E-V13 - Theories on its Origin and New Data

[Riverman]

Findings of relevance from the archaeological side of things - I know we discussed this paper before, but the new article made me start a new post with more extensive commenting:

Satellites spy remnants of hidden Bronze Age settlement in Serbia


The more than 3,000-year-old site along a riverbank in Serbia contains the footprints of dozens of Bronze Age structures.

Archaeologists first noticed the remnants of the more than 3,000-year-old enclosures in 2015 while reviewing Google Earth photos of a 93-mile stretch (150 kilometer) of wilderness along Serbia's Tisza River, according to a study published Nov. 10 in the journal PLOS One.

"We could see traces of over 100 Late Bronze Age settlements," study lead author Barry Molloy, an associate professor of archaeology at University College Dublin, told Live Science in an email. "What is fascinating about the [sites] is that we not only identified their presence in these images, but also measured their size and, for many, how people organized the layout inside their settlements."

There are a few clues as to why the settlement would've been so heavily fortified. Based on the discovery of clay chariots and weaponry at cemeteries near some of the enclosures, it's likely that the inhabitants were "familiar with warfare" — not amongst each other, but rather, with the outside world, according to Science.

"[It] would have been occupied from 1600 to 1200 B.C.," Molloy said. "On occasion, we found pieces of burnt daub indicating structures there had been damaged by fire. Daub was soil applied to walls of thin sticks — wattle — to make structures like houses in the past."

However, archaeologists aren't sure what caused the settlement to be abandoned around 1200 B.C.

"This remains a bit of a mystery for now," he said. "It is possible that they simply became more mobile and moved around the landscape in a less constrained manner."

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/...SmartBrief

From the paper: 

It has been argued the area was marginalised in political and economic networks of Europe and the Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age (LBA) [12–14]. However, we argue in this paper that a new internally highly-connected and externally well-networked society emerged after 1600 BC, characterised by a dense and hierarchically organised complex of enclosed sites. Located in the south Pannonian Plain area of the Carpathian Basin, these sites were commonly monumental in scale, ranging from small sites of 5–10 hectares, through larger ones of many 10’s of hectares up to the largest site which exceeded 1,750 hectares of space encircled by 33km of ditches and ramparts [15–19]. We aim to explain how this dense and prosperous network came into existence in the 16th century and why it collapsed in the 13th century BC. We contend that, alongside the Aegean and Po Valley, this newly identified lower Pannonian network was one of the major cultural centres of southern Europe, exerting regional scale influences across the continent and into the Mediterranean.

Our fieldwork has identified over 100 new sites in a part of this region. They are located in the hinterlands of the Tisza river and so we term them the Tisza Site Group (TSG). The TSG is a network of highly similar sites set within an area of ca. 8,000 km2, roughly 140km north-south and 80km east-west (S1 File). They are aligned along a broadly north-south axis east of a river corridor formed by the River Tisza and a north-south stretch of the River Danube. The results of our survey provide a basic model for settlement frequency, density, organisation and size. The distribution and locational choices make it clear that TSG sites occupied a strategic location along important arterial river routes that connected them to each other, continental Europe and onwards to the Adriatic, Black and east Mediterranean seas [20]. We present results of remote prospection, pedestrian survey, targeted excavations and new absolute chronological research on this TSG cluster and use this to characterise the lower Pannonian network in its regional and European context.

Here we can read anti-migrationist nonsense now factually and completely disproven by ancient DNA, since we have the evidence for the spread of BB like autosomal and R-L2 paternal genetic profiles with the Tumulus culture people, which caused the Koszider horizon: 

The long-standing Tumulus Culture invasion model was introduced to explain the adoption of new material culture styles from the 16th century BC, prompting arguments for a causal relationship between inward migration and the fall of the tells, an idea now out of vogue [5, 41–46]. This model was based in part on the development of distinctive metalwork of the so-called “Koszider horizon” (ca. 1600–1450 BC) along with the “Tumulus culture” or HGK (Hügelgräber-Kultur) pottery style of the same general date range [44, 47]. Recent work demonstrates that the introduction of these was asynchronous, gradual and embedded within local craft and societal dynamics [48].

