"altarustr" <altarustr@...> wrote:
> Here are some excerpts from some assays I have recently read.
> Threelarge- scale phenomena have been inferred from the European
> archeological record( Fig. 1). In the Upper Paleolithic, around
> 40,000 years ago, Neandertal people were replaced by anatomically
> modern humans( 9), who moved in from the Levant, and settled in
> many areas of the continent( 13). At the latest glacial maximum,
> some 18,000 years ago, Northern and Central Europe were largely
> covered with glaciers. Human presence then seems restricted to the
> warmest regions, or glacial refugia( 14), and only later reappears
> more to the North, accompanying the retreat of the ice sheet; we
> shall refer to that postglacial phase as the Mesolithic period. The
> first evidence of food production( farming and animalbreedingi.
> e., theso-called Neolithic revolution) dates at around 10,000 years
> B.P. in the Levant( 15, 16). Gradually, Neolithic artifacts spread
> westwards and northwards, along much the same routes followed by
> the first Paleolithic colonization. Later demographic shifts
> affecting Europe as a whole are not documented. Thus, the overall
> pattern of European genetic diversity probably reflects the effects
> of the first Paleolithic colonization, or of Mesolithic
> reexpansions, or of the Neolithic demic diffusion, although the
> history of each local population must have been much more
> complicated than that.
I find this discussion fascinating as it tends to confirm what I know.
The idea of confinement to refugaria during the Ice Age Maximum also
needs to be taken into account with the "Saharan pump". It would
appear the oscillation with wet Saharan pluvials and dry inter-
pluvials has tended to draw people into the Sahara and then expell
them. This explusion lines up with the 40,000 BCE Out of Africa wave
for the Auricnacian ancestral people (eg Israel Bocher Tachit etc).
There also seems to have been a "Saharan pump" operating 18,000 BP
with the Ice Age maximum. The Ibero Maurasian cukture in Spain and
North Africa clearly implies travel across the straits of Gibraltar
in the Late Ice Age. Similarly the Kebaran culture of Palestine
seems to have derived from Egyptian Fakhurian and Sebellian cultures,
themselves related to Saharan Aterian.
The second last movement of people Northwards - from the Balkans on
to the Eurasian steppes, is the one that I see associated with the
spread of Glen Gordan's "Steppe" Family - Tyrrhenian, Indo-European,
Uralic-Yukaghir, Chuchki-Kamchatkan, Inuit, Altaic (including Korean,
Japanese and Gilyak). It was these people who introduced the dog to
Eurasia.
> http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/1/22/F1
> as it seems from the map the iberic people are associated with
> mesolithic reexpansions. i wonder if these people are basques or
> infact taurids.
>
> To the best of our knowledge, a global age of the European
> mitochondrial genealogy has never been published, and it would be
> very old anyway, certainly older than the arrival of Homo sapiens
> sapiens in Europe. However, groups of evolutionarily related
> alleles have been defined within the genealogy, and their age has
> been variously estimated between 52,500( haplogroup U5) and 6,500
> years(haplogroup J1a)( 23). The fact that the origin of most such
> haplogroups predates the origin of farming has been taken as
> evidence that the European mitochondrial pool comes essentially
> from populations that were already settled in Europe before the
> Neolithic period( ref. 24, and references therein). The fact that
> the age of some haplogroups, and hence of the entire genealogy,
> predates the arrival of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe has not
> received much attention.
