Were My Ancestors Iberian? (2300-1300 BC)

   In the previous writing where we followed our ancestors' footprints we arrived in Central Europe. From there Indo-Europeans spread slowly farther to the west and by about the 2300 BC had crossed the Rhine River. After that the R1b men's migration branched off in four different directions. With the arrival of these men the different parts of Europe advanced rapidly to Bronze Era technology and the people began to use Indo-European languages. At the present time the descendants of the men who belonged to each branch can be identified with the help of mutations which are characteristic of each of them.


   The group which moved south is known as Italo-Celtic, the northern group is known as Germanic, and the western as Atlantic-Celtic. Contrary to what one might expect, at this stage the ancestors of the Hjelt family did not take the northern direction, but instead went to the southwest with a population that is called Ibero-Atlantic. But the question is: did our ancestors move with the group into the Iberian Peninsula?


  

Researchers Were Lost


   I do not know if the ancestors of our family were lost when they did not head directly towards Sweden and Turku in Finland but headed southwest instead. Researchers themselves have also been lost for over ten years in trying to trace the movements of these R1b men. The idea prevailed for a long time that the R1b men's original home had been on the Iberian Peninsula and that they would have spread from there to other areas of Europe in northerly and northeasterly directions. Not until 2009-12 and this year have studies been done which concluded that this idea is wrong. Instead, now the perception prevails that R1b men spread from east to west and that it happened a couple of thousand years later than it had been supposed earlier. In studies and discussion forums, some participants have expressed the idea that R1b men would have moved from the Balkans directly to the Iberian Peninsula as early as the Neolithic time. These perceptions have been gradually marginalized and my conclusions comply with the currently prevailing perceptions. It's a little bit difficult for a layman to form a perception on matters concerning the origin of the population of Europe, as one has to be careful in drawing conclusions only on the basis of mere discussion forums.

The Bell-Beaker Culture


   At the time when the R1b men spread to most of Western Europe, there existed the so-called Bell-Beaker culture (2800-1900 BC). This culture was born on the Iberian Peninsula after the Megalithic Era, and it had spread widely throughout Western Europe. The name "Bell-Beaker" comes from ceramic beakers they made (see the picture above) which have the form of an upside-down bell. On the map below the sphere of influence of the Bell-Beakers is shaded in light brown. The Indo-European newcomers influenced the Bell-Beaker culture so that it gradually adopted Bronze Era technology over a couple of centuries before 1800 BC. The Bell Beakers migrated from southwest to northeast, and the Bronze Age Indo-Europeans vice versa. The R1b men sought regions where tin and copper could be found which were required for making bronze. They were not numerous enough at this time to displace the local men, so the populations lived side-by-side for a time. The Indo-Europeans eventually merged with the local populations, adopted their habits, their Paleo-European languages and took local women. It has not been possible before to form conclusions on the origins of buried persons merely on the basis of archeologic findings. However, in quite recent years with the DNA analyses of bones this has become possible.


The Basques Don't Have the Same Problem as Family Hjelt.


   The Ibero-Atlantic haplogroup DF27 was born fairly soon after the haplogroup P312. The name is based on the fact that nowadays the DF27 men in Spain and Portugal (and also France's most southwestern province, Gascoigne) comprise about 80% of the main population in those countries. This fact seems to be in contradiction with the table below that shows the majority of DF27 men tested to come from the British Isles. The numbers are deceptively biased because nowadays many times more tests are made on the men in the British Isles compared to tests of men currently living on the Continent. Regardless of its name, the Ibero-Atlantic haplogroup is found nowadays only in small numbers in France on the west side of the Alps. Because the men of the Hjelt family belong to this group, it means that at least one of our ancestors has lived in that particular area. But still the question remains: were our ancestors among the majority of the DF27 haplogroup when they crossed the Pyrenees? A sure answer cannot be given here yet. If the genetic studies progress as rapidly as they have so far, I believe we will get the answer to this question in a few years.