In general, the southward spread of the consumption of tumulus culture and encrusted ware styles signal mobility. While we may only speculate on whether this was people, things or ideas on the move, it correlates with a disruptive phase at the end of the MBA. Their introduction alongside other ceramic styles is relevant for understanding the late 17th to 16th centuries BC as a pivotal time of reorganisation across the southern plain [54].

That's why we can never trust modern post-60's archaeologists when they state that the introduction of new cultural traits and products was the result of "cultural contacts". More often than not, they were wrong. 

Notably, the co-occurrence of Belegiš I and SDŽB at TSG settlements, and the common use of incised and / or encrusted decoration, suggests our division between the two, based primarily on cemetery assemblages, is perhaps sharper than would have been viewed in prehistory. When the Belegiš II pottery style emerged, many features such as hanging garland decoration, cylindrical necks with everted rims and four equispaced protomes derived from the Belegiš I style. These features were shared also in a modified format on later SDŽB pottery, demonstrating entanglement of concepts even when broader decorative techniques were adhered to.

Notice that they use the term "sharper than would have been viewed..." This might point to some knowledge about genetics (though if they have genetic knowledge, why are they still so reluctant when its about the Tumulus culture expansion?), since the difference between Encrusted pottery (SDZB) and Belegis I/Belegis II-Gáva should indeed be "sharp". 

Note that the "modified formats" of SDZB show Channelled Ware/Belegis II dominance rather, like Vartop, so this is a cultural fusion, like we see it in Bulgaria, but most likely based on Channelled Ware (Gáva-related) migrations. Basically we see along the Vardar-Morava (Brnjica) and Danube (Encrusted Pottery) first an influence, later an overtake, of Channelled Ware groups.

LBA megaforts: 

Surviving upstanding ramparts are rare and are associated with the larger and most monumental sites, the extreme case being Corneşti Iarcuri at ca. 1765 ha [107]. This was the largest construction built in any part of Europe up to that time, dwarfing the citadels of the Aegean world and their surrounding towns. Other impressive sites, while smaller, were nonetheless massive relative to earlier and contemporary sites in Europe, with sites such as Sântana Cetatea Veche, Gradište-Iđoš, Sakule, Crepaja, Bašaid, Csanádpalota, Orosháza Nagytatársánc and Újkígyós all warranting the term megasite or megafort, ranging from 75 to 460 Ha of enclosed space (Fig 1)

Not just burial rite, ceramic production and weapons were similar, but even the architecture and fortifications were similar from Gáva-sphere to Protovillanovans: 

At the 130ha site of Sântana, located north of the Mureș, exceptionally wide ramparts were constructed that are unique in the area and the excavators point to similarities with Terramare ramparts in northern Italy [19].

This might be an interesting comment concerning the question of continuity from Belegis I to Belegis II-Gáva: 

Considering our survey finds, there is a greater frequency of sites that have only Belegiš I / SDŽB pottery along with relatively fewer or no sherds of Belegiš II in the southern site cluster (Table 2). It is emphasised that this can be a bias of the recovery of diagnostic sherds, as only a handful of diagnostics were recovered from sites that only had Belegiš I pottery. Nonetheless, the difference in assemblages between sites north and south of the Bega appears to be a real phenomenon. This can be explained in two ways. The first is that the making of Belegiš II pottery and displacement of Belegiš I occurred gradually during the 14th century BC, with the stylistic trend spreading from the north while SDŽB was still being made in the southern cluster, thereby blurring or offsetting the LBA 1–2 ceramic transition more there than it does in the northern cluster. The other possibility is that a higher proportion of sites in the south were abandoned before LBA 2.

And this is the evidence for the truly massive scale of the South migration from the Tisza zone: 

Based on both relative and absolute chronologies, all TSG sites appear to have been abandoned in the decades around 1200 BC. Of these, only the largest sites at Gradište Iđoš, Sakule and possibly Bašaid have indicators of reoccupation in small areas during the 11th to 10th centuries BC. The site of Jaša Tomić is an exception as this exhibits TSG features but was (probably) a new foundation of 12th to 10th centuries BC based on pottery recovered.

