Brit-Am Anthropology, DNA Update, and Creation Science
Special Issue. Bell-Beakers.
The Brit-Am Understanding of Ancient History and DNA Change.
4 April 2023; 13 Nissan, 5783.
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A. An Introduction by Yair Davidiy.
Immanuel Velikovsky described cataclysmic changes that occurred in the world in the 700s BCE. This according to conventional dating was the period in which the Northern Israelites were exiled.
This may also have been the period when the Bell-Beakers appeared in Europe even though radiocarbon measurements date it to ca. ca. 2500 BCE. Radio Carbon dating appears to be mistaken.
The first Bell-Beakers appear to have come from Spain.
The Bell Beaker culture, also known as the Bell Beaker complex or Bell Beaker phenomenon, is an archaeological culture named after the inverted-bell beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the European Bronze Age.
At that time the DNA of Western Europe was similar to that of the Middle East i.e. the area of Israel.
Later it changed to R1b.
Their headshapes were round at first but later changed to long-heads.
The presence of the Bell-Breakers are associated with this change in YDNA to R1b.
This is said to reflect a 90% change in the population.
Archaeological evidence reflects this to some degree but not to such an overwhelming extent.
Brit-Am thinks the changes were caused by Genetic Transposon (horizontal movement of DNA genes analogous to the spread of a virus) and not by physical replacement.
The available information needs to be re-processed with this possibility in mind.
Below are information snippets of interest that might prove helpful.
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Extracts ONLY:
1. Bell-Beakers and the Celts
The Celtic World of R1b-L21
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzGslbLzmLBFHZNtVbNMXJVFFFFC
17 March 2023, 08:38 PM
The Celtic World of R1b-L21.
Were the first Bell Beaker folks on the British Isles actually Irishmen?
No, but their genomes were more like the modern Irish genome than anyone else's. They may have been the first Insular Celts or some Early/Archaic type of Celtic which would be technically Pre-Celtic.
R1b-L21 phylogenetic tree, particularly DF13 branching, shows very early expansion with sustained growth until today. Is it possible this represents the Milesian legend. It is difficult to line up the branching with the sons and grandsons of Mil and Mil doesn't appear to be from Spain but the Irish founding story may represent ancient clans or tribes.
Can the old Irish texts like the Irish Annals and Book of Invasions be useful in understanding Irish, Scottish and Welsh families and their paternal lineages? Perhaps, there is a lot of detail in the old Irish texts. Much of it is confusing and conflicting but with all of that detail there probably are valuable facts too.
We may be like miners sifting through the dirt and fool's gold hoping to find the gold nuggets.
2. Early Ireland.
Neolithic and Bronze Age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic genome
Abstract
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26712024/
The Neolithic and Bronze Age transitions were profound cultural shifts catalyzed in parts of Europe by migrations, first of early farmers from the Near East and then Bronze Age herders from the Pontic Steppe. However, a decades-long, unresolved controversy is whether population change or cultural adoption occurred at the Atlantic edge, within the British Isles. We address this issue by using the first whole genome data from prehistoric Irish individuals. A Neolithic woman (3343-3020 cal BC) from a megalithic burial (10.3 coverage) possessed a genome of predominantly Near Eastern origin. She had some hunter-gatherer ancestry but belonged to a population of large effective size, suggesting a substantial influx of early farmers to the island. Three Bronze Age individuals from Rathlin Island (2026-1534 cal BC), including one high coverage (10.5) genome, showed substantial Steppe genetic heritage indicating that the European population upheavals of the third millennium manifested all of the way from southern Siberia to the western ocean. This turnover invites the possibility of accompanying introduction of Indo-European, perhaps early Celtic, language. Irish Bronze Age haplotypic similarity is strongest within modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh populations, and several important genetic variants that today show maximal or very high frequencies in Ireland appear at this horizon. These include those coding for lactase persistence, blue eye color, Y chromosome R1b haplotypes, and the hemochromatosis C282Y allele; to our knowledge, the first detection of a known Mendelian disease variant in prehistory. These findings together suggest the establishment of central attributes of the Irish genome 4,000 y ago.
