Farmers on the Frontier at cross purposes with Atlantic Fringe Hunters

Given my R1b1b2 male-line YDNA results, I thought that it was safe to claim a long shared history, with the descendants of the Mammoth Hunters who roamed north as glacial melting gave way on the Atlantic edges of Europe to moist, steppe grasslands teaming with big game.

And that it was not hard to imagine these people become cattle and sheep herders in later periods, riding rough-legged Welsh or Irish-type ponies – and becoming raiders and reivers when opportunity presented.


The theory or perhaps myth propagated by genetic analysts like Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer was that the 60 to 70 percent of the males of the British Isles who carry the R1b1b2 haplotype stemmed from small bands of hunters who had holed up behind the Pyrenees.

After the melt, the story goes, they parted company with their Basque and Catalonian forbears, following the burgeoning herds of game north, eventually penetrating as far as north western Ireland, where they account for virtually 100 percent of the male population.

This made it possible to claim that these ‘Atlantic’ people were the original / aboriginal inhabitants of the British Isles (discounting previous inter-glacial population episodes).

It also suggested that the Indo-European languages were adopted by the descendants of the Atlantics, as cultivation spread west from its hearth in Asia Minor. The slow western diffusion of cultivation was further held to explain the gradual strengthening of the R1b1b2 gene pool along the line drawn between Connaught and the Balkans, as the eastern pioneering spirit faded and the new techniques were more readily adopted and promoted by the ‘natives’.

This left the Basque language as a lone outlier of a language group that once served all the Atlantic peoples – and as a relic of our hunter-gatherer past in north-western Europe.

But just as we can never be entirely sure of our ancestors (given ‘non-paternal events’, name changes etc.), so we can never be entirely certain that one explanation best fits the currently known facts about prehistory.

An alternative view is that R1b1b2 is the most common form of male-line YDNA in the western fringes of Europe because it records the relatively recent breeding successes of small bands of farmer cultivators, who represent the late, leading edge of a long-standing influx into the European Peninsula, which originated in Asia Minor.

This interpretation has been backed by an intensive study recently reported in the journal Plos Biology.

It is consistent with a couple of well-established trends. The first is for genetic variation to be much more intense in the core or originating home of a diffusing population (the considerable differentiation of DNA within Africa, as contrasted with the relative uniformity of non-African DNA is the prime example).

The second trend is for small populations to rise rapidly when they reach new resources – new ‘resources’ either in the form of previously un-hunted or untilled areas. When cultivation was first introduced into north-western Europe, the rewards and surpluses were comparatively great (hence the availability of food to fuel the construction of megaliths) – and the survival rates of children and the more vulnerable members of society massively improved.

As Steve Connor of the UK Independent puts it:

‘They came, they saw, they farmed and then they stole our women. Stone age farmers from the middle east not only brought their agricultural know-how with them to western Europe, they settled down with the local womenfolk and had children’.

According to a spokeswoman for the study team, Dr Balaresque:

“In total, this means that more than 80 per cent of European Y chomosomes descend from incoming farmers. In contrast, most maternal genetic lineages seem to descend from hunter-gatherers.

To us, this suggests a reproductive advantage for farming males over indigenous hunter-gatherer males during the switch from hunting and gathering to farming – maybe, back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer”.

This leaves two questions:

• Were the maternal ancestors of most of us more closely related to the peoples of North Africa?
• How can we explain the peculiar status of Basque as an outlier among Europe’s Indo-European languages? Perhaps there too, we should look south.

FOR FOLLOW UP - SEE:

‘How settler farmers fathered Europe's males’ by Steve Connor, Science Editor, UK Independent, Tuesday, 19 January 2010

‘Most European males 'descended from farmers'’ by Paul Rincon, BBC News, at: Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

‘A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages’ by Patricia Balaresque, Georgina R. Bowden, Susan M. Adams, Ho-Yee Leung, Turi E. King, Zoë H. Rosser, Jane Goodwin, Jean-Paul Moisan, Christelle Richard, Ann Millward, Andrew G. Demaine, Guido Barbujani, Carlo Previderè, Ian J. Wilson, Chris Tyler-Smith Mark A. Jobling, Plos Biology Journal, January 2010 at: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000285
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Extracts from the Plos Biology Paper:

Abstract

The relative contributions to modern European populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers from the Near East have been intensely debated.

