More on Bell Beakers

I think the thing that desperately needs to happen, and this new genetic study by Olalde and Co. (which I'm even seeing referenced on social/political blogs like Vox Day—because of the implication of mass migration and population replacement that it highlights) is that we need to formally recognize that what we call the Bell Beaker culture is really two cultures that have a totally difference genesis.  And then one of them needs to be renamed.  Although they were (more or less) coterminous in time, and certainly there was interaction of sorts between them, but the Atlantic beakers, based on a copoz pottery prototype are not the same as the German/Dutch beaker culture with pottery based on Corded Ware prototypes.  Not only is it not necessary to derive their various potteries from a single source, but we now know that they had completely different genetics, specifically Y-DNA genetics, and even in Iberia where the Atlantic Beaker tradition started, there was a massive invasion and pretty much 100% replacement of Y-DNA lineages in the early Bronze Age associated with a Corded Ware derived Beaker culture, setting the stage for the later appearance historically of the Celtiberians, the Lusitanians, etc.  Now granted, this doesn't mean that the Beakers were themselves Celtic (the term Celtic linguistically doesn't have much meaning prior to the Urnfield culture at the earliest, which is considerably later, and it also likely is the material culture associated with other later appearing linguistic groups too, like the Illyrians and maybe even the Italic and Venetic groups) and we do know that waves of Hallstatt cultural artifacts continue to appear in Iberia later, possibly bringing updated Indo-European (specifically Celtic) languages with them.  Or possibly the Bell Beakers' descendants in Iberia maintained some linguistic continuity due to continued contact with the Hallstatt peoples as they eventually shed some of the other linguistic groups and gradually became Celtic.

But they are not the same people who started the Atlantic Beaker tradition prior to the arrival of Corded Ware Y-DNA lineages.  The genetic evidence is very clear.  Even if they contributed culturally in some way (well, they did contribute mtDNA.  Apparently the arriving northern Beaker people took lots of local girls to wife, likely in a similar manner as the rape of the Sabine women.  Except without the reconciliation between the new husbands and the fathers.)

The other odd finding is that the Basque people are just as rich in steppe ancestry as the rest of them.  In other words, the early Aquitanian people are genetically the same as the Indo-European peoples around them.  In fact, modern Basques are more similar to Iron Age Indo-Europeans in Iberia than current Indo-Europeans in Iberia are, because subsequent admixture events have caused further drift in the Iberian population (notably the mixing of many Romans, then later Visigoths and Franks, then later Moors) that has not affected the Basques.  As "Davidski" says:

The Basques form a tight cluster with most of the Copper, Bronze and Iron Age Iberians, and, unlike the other present-day Iberians, they basically look like an Iberian population from the metal ages. This is nothing new and very much in line with the results in Olalde et al., but I wanted to emphasize the point that Basques were not just a group that experienced an extreme founder effect in R1b-P312, which is a Beaker-specific Y-chromosome lineage. Rather, they're still very similar to Iberian Beakers in terms of overall genetic structure. So where did they get their language?

Some folks are mesmerized by this, and presume that, "oh my gosh; where does Basque come from then?" because they can't imagine a scenario where conquering males taking local wives pick up the language of the wives instead of the other way around.  (To which I say; ever hear of the Normans?)

As an aside, I picked up copies of Koch's Celtic out of the West books from Academia.edu and I'm quite curious what they say.  Sure, sure—the theory doesn't have mainstream approval yet, but I wonder; is there any reason why a very archaic Celtic couldn't have spread from the Atlantic Bronze Age into the Urnfield region, bringing languages with it that later emerge as Hallstatt Celtic?  Anyway, more after I've had a chance to read them.

We do already know that the mainstream view is that Illyrian is associated with the eastern Hallstatt material culture, and I don't know of anyone that proposes that Illyrian is a Celtic language, or even a para-Celtic language (like maybe Venetic and Lusitanian.)  If Celtic did come from the west, it didn't originate with the Bell Beakers, but with their subsequent descendant cultures.  And while there usually is a strong correlation between material cultures, genetics and linguistics, we should be cautious to remember that there isn't always that correlation in every specific example.  It is certainly possible that people sharing a very close if not practically identical genetic profile, with very similar material cultures, spoke different languages.  And it's also important to remember that there may well have been extinct branches of Indo-European that we don't know anything about because they were linguistically "updated" by the spread of a newer language or dialect. From the Baltic Coast in just relatively recent historical times we know the West Baltic languages (like Old Prussian) were replaced by German(ic) languages following the northern Crusades, and those same areas have largely if not completely been converted now into Slavic speaking (Polish) areas following WWs I and II.  And that's just a few centuries of written historical records for the area.  Similar linguistic changes could have been widespread in the many millennia between the Indo-Europeanization of Europe and the arrival of written languages in the Middle Ages, or Late Classical Age at best. In pre-literate societies, who knows how many times this has happened?