Absolute and relative dates suggest that TSG sites and cemeteries–and indeed most of the lower Pannonian network–were abandoned en masse around 1200 BC. It is noteworthy that this was precisely the time of the contraction of settlement on the Titel plateau and reoccupation of the tell at Mošorin-Feudvar. A similar pattern, based on surviving strata, is probably detected at Židovar, which was resettled. No re-occupation horizon is observed at tells in the area of the Maros group in the 12th century BC. These changes indicate that knowledge of tell sites was sustained in societies during LBA 1–2 but they were marginalised as loci for settlement until another major societal shift took place after 1200 BC through which loci for LBA settlements were rejected.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0288750

Keeping in mind that a similar pattern could be observed up to the Upper Tisza, in areas like that of Lapus II-Gáva, there can be no doubt that we deal with a truly massive, gigantic folk migration down, towards the South. Clearly affecting other people and causing chain reactions with various people on the move, contributing to the Aegean and Sea Peoples migrations.

[Riverman]

What's most important is the sheer size. We deal with some of the biggest settlements, some of the most advanced warriors and metallurgists of that era, they lived in dense settlements along the Tisza and its tributaries, and then, suddenly, at the end of the LBA, from Ukraine to Serbia they are on the move. It can't be stressed enough how big this movement must have been for that time, when one of the biggest ethnocultural formations of Europe in that era, nearly the whole Carpatho-Balkan cremation block, began to move.

Whether they were under pressure themselves from the North East, because of steppe incursions, whether it was the climate or ending ressources, or simply the riches of the South they knew from their Mycenaean contacts, we don't know for sure, but if looking at the magnitude, this movement should dwarf many of the later historically attested tribal migrations. Even by total numbers, let along in relative terms for the context of that time.

[Riverman]

Another early Slavic (possibly Germanic influence present) E-V13 sample, a medieval sample from modern Poland, Lubin:

LUB_6: E1b1b1a1b1

Lubin on the island of Wolin:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolin

From the paper:

A group of individuals from the early medieval stronghold settlement in Lubin (island
Wolin), whose location favored contacts of its inhabitants with the ports of the West
parts of the Baltic coast.

Necropolis in Lubin, st. 6, located in the southwestern part the island of Wolin, is associated with the period of operation of the stronghold located on the Hill Zamkowy, which plays an important role in the emerging structure of territorial organization Duchy of Pomerania. The town, located on an important water and communication route, it enabled control of one of the straits connecting the Szczecin Lagoon with the Pomeranian Bay

The analysis of the cemetery allows for the observation of very early phases of the penetration of Christianity in the lands of modern Poland. The first burials took place in the cemetery Christian Pomeranian Slavs.

Link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Agbd2-f...sp=sharing

[corrigendum]

Another early Slavic (possibly Germanic influence present) E-V13 sample, a medieval sample from modern Poland, Lubin:

LUB_6: E1b1b1a1b1
Link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Agbd2-f...sp=sharing

Since no new relevant papers have been published, I'm not very active in the forum but I think that it needs to be pointed out that it is 1/30+ Y-DNA samples and it isn't a "an early Slavic" sample. This individual dates to an era between the 10th and 13th century AD, and it is at least 700 years older than the first (southern Balkan/Roman) E-V13 which has been found in Poland. This is just a medieval sample and doesn't represent some "Germanic" influence in the area, because we're dealing with a much later era than late IA Germanic migrations or even the migration period.

[Riverman]

Another early Slavic (possibly Germanic influence present) E-V13 sample, a medieval sample from modern Poland, Lubin:

LUB_6: E1b1b1a1b1
Link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Agbd2-f...sp=sharing

Since no new relevant papers have been published, I'm not very active in the forum but I think that it needs to be pointed out that it is 1/30+ Y-DNA samples and it isn't a "an early Slavic" sample. This individual dates to an era between the 10th and 13th century AD, and it is at least 700 years older than the first (southern Balkan/Roman) E-V13 which has been found in Poland. This is just a medieval sample and doesn't represent some "Germanic" influence in the area, because we're dealing with a much later era than late IA Germanic migrations or even the migration period.

We'll see how they plot autosomally, but we can now say with certainty that the base line of E-V13 in ancient Slavs was established very early. The earlier samples from Poland are not the source, because all the other haplogroups largely disappeared, but E-V13 was introduced by Slavs from a different source. From where exactly we don't know, but crucial is that they came in with the early Slavs and show no deviation from other Slavic samples. Surely, in the Iron Age and Roman era, that likely was different, but the Slavs picked it up early.