Haplogroup R1b1b2 (R-M269) is the commonest European Y-chromosomal lineage, increasing in frequency from east to west, and carried by 110 million European men. Previous studies suggested a Paleolithic origin, but here we show that the geographical distribution of its microsatellite diversity is best explained by spread from a single source in the Near East via Anatolia during the Neolithic.

Taken with evidence on the origins of other haplogroups, this indicates that most European Y chromosomes originate in the Neolithic expansion. This reinterpretation makes Europe a prime example of how technological and cultural change is linked with the expansion of a Y-chromosomal lineage, and the contrast of this pattern with that shown by maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA suggests a unique role for males in the transition.

Author Summary

Arguably the most important cultural transition in the history of modern humans was the development of farming, since it heralded the population growth that culminated in our current massive population size. The genetic diversity of modern populations retains the traces of such past events, and can therefore be studied to illuminate the demographic processes involved in past events.

Much debate has focused on the origins of agriculture in Europe some 10,000 years ago, and in particular whether its westerly spread from the Near East was driven by farmers themselves migrating, or by the transmission of ideas and technologies to indigenous hunter-gatherers.

This study examines the diversity of the paternally inherited Y chromosome, focusing on the commonest lineage in Europe. The distribution of this lineage, the diversity within it, and estimates of its age all suggest that it spread with farming from the Near East.

Taken with evidence on the origins of other lineages, this indicates that most European Y chromosomes descend from Near Eastern farmers. In contrast, most maternal lineages descend from hunter-gatherers, suggesting a reproductive advantage for farming males over indigenous hunter-gatherer males during the cultural transition from hunting-gathering to farming.

Discussion

Previous observations of the east–west clinal distribution of the common Western European hgR1b1b2 (or its equivalent) considered it to be part of a Paleolithic substrate into which farmers from the Near East had diffused. Later analyses have also considered variance, and have conformed to the Paleolithic explanation.

Here, we concur that the cline results from demic diffusion, but our evidence supports a different interpretation: that R1b1b2 was carried as a rapidly expanding lineage from the Near East via Anatolia to the western fringe of Europe during the Neolithic.

Such mutations arising at the front of a wave of expansion have a high probability of surviving and being propagated, and can reach high frequencies far from their source. Successive founder effects at the edge of the expansion wave can lead to a reduction in microsatellite diversity, even as the lineage increases in frequency.

The innovations in the Near East also spread along the southern shore of the Mediterranean, reflected in the expansion of hgE1b1b1b (E-M81), which increases in frequency and reduces in diversity from east to west.

In sub-Saharan Africa, hgE1b1a (E-M2) underwent a massive expansion associated with the Bantu expansion.

In India, the spread of agriculture has been associated with the introduction of several Y lineages, and in Japan, lineages within hgO spread with the Yayoi migration, which brought wet rice agriculture to the archipelago.

On a more recent timescale, the expansion of the Han culture in China has been linked to demic diffusion.

In this context, the apparently low contribution of incoming Y chromosomes to the European Neolithic, despite its antiquity and impact, has appeared anomalous. Our interpretation of the history of hgR1b1b2 now makes Europe a prime example of how expansion of a Y-chromosomal lineage tends to accompany technological and cultural change.

Other lineages also show evidence of European Neolithic expansion, hgE1b1b1 (E-M35) and hgJ, in particular. Indeed, hgI is the only major lineage for which a Paleolithic origin is generally accepted, but it comprises only 18% of European Y chromosomes.

The Basques contain only 8%–20% of this lineage, but 75%–87% hgR1b1b2.

Our findings therefore challenge their traditional “Mesolithic relict” status, and in particular, their use as a proxy for a Paleolithic parental population in admixture modelling of European Y-chromosomal prehistory.

Is the predominance of Neolithic-expansion lineages among Y chromosomes reflected in other parts of the genome? Mitochondrial DNA diversity certainly presents a different picture: no east–west cline is discernible, most lineages have a Paleolithic TMRCA, and hgH and hgV show signatures of postglacial expansion from the Iberian peninsula.

