers spread Indo-European languages; Celts expanded later”

Our monograph on North-West Indo-European (first draft) is out

I wrote yesterday about the recently updated Indo-European demic diffusion model.

Fernando López-Menchero and I have published our first draft on the North-West Indo-European proto-language. Our contribution concerns mainly phonetics, and namely two of its most controversial aspects: a common process of laryngeal loss and two series of velars for PIE.

There is also an updated linguistic model for the Corded Ware substrate hypothesis, which seeks to explain certain similarities between Germanic and Balto-Slavic, and between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, and potential isoglosses between the three.

Available links:

… Read the rest “Our monograph on North-West Indo-European (first draft) is out”