3. Britain
3,000 Years Ago, Britain Got Half Its Genes From France?
By Franz Lidz
Dec. 22, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/science/archaeology-britain-migration-dna-reich.html
Extracts:
By analyzing the degraded DNA from the remains of 400 ancient Europeans, the researchers showed that 4,500 years ago nomadic pastoralists from the steppes on the eastern edge of Europe surged into Central Europe and in some areas their progeny replaced around 75 percent of the genetic ancestry of the existing populations.
Descendants of the nomads then moved west into Britain, where they mixed with the Neolithic inhabitants so thoroughly that within a few hundred years the newcomers accounted for more than 90 percent of the island's gene pool. In effect, the research suggested, Britain was almost completely repopulated by immigrants.
Analyzing DNA from 793 individuals, the investigators discovered that a massive Late Bronze Age movement displaced around half the ancestry of England and Wales .
According to the findings, from 1,000 B.C. to 875 B.C. the ancestry of early European farmers increased in southern Britain but not in northern Britain (now Scotland). Dr. Reich proposed that this resulted from an influx of foreigners who arrived at this time and over previous centuries, and who, no doubt to the disbelief of 21st-century British nativists, were genetically most similar to ancient inhabitants of France.
These newcomers accounted for as much as half the genetic makeup of the populace in southern Britain during the Iron Age, which began around 750 B.C. and lasted until the coming of the Romans in A.D. 43. DNA evidence from that period led Dr. Reich to believe that migration to Britain from continental Europe was negligible.
By leveraging their large data set of ancient DNA, Dr. Reich and his colleagues also found that lactase persistence, the ability of adults to digest the sugar lactose in milk, increased 1,000 years earlier in Britain than in Central Europe. At the dawn of the Iron Age, Dr. Reich said, overall lactase persistence on the island was about 50 percent, compared to less than 10 percent in the region stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic.
Curiously, analysis of the hardened dental plaque coating ancient teeth, and of traces of fat and protein left on ancient pots, showed that dairy products were a dietary staple in Britain thousands of years before lactase persistence became a common genetic trait.
'Either Europeans tolerated stomachaches prior to the genetic changes or, perhaps more likely, they consumed processed dairy products like yogurt or cheese where the lactose content has been significantly reduced through fermentation,' Dr. Reich said.
4. Bell Beaker culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Beaker_culture
Pertinent Extracts:
Arising from around 2800 BC, it lasted in Britain until as late as 1800 BC[1][2] but in continental Europe only until 2300 BC, when it was succeeded by the Unetice culture. The culture was widely dispersed throughout Western Europe, being present in many regions of Iberia and stretching eastward to the Danubian plains, and northward to the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and was also present in the islands of Sardinia and Sicily and some small coastal areas in north-western Africa. The Bell Beaker phenomenon shows substantial regional variation, and a study[3] from 2018 found that it was associated with genetically diverse populations.
The Bell Beaker artefacts (at least in their early phase) are not distributed across a contiguous area, as is usual for archaeological cultures, but are found in insular concentrations scattered across Europe. Their presence is not associated with a characteristic type of architecture or of burial customs. However, the Bell Beaker culture does appear to coalesce into a coherent archaeological culture in its later phase.
The origin of the "Bell Beaker" artefacts has been traced to the early 3rd millennium, with early examples of the "maritime" Bell Beaker design having been found at the Tagus estuary in Portugal, radiocarbon dated to c. the 28th century BC.[2][10][11] The inspiration for the Maritime Bell Beaker is argued to have been the small and earlier Copoz beakers that have impressed decoration and which are found widely around the Tagus estuary in Portugal.[12] Turek sees late Neolithic precursors in northern Africa, arguing the Maritime style emerged as a result of seaborne contacts between Iberia and Morocco in the first half of the third millennium BC.[13]
The evidence is sufficient to support the suggestion that the initial spread of Maritime Bell Beakers along the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean, using sea routes that had long been in operation, was directly associated with the quest for copper and other rare raw materials.[2]
Archaeogenetics studies of the 2010s have been able to resolve the "migrationist vs. diffusionist" question to some extent. The study by Olalde et al. (2017) found only "limited genetic affinity" between individuals associated with the Beaker complex in Iberia and in Central Europe, suggesting that migration played a limited role in its early spread. However, the same study found that the further dissemination of the mature Beaker complex was very strongly linked to migration. This is true especially for Britain, where the spread of the Beaker culture introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry, resulting in a near-complete transformation of the local gene pool within a few centuries, to the point of replacement of about 90% of the local Neolithic-derived lineages.[35]
Anthropomorphic stele from Sion, Switzerland, 2700-2150 BC
Historical craniometric studies found that the Beaker people appeared to be of a different physical type than those earlier populations in the same geographic areas. They were described as tall, heavy boned and brachycephalic. The early studies on the Beakers which were based on the analysis of their skeletal remains, were craniometric. This apparent evidence of migration was in line with archaeological discoveries linking Beaker culture to new farming techniques, mortuary practices, copper-working skills, and other cultural innovations.