Demic diffusion involves both females and males, but the disparity between mtDNA and Y-chromosomal patterns could arise from an increased and transmitted reproductive success for male farmers compared to indigenous hunter-gatherers, without a corresponding difference between females from the two groups.

This would lead to the expansion of incoming Y lineages—as suggested by the high growth rate observed for hgR1b1b2. Similar conclusions have been reached for the Bantu expansion (in which the current Bantu-speaking populations carry many mtDNA lineages originating from hunter-gatherers, the introduction of agriculture to India and the Han expansion.

Some studies have found evidence of east–west clines for autosomal loci.

By contrast, recent genome-wide SNP typing surveys find a basic south–north division or gradient, including greater diversity in the south, but they provide no indication of the time-depth of the underlying events, which could in principle involve contributions from the original colonization, postglacial Paleolithic recolonization, Neolithic expansion, and later contact between Africa and southern Europe.

The distinction between the geographical patterns of variation of the Y chromosome and those of mtDNA suggest sex-specific factors in patterning European diversity, but the rest of the genome has yet to reveal definitive information. Detailed studies of X-chromosomal and autosomal haplotypes promise to further illuminate the roles of males and females in prehistory.

Continuity & Replacement: What can we learn from New Zealand?

Oppenheimer assumes the 'mantle of a genetic detective' in his book 'The Origins of the British'. Adjusting his deerstalker hat and his meerchaum pipe, he tries to reconcile his findings about the relatively low contribution of Anglo-Saxon male-line ydna in England with the rapid supplanting of the original Celtic languages by English.

He deduces the prior existence of a Germanic language in southern England in the Pre-Roman period and claims that this laid the foundations for the wider language shift.

However, he is not able to present any tangible evidence whatsoever to support his hypothesis.

Oppenheimer's Continuity Hypothesis is not shared by all and there is something of a mother and father of a row between experts about the issue - with respect to both the language and the ydna evidence.

The alternative Replacement view is given below.

'WHO KILLED THE MEN OF ENGLAND?'

Jonathan Shaw explains, writing on the intersection of written history, genomics, evolution, demography, and molecular archaeology:

"There are no signs of a massacre—no mass graves, no piles of bones. Yet more than a million men vanished without a trace. They left no descendants.

Historians know that something dramatic happened in England just as the Roman empire was collapsing. When the Anglo-Saxons first arrived in that northern outpost in the fourth century a.d.—whether as immigrants or invaders is debated—they encountered an existing Romano-Celtic population estimated at between 2 million and 3.7 million people. Latin and Celtic were the dominant languages.

Yet the ensuing cultural transformation was so complete, says Goelet professor of medieval history Michael McCormick, that by the eighth century, English civilization considered itself completely Anglo-Saxon, spoke only Anglo-Saxon, and thought that everyone had “come over on the Mayflower, as it were.”

This extraordinary change has had ramifications down to the present, and is why so many people speak English rather than Latin or Celtic today. But how English culture was completely remade, the historical record does not say.

Then, in 2002, scientists found a genetic signature in the DNA of living British men that hinted at an untold story of Anglo-Saxon conquest. The researchers were sampling Y-chromosomes, the sex chromosome passed down only in males, from men living in market towns named in the Domesday Book of 1086.

Working along an east-west transect through central England and Wales, the scientists discovered that the mix of Y-chromosomes characteristic of men in the English towns was very different from that of men in the Welsh towns: Wales was the primary Celtic holdout in Western Britannia during the ascendance of the Anglo-Saxons.

Using computer analysis, the researchers explored how such a pattern could have arisen and concluded that a massive replacement of the native fourth-century male Britons had taken place. Between 50 percent and 100 percent of indigenous English men today, the researchers estimated, are descended from Anglo-Saxons who arrived on England’s eastern coast 16 centuries ago.

'So what happened? Mass killing, or “population replacement,” is one possible explanation. Mass migration of Anglo-Saxons, so that they swamped the native gene pool, is another."

This theory of course is easy to reconcile with the triumph of English over the Brythonic language of England's Romano-British inhabitants.

In countering this line of argument, Oppenheimer feels it necessary to invent the pre-existence of settlements of Germanic-language speakers.