[corrigendum]

We'll see how they plot autosomally, but we can now say with certainty that the base line of E-V13 in ancient Slavs was established very early. The earlier samples from Poland are not the source, because all the other haplogroups largely disappeared, but E-V13 was introduced by Slavs from a different source.

The autosomal profile wouldn't refer to anything related to IA Germanic or Slavic tribes because this individual is medieval. It might have a medieval Polish, Pomeranian or German profile. The point is that it's medieval as are all E-V13 samples in these areas. E-V13 doesn't have a very early presence in such regions since antiquity as there aren't any pre-medieval E-V13 with a Balto-Slavic profile just like the rest of all "southern" haplogroups which moved northwards in the Roman era.

The earliest E-V13 sample in Poland dates to the late Roman era and he has a southern Balkan/Imperial Roman profile. He doesn't date to the Iron Age. It is the Roman era which propelled the movement of E-V13 carriers northwards towards Germany. In the medieval era, they might have moved in more northern areas like Pomerania as Germans but this is another subject as in this period there are even J-L283 samples with a Baltic profile in Estonia.

[Riverman]

We'll see how they plot autosomally, but we can now say with certainty that the base line of E-V13 in ancient Slavs was established very early. The earlier samples from Poland are not the source, because all the other haplogroups largely disappeared, but E-V13 was introduced by Slavs from a different source.

The autosomal profile wouldn't refer to anything related to IA Germanic or Slavic tribes because this individual is medieval. It might have a medieval Polish, Pomerania or German profile. The point is that it's medieval as are almost all E-V13 samples in these areas. E-V13 doesn't have a very early presence in such regions since antiquity as there aren't any pre-medieval E-V13 with a Balto-Slavic profile just like the rest of all "southern" haplogroups which moved northwards in the Roman era.

The earliest E-V13 sample in Poland dates to the Roman era and he has a southern Balkan/Imperial Roman profile. He doesn't date to the Iron Age. It is the Roman era which propelled the movement of E-V13 carriers northwards towards Germany. In the medieval era, they might have moved in more northern areas like Pomerania as Germans but this is another subject.

But the later E-V13 carriers in the Slavic communities come from the Slavic expansion and were picked up by Slavs elsewhere. There is little yDNA continuity in Poland from the Gothic to the Slavic era.

[corrigendum]

But the later E-V13 carriers in the Slavic communities come from the Slavic expansion and were picked up by Slavs elsewhere. There is little yDNA continuity in Poland from the Gothic to the Slavic era.

E-V13 in Balkan Slavs comes from local Balkan lineages. E-V13 in modern Poland comes from lineages in medieval Poland/Germany/Hungary/Vlachs etc. and such lineages spread in other regions like Belarus and Ukraine and much later Russia. They represent medieval movements, not movements of the Slavic expansion era. There is no E-V13 lineage which spread with Proto-Slavs or even Early Slavs.

[Riverman]

But the later E-V13 carriers in the Slavic communities come from the Slavic expansion and were picked up by Slavs elsewhere. There is little yDNA continuity in Poland from the Gothic to the Slavic era.

E-V13 in Balkan Slavs comes from local Balkan lineages. E-V13 in modern Poland comes from lineages in medieval Poland/Germany/Hungary/Vlachs etc. and such lineages spread in other regions like Belarus and Ukraine and much later Russia. They represent medieval movements, not movements of the Slavic expansion era. There is no E-V13 lineage which spread with Proto-Slavs or even Early Slavs.

That's conjecture, there is no evidence for this and by about 1.000 AD we now have a confirmed frequency of about 2-5 % in all Slavs tested so far. Even more, there are a couple branches which are exclusively or primarily Slavic and start to diversify around 0 AD. Such a pattern can't be explained by Medieval migrations, especially since other haplogroups from the South are either absent or represented by rather singular samples. This means the transmission came from an extremely high/exclusively E-V13 source, which, at that time, no longer existed in the Balkans.

[corrigendum]

That's conjecture, there is no evidence for this and by about 1.000 AD (..)

The fact that you have to state that "by about 1.000 AD" there was a small percentage of E-V13 carriers among different medieval Slavic groups just confirms what I already stated: there is no E-V13 lineage which spread with Proto-Slavs or Early Slavs.

