Tracking the Origin of R1b-M343

[rmstevens2]

looks to me like Villabruna was from a small group who had strayed from the Urals into the  epigravettian zone which stretched from the Volga to Italy. in the steppe and ended up in a group that was mostly not R1b. So, I think Villabruna is very misleading. I’d guess Villabruna had likely already lost his Siberian material culture identity as his immediate ancestors strayed into through the steppe and Balkans. The numbers must have been v low as I can’t think of traces of Siberian-Ural type technology west of the Volga-Urals area until after 10000BC. Villabruna must have migrated west in a v small group and rapidly absorbed into epigravettian culture.

It’s v difficult to work out distributions across say 15000-9000BC as there were some huge climate ossilations that would likely have caused cycles of advance, retreat and movement.

Yes, I think the key to the significance (or insignificance) of Villabruna is the fact that after him R1b disappears from peninsular Europe until those V88s appear at the Iron Gates 3,000 years later. That is, unless one counts Iboussieres, which is a low coverage sample not up to FTDNA Discover's standards (which is why you can't find it there). Even if one does include Iboussieres, after him there is no non-V88 R1b in Central or Western Europe until the 3rd millennium BC.

Since that is the case, how important can Villabruna and Iboussieres be?

On that same subject, if one looks in FTDNA Discover at the Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherer samples in peninsular Europe, he will see that they overwhelmingly belong to Y-DNA haplogroup I. There really is only one non-V88 R1b hunter-gatherer sample in peninsular Europe, and that is Villabruna. If one wishes to add Iboussieres, which is not up to FTDNA Discover's standards (and so does not appear there), that would make two non-V88 hunter-gatherers in peninsular Europe. 

As far as the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer V88 samples go, they seem to range from Ukraine to the Iron Gates, on the Danube border of Romania and Serbia. The two oldest Iron Gates samples are only slightly older than the oldest Ukrainian sample, and since hunter-gatherers were not sedentary, where they are found should probably be considered as simply part of their range. The Iron Gates area is a gorge on the Danube River and valley route into Europe formed by the Carpathian Mountains on the north and east and the foothills of the Balkan Mountains on the south and west. They are on a natural path north and west up the Danube from its delta, which empties into the Black Sea to the southeast. V88 does not show up farther west in Europe until the Neolithic period, so it certainly seems to have moved into Europe from the east. Thus far, V88 is the only kind of R1b that has shown up among Neolithic European farmers, but as it predates the arrival of Anatolian farmers in Europe, it cannot be attributed to them as its source. 

I was recently criticized as a "one trick pony" by a commenter on the Eurogenes Blog, apparently for relying too much on FTDNA Discover, as if I should be going back several years, combing through every scientific paper, and keeping my own ancient DNA spreadsheet or spreadsheets. Actually, I do that to a certain extent, but it seems to me FTDNA Discover is a really handy, timesaving resource, which one can use with the added assurance that FTDNA's team of scientists has checked the ancient samples that appear there and verified their Y-DNA status, rejecting samples that cannot be safely classified. That comes in handy, because ethno-nationalist crackpots seem to love to drag out shaky, illegitimate samples as "proof" of their favorite theories.

[Kale]

We can't say anything terribly specific about Villabruna. He is L761+, but there are no calls for L389, he has 1 positive snp (and a bunch of negative snps) for both P297 and PF6323/V88 level.
So he could be L761*, L389*, pre-P297, or pre-PF6323

[rmstevens2]

We can't say anything terribly specific about Villabruna. He is L761+, but there are no calls for L389, he has 1 positive snp (and a bunch of negative snps) for both P297 and PF6323/V88 level.
So he could be L761*, L389*, pre-P297, or pre-PF6323

I'm guessing a dead end line parallel to the surviving lines under L761, or maybe some kind of pre-PF6323, since PF6323 (at least V88) seems to have gone west first.

[rmstevens2]

Here's a tree I posted awhile back, but now updated with more TMRCA dates. Anything without a TMRCA estimate is lacking one in FTDNA Discover.

[rmstevens2]

Here's a tree I posted awhile back, but now updated with more TMRCA dates. Anything without a TMRCA estimate is lacking one in FTDNA Discover.