Well, I think that I can strengthen the case for ydna continuity while retaining consistency with the history that there was an initially thoroughgoing Anglo-Saxon invasion and little prior Germanic influence.

In this 'Mixed Model' the intruder language is eventually adopted by all while the proportion of ydna from initially dominant immigrants becomes overwhelmed by the resurgence of the native population.

Here I believe New Zealand's ongoing relative shifts in ydna and language can provide a possible template.

ANOTHER EXPLANATION

The Model

The population of the original inhabitants is 100,000 prior to contact and subjugation by a dominant settler group. The intrusion is preceded by a period of savage inter-tribal warfare and population decline. The newcomers are welcomed initially for their capacity to impose order and security.

Within 60 years, the population of the indigenous group has declined to about 40,000 as a result of social collapse, introduced diseases and warfare with the intruders. The indigenous group now represent 7.5% of the total population.

The dominant settler group talk of ‘smoothing the pillow of the dying race’. They sing sagas to celebrate the demise of their erstwhile enemies:

Newer nations yet press onward:
Their brave warriors' fight is over —
One by one they yield their place,
Peace-slain chieftains of their race.

But the indigenous race is hardy and resourceful. They learn the intruders’ language. They enlist in the intruders’ armies and distinguish themselves in warfare. There is significant and expanding inter-marriage between the two groups.

The population of the indigenous group gradually recovers.

150 years after the onslaught of colonisation, looking at children in the 0-14 years old age category, 374,000 live in households who who at least in part identify with the indigenous group (& more recent immigrants from the periphery who share the same cultural background), while 577,000 live in households that identify in part with the settler group. There is a huge overlap and the gap itself is closing.

Two hundred or so years on from the initial subjugation event, the population of the indigenous group has reached 1 million. However, all the inhabitants increasingly see themselves as a united and distinct entity. English is the dominant everyday language.

Well, that's the history of New Zealand since 1840. Could it also explain the history of England from 440?