The evidence is in the aDNA record. There is not a single E-V13 sample with a Balto-Slavic profile which predates the medieval period. 

The only E-V13 sample from pre-medieval Poland is this individual:

Show Content

Spoiler

[Riverman]

And he comes from a population which was of low impact on the Slavs which followed. The E-V13 in the Slavs is not from these locals, by and large, but was picked up otherwise.

We have a wide variety of autosomal profiles for earlier E-V13 carriers and even more, the main reason we don't have earlier Slavs with E-V13 is that there are no earlier Slavs at all. 1.000 AD is still pretty early, especially for some regions into which the Slavs moved fairly later.

Like near to the new sample:

In the late migration period, areas that had previously been settled by Germanic tribes became settled by Slavs. In Rugia and the adjacent mainland, where the Rugii were recorded before the migration period, Slavs first appeared in the ninth century;[1] continuous settlement from the pre-Slavic era is suggested based on pollen analyses and name transitions,[9] so a Rugian remnant seems to have been assimilated.
The tribal name of the former inhabitants, the Rugii, may be the root of both the medieval name of Rugia and the tribal name of the Slavic R(uj)ani, though this hypothesis is not generally accepted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rani_(tribe)

That means in some of these places, especially Baltic islands, the Slavs were fairly new and we see that in their autosomal composition as well (like in Krakauer Berg), that they have little non-Slavic admixture of any kind.

The frequency in the early Slavs was low, but more important than the total number is the stability. You get it from Eastern Germany to North and Central Russia, even into areas which have more Finnic admixture than anything else (like around St. Petersburg).

[corrigendum]

We have a wide variety of autosomal profiles for earlier E-V13 carriers and even more, the main reason we don't have earlier Slavs with E-V13 is that there are no earlier Slavs at all. 1.000 AD is still pretty early, especially for some regions into which the Slavs moved fairly later.

1000 CE is close to half a millenium after the Migration Period and the Slavic migrations. It's not early in the context of the subject we're discussing, it post-dates Slavic migrations by many centuries which is why there is no E-V13 lineage which spread with proto-Slavs or early Slavs.

What you term as "stability" is just a reflection of very low-scale movements coupled with minor founder effects across medieval east-central Europe which are reflected in modern E-V13 % in these regions. It's not remarkable and it doesn't reflect some special role of E-V13 in Slavic movements because it post-dates them and if you dig a bit deeper you'll notice that not only is E-V13 very minor in all of these regions, but it also has a tendency to be related to groups which are either non-Slavic or have a history of non-Slavic origins e.g. about 1/3 of E-V13 in Russia is carried by Tatars. This tendency is not unique to E-V13 but to many other ("southern") haplogroups in such regions which tend to be concentrated in groups which have a distinctly non-Slavic past e.g. about 1/6 Tatars of Russia carries J-L283 and about 1/3 of all J-L283 in Russia are Tatars.

[Riverman]

We have a wide variety of autosomal profiles for earlier E-V13 carriers and even more, the main reason we don't have earlier Slavs with E-V13 is that there are no earlier Slavs at all. 1.000 AD is still pretty early, especially for some regions into which the Slavs moved fairly later.

1000 CE is close to half a millenium after the Migration Period and the Slavic migrations. It's not early in the context of the subject we're discussing, it post-dates Slavic migrations by many centuries which is why there is no E-V13 lineage which spread with proto-Slavs or early Slavs.

What you term as "stability" is just a reflection of very low-scale movements coupled with minor founder effects across medieval east-central Europe which are reflected in modern E-V13 % in these regions. It's not remarkable and it doesn't reflect some special role of E-V13 in Slavic movements because it post-dates them and if you dig a bit deeper you'll notice that not only is E-V13 very minor in all of these regions, but it also has a tendency to be related to groups which are either non-Slavic or have a history of non-Slavic origins e.g. about 1/3 of E-V13 in Russia is carried by Tatars. This tendency is not unique to E-V13 but to many other ("southern") haplogroups in such regions which tend to be concentrated in groups which have a distinctly non-Slavic past e.g. about 1/6 Tatars of Russia carries J-L283 and about 1/3 of all J-L283 in Russia are Tatars.