Interesting
> Genetics and the population history of Europe Guido Barbujani* and
> Giorgio Bertorelle 22 25 u PNAS u January 2, 2001 u vol. 98 u no.1
>
> farming and anima l domestication are recent phenomena occuring
> from 10000 years before present and onward. farming arose
> independently on several parts of the world including in a region
> in the middle east known as fertile crescent which extends from
> israel through northern syria to western iran. from this region
> agriculture expanded in both western and eastern directions. the
> spread of farming economy towards east into the area from iran to
> india started a little later between the sixth and fifth millenia
> B.c. the neolithic revolution in the iranian region and the indus
> valley reached its zenith by 6000 yeas before present. and involved
> strong urban civilizations such as the sumerian the elamite and
> harappan. another major innovation probably later than agriculture
> was the domestication of animals which is thought to have led to
> dramamatic population extensions in eurosia. pastoral nomadism
> developed in the grasslands of central asia east of the volga don
> region as well is in southeastern europe opening up the possibility
> of rapid movements of large population groups. the spread of these
> new technologies have been associated with the dispersal of
> dravidian and indoiranian languages in southern asia(renfrew 1987;
> cavalli sforza 1988) spesifically elamodravidinian languages(ruhlen
> 1991) which may have originated in the elam province(zagros
> mountains southwestern iran)are now confined to southeastern india
> and to some isolated groups in pakistan and northern india. it is
> hypothesized that the protoelamodravidinain language spoken by the
> elamites in southwestern iran spread eastward with the movement of
> farmers from this region.(cavalli-sforza et al 1994); renfrew
> 1996).
It is interesting that the spread of Nomadic pastoralism as a form of
cultural organisation seems to have not spread with the initial
domestication of animals, which was almost totally for meat. It has
been suggested by Andrew Sherrit that there was a "secondary products
revolution" in which the usefulness of domesticated animals for wool,
milk, and traction, was associated with the spread to the Grasslands
and the appearance of a fully fledged Nomadic Pastoral way of life.
This occurred differently in different locations. In the Sinai and
the TransJordan, the end of Pre-Pottery IIIC cultures circa 6,000 BCE
saw the appearance of a hunter-gatherer people who seem to have
crossed the Sinai from Egypt. These people adopted animal husbandry
but not farming, initially sheep and goats, and later of donkeys (or
onagers), becoming the Munhata culture. They seem to have been the
first wave of Afro-Asiatic speaking Semites in the Middle East. From
5,600 BCE they formed the very successful Ghassulian culture which
pioneered the Mediterranean form of agriculture in the region,
combining grain growing on the valley bottoms, with olive and grape
growing closer to the settlements, and transhumance pasturage on
hills and slopes.
In the Eurasian Steppe, a different form of Nomadic Pastoralism seems
to have spread with the Yamnaya culture, forcussing more upon horses
and cattle as the major animals used. This second zone was
associated with the spread of Indo-European, particularly Indo-
Iranian languages.
> A later episode the arrival of pastoral nomads from central asian
> steppes to the iranian plateau,~4000 years bpd(before presnt day)
> brought with it the indoiranian branch of ÝE language family, which
> eventually replaced dravidian languages in iran and most of
> pakistan and northern india perhaps by an elite dominance process.
I feel you are spot on here. You might like to check out the
recently published book by Christian "A History of Russia, Central
Asia and Mongolia" Volume 1 which is particularly good on the
incursion you describe, and its precursors in the region of
Transoxania and Northern Khorasan.
> of these arian peoples coincided with the decadence of important
> neolithic cultures such as the harappan civilization by ~~3000,4000
> years bpd. two chrosomal linages are described hg9 hg3 depending on
> the analysis of 11 biallelic markers( sry-1532,2627,8299, yap,
> sY81,12f2, M9, 92R7,LLY22g, Tat and RPS4y) but the frequency for
> each of the haplotypes for two clines are not given in details but
> as two major clines. Hg9 defined by the 12f2 deletion is largely
> proposed to caucasoid populations with its largest frequencies
> being found in middle eastern populations.
Interesting!
> hg3 is defined by a back mutaiton atsry1532 is virtually absent
> from african eastern asian and native american populations and found
> in highest frequencies in central asia. russia %50, altai %52. with
> a decreasing frequency cline westward into europe. this data
> suggests that central asia is the origin of this marker.