Remembered Cheshire Dialect

Some South Cheshire Dialect - mostly dairy farming terms

Adland – headland – uncultivated area left at the end of a furrow where the mower / plough turns
Aind - hound - as in 'up comes 52 bloody ainds' in Blaster Bates' well-quoted monologue 'A Shower of Shit over Cheshire'
Atchen – acorn (nickname for Keith at primary school ‘atchen yed’)
Asker – newt (small amphibian like a damp torpid skink)
Avarous - avaricious
Backend – Autumn – hence ‘backender’ – a heifer or cow that will calve late in the year when feed is scarce but milk prices are high
Bear - no bears in Cheshire when I grew up either wild or for baiting - but a memory in the saying 'as brown as a bear's arse'
Beast - the first milk let down after calving - colostrum
Bletch - the dirty oil on a machine (e.g. bike chain), from Crewe Railway Workshops -originally in complaint about the state of locos sent up from the linked North Western Railway workshop in Northamptonshire at Bletchley
Bonk – bank – frequently used to describe farms, as raised areas were better drained sites for farm houses
Boozy – trough at the head of each cattle stall or tying
Bowk – bucket
Bread and cheese - local term for the earliest green shoots of the hawthorn in the Springtime - widely eaten by children (probably a good source of vitamen C)
Brook - stream
Bugger - omnipresent in conversation - same in rural New Zealand as illustrated by a recent Toyota light truck / utility / ute advertisement where the ute pulls out a tree stump that destroys the chook house and the cockie rubs his head and says 'Bugger Me'. I personally believe that use of the the word in rural areas has nothing do do with buggery or the 'Bulgarian Atrocities' of the late 19th Century. Much more likley, it seems to me, is that it is related to 'beg', as in 'Begger me' or 'begger my neighbour'.
Bull - verbally abuse - to give someone a 'good bulling' about a problem or issue - not always polite or to be used a tea with the vicar as it can refer to mating cattle - probably related to standard English 'bully' / 'bullying'
Byng – corridor at the head of tyings in the shippon from which stock are fothered
Chimbley – chimney - 'the owd dog shot up bloody chimbley' - dog seeking warmth and catching the fire's smoke
Clem - starve
Conna – cannot (my nickname for Pete)
Cowd – cold
Cratch – side of a wagon (‘a good cratched ‘un’ – someone who can eat a lot)
Cut – canal (Cheshire is intersected by canals linking the industrial Midlands and industrial North of England – a great way to see the countryside)
Dabber – inhabitant of Nantwich (from leatherworking, stemming from the local abundance of salt and hides – hence Dab-town)
Diggly – sex, as in ‘having a bit of diggly’
Dunna – do not (my nickname for Matt)
Ess ole rooter - someone who hugs the fire (i.e. the ash-hole) and baulks from work
Feggy – rank and overgrown
Five gallon a day beast – good milking heifer (or well-endowed young lady)
Fother – fodder (often used as a verb)
Gradely – fine – as in ‘oos a gradely little wench’ (i.e. she is a fine young woman)
Gur – diarrhea
Jed – dead
Kench – wedge of hay or silage – also scrunched up, as in being ‘kenched wi cowd’ (doubled up with cold)
Korves - calves - see below - cry to get calves to come for bucket-feeding, 'cub, cub korv'
Kyat - cat - typical of the distorted pronounciation of standard English words
Ligger - liar
Lommer - another word sometimes used in relationship to hard physical labour - if the Inuits have 32 words for snow, Cheshire farmers had a raft of words for punishing work - this one though most frequently referred to 'on-heat' heifers mounting or lommering each other
Look up – check stock by walking among them in the fields or walking down the byng in the shippon
Mard – spoilt – i.e. ‘marred’ – schoolyard taunt ‘mardy custard’
Maul – strain in doing something / make a nuisance of oneself (e.g. maul one’s gorbey [guts])
Miss Muffet - not strictly dialect but a 'dirty' version of the rhyme that I have never heard elsewhere - 'Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, her nickers all ragged and torn. It wasn't the spider that sat down beside her but Little Boy Blue with his horn'
Mither – be a nuisance
Mixen – midden (‘better to marry over the mixen than over the moor’ i.e. marry all girl from Cheshire whose dad has lots of cows and cow shit, rather than marry into the poor sheep farmers of Derbyshire)
Mizzle – half-way between drizzle and mist
Mow'd - mowed - widely used in regard to sufficiency and relating to the importance of restricting mowing to the amount that can be dried and harvested successfully as hay - 'mowd up wi work' (overstretched), 'oer mowd' (over-mowed - too much on to be able to cope)
Munna – must not (nickname for Sam?)
Muxt - mess - as in 'tha's made a muxt on it lad' (you have made a mess of it)
Nesh – unable to stand cold or pain
Nowt - naughty child - naught / nothing, as in 'tha's a reet nowt'
Oawa up - morning cry to cows to 'come up' from the fields for milking (How up?)
Oo - she - as in 'Oo inna jed is oo - noeweh, oos corbelsed - ah a mun get vet' (i.e. she is not dead is she - no, she's collapsed - I must get the vetinerary surgeon - referring to treating a 'downer' cow that is suffering from 'milk fever' / calcium deficiency)
Owd – old –e.g. as in someone being decrepit and ‘owd an feggy’
Pit – pond – a vital part of the old cheese-making economy, providing water for the stalled cattle in the winter and the means for swilling out the shippons
Pather – bring wet and mud into the house by not cleaning one’s shoes
Pikel - pitchfork
Poll Evil - infection of horses / cows head
Pommer – attractive girl, as in ‘a reet (right) pommer’
Practical - handy, dextrous - the ultimate accolade
Rawnge – sprain / strain – ‘rawnge, maul and mither’ – the actions of particularly troublesome children (probably variant of standard English 'wrench' i.e. 'wrawnge')
Reens and bawks – the corrugations – about 3 metres apart that were dug to drain boggy fields in the 18th century) – hence ‘reen-warted’ – like a sheep or cow that has sunk down on its back in the reen and cannot get up – colloquially, someone who has eaten too much or who is getting too fat
Rit – runt – e.g. the rit of the litter
Scrag – grab and beat up (schoolyard term)
Scrumping - stealing apples - a common sport for kids in Autumn
Seg – callous (on the hand)
Shippon – cow shed
Snap - snack (used particularly for the lunch that farm labourers took to work with them in their 'snap tins' - along with their dry tea for a 'brew'. After work, they cycled home with their brew can on their handlebars filled with 'free' milk from the farm for their families)
Snig - Eel - 'as fat as a snig'
Spadger – sparrow (‘Like a Northwich spadger – all twitter and shit’, i.e. garrulous)
Stirk - type of 'cattle-beast' - steer?
Straighten – tidy up something or oneself - as in 'yeah lads mun get tha'sens straightened an go skoo' (you boys must get dressed and go to school)
Strap - extra licence / credit (presumably from lightening the straps on cart / carriage horses)
Yarn – heron
Tha - 'you' singular - universal in conversation - as in 'tha's a bugger to coo' (innocent report in 1930s of kid to his female schoolteacher of his father's opinion of the singing capabilities of his recently purchased parrot - received strong condemnation for the use of the 'b' word)
Thripper – gate on the end of a cart to hold on the load
Thrutch – squirm
Tice - to actively seek involvement in mischief (i.e. 'entice')
Tight – drunk, also miserly e.g. ‘as tight as a duck’s arse – and that’s water tight’
Tine - prong (as in the 'tines on a pikel')
Tying - chain at cattle stall
Underdone – not looking well (as opposed to ‘prosperous’ = looking well)
Wid – duck (from Welsh ‘hwaed’ = duck – presumably because the junior cheese-maids from Wales generally called up the ducks off the pit – “wid, wid ..wid”)
Wom – home – as in wom bonk (as in the saying ‘a cock feets (i.e. fights) best on (h)is wom bonk’)
Wunna - will not (nickname for Theo?)
Yed - head