The Slavic E-V13 have fairly high diversity and show multiple founder events within the Slavic ethnicities. There is absolutely no alternative explanation to E-V13 being present in the Early Slavs since there are no other Carpatho-Balkan haplogroups around in any significant numbers in Slavs from say 800-1.200 AD. Slavic in the sense of having typical autosomal profiles and samples coming from a Slavic archaeological context. By 900 AD there was no population left which had such a high percentage of E-V13 and it would have been too late anyway, since quite obviously, by that time E-V13 was, as a minority element, spread by Slavs - and of course other people too, that's no contradiction.
We will be able to trace it back subclade by subclade. There won't be one story for all of the E-V13 branches now common in Slavs. Some were Early Slavic, others Vlach, again others Albanian, German, even Greek, French, Italian etc. But there is a stable Slavic presence of 2-4 % everywhere in all the Slavic people which predates later contacts of that kind.

Also worth to note how close Lubin is to Usedom:



That's just about 35 km apart and in Usedom was a second E-V13 from an early Slavic context, in an earlier paper:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid...400586&z=9

Would be great to know whether these two were closely related or not, but we don't have any better resolution results from both.

Make a statistic of Early Slavs (we have no earlier samples in significant numbers) from say 900-1.200 AD and look at those which are not part of the holy Slavic trinity (R-Z280, R-M458, I2a-din) or Finnic N - what remains is for the most part E-V13. Any other source other than a direct Dacian contact would have caused a wider range of Carpatho-Balkan haplogroups, more than just singular finds here and there. Only E-V13 pops up everywhere, in all major samplings.

[corrigendum]

The Slavic E-V13 have fairly high diversity and show multiple founder events within the Slavic ethnicities. There is absolutely no alternative explanation to E-V13 being present in the Early Slavs since there are no other Carpatho-Balkan haplogroups around in any significant numbers in Slavs from say 800-1.200 AD. 
That's just about 35 km apart and in Usedom was a second E-V13 from an early Slavic context, in an earlier paper:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid...400586&z=9

Would be great to know whether these two were closely related or not, but we don't have any better resolution results from both.

The context for E-V13 among modern Slavic-speaking nations is best explained by a multitude of post-antiquity scenarios which are unrelated to each other. These are the "multiple founder effects" and "fairly high diversity" as you label them. There is no actual diversity in this sense. There is no inter-Slavic diversity if a medieval lineage appeared via earlier migration in Poland and another one appeared via local Slavicization in the medieval Balkans. The fact that both may exist among modern Slavic-speaking ethnic groups doesn't make the two processes related. In fact, it's evidence for the opposite: they are always explained by unrelated scenarios because none of them dates to the proto-Slavic or early Slavic era among modern Slavic-speaking groups.

There is no need for all of them to come from one area and it's obvious that they don't, but what all data suggest is that none of them predates in these regions the Roman era and their contacts with Slavic groups are medieval ones. The Usedom sample (which might not even be E-V13) dates to 1200 CE. It's not an "early Slav". 

The fact that in the medieval era there were individuals in northern Europe whose ancestors came from southern Europe in a previous era is so mundane that in medieval Gotland around 1000 CE there has been found an E-M123 sample with a Baltic profile and in nearby Öland (in the same era) there is a J-L283 individual with a southern German profile. So why wouldn't there be an E-V13 sample with any northern/eastern European profile in this period in Poland or anywhere else in northern/eastern Europe? It's just one of the many minor haplogroups which appeared during this period in these areas.

[Riverman]

There are multiple branches of E-V13 which show increased diversity within the Slavic groups and some of them are concentrated West and East Slavs, rather, with no or only secondary (explained by later Southward migration) presence in South Slavs. But you won't stop claiming they are all recent arrivals until you get the smoking gun samples which prove the opposite.

By the way, I expect them to be more Carpatho-Balkan up to about 200 BC-300 AD, but somewhere in that time frame, going by the available evidence from modern samples, there started to be definitively Slavic E-V13 branches. Even the Northern Dacians with which the Pre-/Proto-Slavs had contacts were likely typically Carpatho-Balkan and in no way Baltoslavic. In fact, this admixture - mostly female mediated - pulled the Pre-Slavs into the Proto-Slavic direction and away from their more Baltic ancestors, together with a bit of other admixtures.