   For couple of years some new subclades under the haplogroup DF27 have been identified. Among many other men we in the family Hjelt also belong to the subclade R-Z220. Some of the present-day Basque men belong to the same group, too. To the Basques it's probably unimportant whether R-Z220 was born north or south of the Pyrenees. They once came to Iberia and there they have remained to the present day. However, the birthplace of Z220 is relevant to members of the Hjelt family because it will tell us if our ancestors ever lived on the Iberian Peninsula or not. It is believed that the DF27 men came to Iberia about 1800 BC and the subclade R-Z220 was probably born at the same time or little later. Within these time limits there were perhaps only a few generations time until the birth of R-Z220 on the Iberian Peninsula. It is more probable that both R-DF27 and R-Z220 were both born on the north side of Pyrenees. In that case the answer would be: our family does not descend from Iberians, but nevertheless in a broader perspective we are genetically a kind of cousins to them. As an interesting detail I must add that genetically we are closer to the Basques than to other inhabitants of Iberian Peninsula.


   I have marked the route of our family's ancestors on the enclosed map with green and the different routes of men belonging to other R1b-haplogroups with red. The relative sizes of haplogroups is not clearly shown on the map, hence a few words on that. The four branches that separated from haplogroup R-P312 are significant. From them the majority of the present male population in Europe has grown. About 80% of male population of Spain, Portugal and their male descendants around the world belongs today to the Ibero-Atlantic haplogroup R-DF27. The share of its subclade R-Z220 among the present populations is not known exactly, but it is significant in the British Isles, in France and along the coast of the North Sea. The subclades R-S21184 and R-S19290 under R-220 have been found only this year, so the number of men belonging to these is still unknown. Obviously it can be said that they are rare. The table below shows the geographic frequencies of DNA-tests where the haplogroups mentioned here have been identified as of May 2015.


Language Transitions

   The ancestors of our family have spoken many languages over the course of millennia. As a matter of interest I might mention that they have spoken several languages from three main language families: from the Russian Steppes to the coast of the Atlantic they spoke Proto-Indo-European or Indo-European languages. During the Atlantic Bronze Era they made a change to local Paleo-European languages. It did not take long when they in the Celtic period changed their language back to Indo-European again, this time to some of the Celtic languages. Eventually in the 1800's in Finland some of the men in our family changed their native Indo–European language (Swedish) to a particular language belonging to the Uralic language family (Finnish).


To The North Sea


   This year geneticists have added some new branches to their haplotree. Among them are two such to which also the men of the Hjelt family are classified. During the Atlantic Bronze Age (1300-700 BC) two subclades were born under the haplogroup R-Z220, namely S21184 and S19290. These are so new that only a few tests have yet been made in which they have been identified. However, the feeling is that these newest haplogroups were born on the coast of the North Sea or English Channel, sometime BCE. First of all, the Iberians disappeared from these groups and instead the representation of northern areas increased, at least relatively.



  

Number of Tests Made in Haplogroup DF27 And Its Subclades.

   The last column in the table is dominated by the men of the Hjelt family and the men genetically close to us. In Finland three of the men are called Hjelt and the fourth is Hannu whose connection to the Hjelt family is very close but not figured out yet. To this same group should be added as a fifth the only man thus far counted who can trace his ancestry to Scandinavia. He is Les, a third-generation Swedish-American who has roots in East-Götaland Sweden but is genetically close to the Hjelt family, too. The three British men in the last column are a distinctly separate group from the other five. The Genetic Distance (defined in the following writings) measured between me and "the gang of five" is 0-4 whereas it is 20-27 between me and the British men.


   The story of haplogroups as told by DNA does not reach far enough yet. If, however, there might come results from studies with the same speed as previously, then I believe I'll be returning to this matter in the near future. But, no worry, DNA can tell its stories in another way also.

So the story continues in the following articles.

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Anthrogenica: S21184 has somethingto tell us

Chiara Batini et al.: Large-scale recent expansion of European patrilineages shown by population resequencing. Nature, April 2015.

Haak, Wolfgang; Lazaridis, Iosif et al.: "Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe". BioRxiv, February 2015.

Lee, Esther et al.: Emerging genetic patterns of the european neolithic: Perspectives from a late neolithic bell beaker burial site in Germany, Wiley Online Library 2012

Eupedia Forums: Why R1b couldn't have been spread around Western Europe by the Bell Beaker people.

Eupedia Genetics: Haplogroup R1b

YFull: Y-tree

Wikipedia: Haplogroup R1b