WORD ORIGINS - THE INFLUENCE OF BRYTHONIC / CUMBRIC

The Reverend William Gaskell (husband of Elizabeth Gaskell, author of 'North and South', 'Mary Barton' etc) contributed a fascinating appendix to 'Mary Barton' on the Lancashire Dialect (based on 2 lectures that he gave in Manchester in 1848). He makes a strong case for deriving many dialect words from a Brythonic / Cumbric / Welsh-variant vocabulary substratum. This in turn being related to the fact that Lancashire (& Cheshire)once formed part of Celtic-speaking Yr Hen Ogledd (the Old North).

Among the examples that he discusses are:

Camming – wearing out of shape – Welsh ‘cam’ = bent, awry. Gammy is a variant
Cob – lump – Welsh ‘co’ = mass; to cob = break into small pieces , Welsh ‘cobiaw’ = strike, thump
Bragget – drink of malt and meat – Welsh ‘bragawd’
Pobs – bread soaked in milk – Welsh ‘pob’ = baking
Sad – stiff, dry – Welsh ‘sad’ = firm
Kecks – stems of wild hemlock – Welsh ‘cecys’ = hollow stalked
Griddle – bakestone – Welsh ‘greidyl’
Tad and Mam – Dad and Mum (Welsh equivalents).

These certainly seem very familiar to me. Horace used to have (and I still tell my boys about him having) 'pobs' (stale bread, with hot milk and sugar) for breakfast.

Gaskell also makes the point that:

'As Celtic and Gothic (the ancestor of Anglo-Saxon) are stocks of the same tribe of languages (i.e. Indo-European), they have many words in common, scarcely if at all, different in form, and this sometimes renders it difficult to say which may claim the immediate parentage of a current term.'

I am reminded here also that Caesar could not send messages written in Latin to his commanders in the field as the Gauls could easily read them if they captured the message-bearers (no doubt one reason that modern French is not quite as 'Latin' say as Spanish, as it is a mutation rather than the product of colonization).

It seems to me that many modern commentators, like Stephen Oppenheimer in his 'Origins of the British', completely lose sight of the overlap issue. This leads Oppenheimer to insist on the likelihood of widespread pre-Roman use of a Germanic language in South Eastern England - even though no words have ever been recoverd.

That is not to deny though that, for example, there may well have been some Friesian coastal settlers in the area controlled by the Iceni - or that late-Roman London and Middlesex may have been dominated by demobilised Roman soldiers / colonists from Batavia, the Rhineland and northern Belgium.