> the distribution of hg3 in iran shows marked difference between
> western and eastern provinces southwestern caspian %3, eastern
> provinces %31 with a decreasing frequency cline towards india,
> pakistan %32, northern india %26. this supports the idea that ÝE
> speakers spread from central asia via eastern caspian route as weel
> as india.hg9 is dated 14800 and hg3 is dated 7500 yeras from
> present.
> y chrosome lineage trace diffusion of people and language in
> southwestern asia am journal hum genet 537 542.
>
> affinities among the vocabularie and morphologies of many euroasian
> languages have led to the hypothesis that they drive from a common
> ancestor.renfrew proposed that nostratic was spoken by populations
> of near east more than 10000 years ago. the ability to produce
> foodincreased the population densities.population then expanded
> outward in four major wawes with each wawe propagating farming
> along with a protolanguage from which ÝE, elamodravidian,
> afroasiatic and altaic later developed. if the nostratic dd model
> is correct two bilological consequences are to be expexted. i.
> genetic vraince among should be larger in the NDD than in other
> linguistic languages. indeed other evolutionary pressures being
> equal the former received from immigrant farmers different
> proportions of novel alleles depending on their location along the
> routes of dispersal. in thr NDD families one should observe clines
> radiating away from the near eeast analogus to those that allowed
> identification of demic diffusion in europe. at the glyoxalase
> locus approximately longitudianl clines are evident for populations
> speaking indoeuropean, alamodravidinian and altaic languages but
> not for afroasiatic speakers.
This confirms the thesis I have presented above regarding the spread
of Semitic languages in the Middle East.
This confirms the thoughts of some Nostraticists that Afrasiatic
languages were not part of the Nostratic radiation, but may have been
in fact a "sister" grouping, radiating prior to the Proto-Nostratic.
> there is significant overall departurew from chance expectations
> for austric but not for uralic, caucasian and sinotibetean.
>
> the longitudinal gradients observed observed for austric cannot be
> due to demic diffusion from the near east because of two or three
> cases they do not emcompass iran and indian subcontinent. there may
> be some gradients in the NDD groups may also reflect processes
> other than neolithic demic diffusion of N. for afroasiatic the
> answer is not obvious. there five gradients are consistent with
> NDD. but overall significance is not higher than among austric
> speakers. contrary to what is stated by NDD model some linguists
> claim that afroasiatic spread from africa to asia.other processes
> partly overlapping with it may have played a grater role. as a
> whole demic diffusion occur within nostratic family farming and
> atleast three language familes must have spread together.
See my comments above.
> one could envisage the possiblity that the gradients result from
> founder effects occuring earlier during the initial colonization of
> euroasia by homo sapiens sapiensalso starting from near east.
> howerver the correspondence between nostratic language family and
> regions of clinal variation would also imply these familes
> originated in the early paleolithic. few linguists would be ready
> to root current linguistic differences in so distant times. best
> estimates of origin are catal huyuk(turkey) for ÝE, jericho for
> afroasiatic, ali kosh (iraq) for indoeuropean and elamo-
> dravidian, caucasian, sinotibetean and austric and jetuin
> (turkmeania) for altaic and uralic.
In actual fact Catal Huyuk is probably too late for the associations
within Indo-European, Tyrrhenian, and Uralic Yukhagir. A better
association would be the earlier chain of Mesolithic cultures
stretching from 13-10,000 BCE Belbasi(Cilicia) (derived from Kebaran),
10-8,500 BCE Beldibi (derived from Natufian), 9,800-5,794 Franchi
Cave in the Argolid, the Danubian Gorge culture and by 9,1-8,000 BCE
the Murzak-Koba of Ukraine.
> there is a map aa for north africa, Ýe on the continetal europe, ur
> for the northest scandinavia and northwest asia, altaic from
> turkmenia to most of the asia until the almost chinese wall, indian
> and elamodravidian for iran and india.
Thanks for your posting up of this, it is *VERY* interesting.
Regards
John