Oíche shamhna shona daoibh!

The hunt is on

So with the publication of the recent paywall locked Mittnik et al paper on “social inequality in Bronze age Lech Valley” (whatever the hell that means?) we finally have our first R1b-L51 positive call from a confirmed Corded ware sample. Back in 2015 a sample from a Kujavian Corded ware (RISE 1) site in Poland was also deemed to be somewhere downstream of R1b-M269 however unfortunately this was a very low resolution sample that couldn’t be taken too seriously.

Many over the years have denied the ancestors of eastern bell beakers had anything to do with the spread of Corded ware groups from the forest steppe, and instead purported a direct Yamnaya migration from the more open Don-Kuban steppe region through the Balkans and up into the Carpathian Basin. I at one point probably favoured this theory, but not so much anymore. Even the famed Lithuanian feminist scholar responsible for the Kurgan hypothesis believed these bell beakers’ ethnogenesis came about as an amalgamation of Yamnaya and Vucedol populations in the Balkans with the resulting meta population subsequently taking over Western Europe.

And at the time she could be forgiven for believing as such, but she was wrong ultimately, as she also was believing the Globular Amphora culture to have been Indo-European. 

All she had to go on was anthropology, which seemed to suggest that the ultra brachycephalic beakers were of the Dinarid type (at least according to Carletoon Coon) a phenotype most commonly observed in Balkanite populations. They didn’t have WGS technology to work with back then, just good old fashioned calipers. Surely these robust short skulled beaker folk couldn’t possibly have anything to do with those gracile dolicho Nordid people from corded ware? Right? 

We wuz bell beekaz n shiet

These scholars were simply working with the tools they had available at the time. Thankfully we have more tools available to us now. These Yamnaya derived Hungarian beakers completely lack the R1b-L51 found in Rhenish beakers. The naysayers who criticised the Dutch Single Grave model kept pointing to the lack of R1b samples in CWC. And no doubt these people will continue to deny bell beakers were essentially a Single Grave offshoot (Protruding Foot beakers?)
But it appears now we may have found the missing link, in the German Lech valley, an individual dubbed “Tauber ALT_4” has indeed tested positive for at least one Y-SNP R1b-L51 call. As for those claiming that he is some sort of assimilated bell beaker who intermarried with a local CWC girl they are wrong. He has CWC levels of steppe ancestry. Higher than that of Lech valley beakers.

Notice the diminishing level of Steppe
admixture throughout the BA.

The signs were always there of course. A R1b-U106 sample from Beddinge, Sweden (Nordic_LN RISE98) harboured a good chunk of battle axe and funnelbeaker admixture.
Although he could very well have been a recent Danish Single grave migrant.

(He also appears to have been part of a ritual human sacrifice, weird.)

The only question now is to pinpoint where on the PC steppe the ancestors of CWC came from.

Protruding foot vessels, noticeable similarities with
TRB ceramic type.

Update: You can read the latest study on Bronze Age social inequality for free here.