Margaret Cox and Simon Mays sum up the position: "Although it can hardly be said that craniometric data provide an unequivocal answer to the problem of the Beaker folk, the balance of the evidence would at present seem to favour a migration hypothesis."[41]
Non-metrical research concerning the Beaker people in Britain also cautiously pointed in the direction of migration.[42] Subsequent studies, such as one concerning the Carpathian Basin,[43] and a non-metrical analysis of skeletons in central-southern Germany,[44] have also identified marked typological differences with the pre-Beaker inhabitants.
Jocelyne Desideri examined the teeth in skeletons from Bell Beaker sites in Northern Spain, Southern France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Examining dental characteristics that have been independently shown to correlate with genetic relatedness, she found that only in Northern Spain and the Czech Republic were there demonstrable links between immediately previous populations and Bell Beaker populations. Elsewhere there was a discontinuity.[45]
A study published in Nature in 2018 confirmed a massive population turnover in western Europe asssociated with the Bell Beaker culture, but also noted that the earliest Bell Beaker samples in Iberia completely lacked Western Steppe Herder ancestry.[50] Both men and women of Western Steppe Herder ancestry participated in the turnover in Neolithic Britain, as evidenced by the rise of the paternal haplogroup R1b and maternal haplogroups I, R1a and U4. The study also found that the Bell Beaker arrivals in Neolithic Britian had significantly higher genetic variants associated with light skin and eye pigmentation than the local population, but very low frequencies of the SNP associated with lactase persistance in modern Europeans.[51]
5. Bronze Age Britain
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/warwickclassicsnetwork/romancoventry/resources/prehistoricbritain/bronzeage/
A scientific study by Natural History Museum scientists from 2017 study suggests that more than 90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool was replaced with the coming of a people genetically related to the Beaker people of the lower-Rhine area at the start of the Bronze Age. In short, ancient DNA shows that the culture that brought Bronze Age technology to Britain was connected to a migration that almost completely replaced the island's earlier inhabitants.
As Prof Ian Barnes, Research Leader in Ancient DNA at the Museum, explains, 'We found that the skeletal remains of individuals from Britain who lived shortly after this time have a very different DNA profile to those who came before. It seems that there is a large population turnover.'
The genetics reveal and interesting and complex pattern. It seems that the people who entered Britain with the Beaker culture themselves originally had migrated from the Eurasian Steppes to Central Europe. The Eurasian Steppes (turquoise on map below) extend across Europe and Central Asia.
In Central Europe these Steppe people had taken up the Beaker culture which had itself spread through Europe from Iberia. With the new culture, this group continued to migrate west and finally arrived in Britain around 4,400 years ago. The DNA data suggests that over a span of several hundred years, the migrations of people from continental Europe led to an almost complete replacement of Britain's earlier inhabitants, the Neolithic communities who were responsible for huge megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge.
Interestingly, this was a time of major disruption across Europe and the Near East. This was a period when most of the great Near Eastern empires and the Greek Mycenaean empire collapsed, while the 'Sea Peoples' (probably not a single group but the name given to a diverse range of people on the move at this time) raided the Mediterranean and are recorded for example in inscriptions in Egypt. So throughout Europe and the Near East this was a period of great change.