I would really love to see an Upper Paleolithic R1b-M343* sample from around 17,000 BC or so. I'm guessing if one is found it will be in Siberia, but that's just my guess.

[alanarchae]

Here's a tree I posted awhile back, but now updated with more TMRCA dates. Anything without a TMRCA estimate is lacking one in FTDNA Discover.

I would really love to see an Upper Paleolithic R1b-M343* sample from around treated 17,000 BC or so. I'm guessing if one is found it will be in Siberia, but that's just my guess.

The cultural technocomplex Malta boy was found in is called the middle upper palaeolithic of Siberia. He is literally the latest radiocarbon date for that culture by 2000 years. It appears his family were one of the last hold outs. It appears the population retreated to the Altai refugium. There, the technology of pressure flaked microblade technology evolved during the LGM and later the people and this technology re-expanded after the LGM. Afantova Gora is an example of this group in its microblade phase. This technology first spreads into Europe in the Urals about 10000BC I believe and was soon after associated with the Butovo culture on the mid/upper Volga. It’s technology resembles the Kunda culture which of course has returned P297 men. So, i’m pretty convinced that the spread of micro blades marks the arrival of P297 in Europe, very likely ancient north Eurasian but likely soon mixed a bit with some of the most easterly  Gravettians to form EHG. 

Rewinding back, I suspect R1 came into being among the ANE population in the Altai LGM refugium. R1b could have too or perhaps at the start of the expansion out of the refugium. That was multidirectional of course and elements headed north and east and mixed with with east Asians before some reached the Americas. My own feeling is R1b must have taken a trench west to the Urals via north  central Asia/the southern edge of Siberia across the era 15000-10000BC. While some P297 seems to follow the upper Volga to the Baltics, some must have stayed further down the Volga and to form part of the Mesolithic of Samara and other areas of south-west Russia.

[ArmandoR1b]

We can't say anything terribly specific about Villabruna. He is L761+, but there are no calls for L389, he has 1 positive snp (and a bunch of negative snps) for both P297 and PF6323/V88 level.
So he could be L761*, L389*, pre-P297, or pre-PF6323

Which SNP are you saying he is positive for at the P297 level? If you are talking about CTS11985/PF6523 that is a G>A mutation, and only 1 out of 2 reads of that specific SNP show it derived. Other than that one everything else that has a read is ancestral. Since he is ancestral for everything reliable at the P297 and the PF6323/V88 we can say he doesn't show derived for anything reliable at the P297 and the PF6323/V88 levels. The 14C date of Villabruna is younger than all SNPs at the P297 and the PF6323/V88 levels so if it had been derived for one of the SNPs that has no read on it would be a different branch. Basically what you guys call pre-whatever. I never call them that. I just call it a new branch. He would basically be on a dead branch. Because there are very few people that ever deserve the * after their branch since on average every three generations there is a new SNP creating a new branch.

[ArmandoR1b]

I'm guessing a dead end line parallel to the surviving lines under L761, or maybe some kind of pre-PF6323, since PF6323 (at least V88) seems to have gone west first.

I agree. He is on a dead branch.

[ArmandoR1b]

 Even if one counts Iboussieres31-2, which is a low coverage, iffy sample from France, after him (10,090-9460 BC - not directly, but based on another sample in the same layer) there is no non-V88 R1b in central or western Europe until the 3rd millennium BC. [Note: FTDNA does not include Iboussieres31-2 in its Ancient Connections or Time Tree because Iboussieres31-2's Y haplogroup cannot be securely determined, i.e., the sample is not up to FTDNA's standards.]

So, it looks like V88 was the first branch of R1b into peninsular Europe. Unless Villabruna1 and Iboussieres31-2 were on some sort of pre-PF6323 lineage leading to V88, they appear to be stray hunter-gatherers who wandered farther west than most but left no descendants whose remains have turned up so far in the ancient record of central or western Europe. 

Iboussieres31-2 is ancestral for PF6271 which is on the L754 level but it was young enough to be derived for all SNPs tested at that level. It is also ancestral for 2 PH155 SNPs. So it is also on a dead branch.