Re: Origin of the Etruscan people?

In sci.archaeology message news:dpd940$snl$1@xxxxxxxxx by "Uwe
Müller" <uwemueller@xxxxxxxxxx> . . . :

>
> "prd" <X_header@xxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:Dpguf.217668$qk4.197660@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> .
>> In sci.archaeology message news:dpbtbc$7tk$1@xxxxxxxxx by "Uwe
>> Müller" <uwemueller@xxxxxxxxxx> . . . :
>>
>> >
>> > "dhobraasch" <dhobraasch@xxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
>> > news:1136216794.474405.70040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>> snip >
>
>> >>
>> >>I try to give an ´could be´ answer. My hypothesis may look
>> >>for a prehistorian at the first view like an idiosyncratic
>> >>patchwork, but to judge this patchwork one needs to know and
>> >>to understand the supposed background of the given patches.
>> >>For instance one of my tiny bit a data."Why could the Libyan
>> >>but not the Egyptian drink fresh milk?"
>> >
>> > Which is completely irrelevant for north or west European
>> > megaliths. You are in fact trying to find a theory, in which
>> > your discovery of a superior, milk drinking race, would fit
>> > and explain something meaningfull. But as long as you present
>> > that as racism, it is simply irrelevant.
>>
>> Within every (or just about every group of humans) there is at
>> least a low frequency of milk tolerance, at some point in
>> humans distal past babies might have been weened later for
>> whatever reason. In the !kung babies are breast fed for an
>> excessive length of time. As a result when a culture
>> increasingly adopts milk consumption selection on these lactose
>> tolerance age extensions may simply be a matter of internal
>> selection and not external. The Mandenka may be the worlds
>> highest consumers of milk of any 'primative' peoples. Of
>> course, there is also the possibility that pastoral herding and
>> interspecific milk consumption began in west africa. :^).
>
> The Massai also come to my mind, which feed on milk (and blood)
> and even show many traits comparable to germanic societies,
> because they are cattle herders and had to structure their
> society accordingly, without having any close genetic
> connection. And we did have the example of the Swiss, where,
> after centuries or millenia of dairy farming, there is still a
> high percentage of people with lactose intolerance.

The assumption is that there was a single population structure in
switzerland, were as switzerland appears to be between two structures
in which later one structure came to dominate the second. Phenotypes
change and average, dominant features silence recessives, and
selection acts, and over time it becomes difficult to resolve
phenotypic clines even though genetic clines can still exist.
The foolery of the Nazis is they beleived Germanics to be a great
pure race, but in actuality germany and france are two of the most
mixed places in europe, and have stirred unto themselves a great
deal. He should have called them the great unpure 'race'.

>> I know you like it when I say these kinds of thing Uwe. lol.
>
> I have learned to differentiate between statements in different
> scientific fields. The eye opener was, when I did research on
> finds from a bishops grave in Luebeck, and biologists told me
> that (AFAIR) pine, pinus silvestris, did not occur naturally in
> Schleswig Holstein at the time. As that would have implied the
> bishops staff, or at least the wood for it, was imported, and I
> was nagging for methods to find out from where it originated,
> they then told me, that there may well have been some isolated
> pockets of pine in SH in favourable microclimates.

The flaw of generalization. Its the same in the molecular genetics,
paabo and many others combine genetic waves because they can find 'no
significant' argument for separating them. But why does the null
hypothesis have to seat on the generalized conclusion? The issue is
where you can test the alternative hypothesis, and it fails. If both
the 'null' hypothesis and alternative hypothesis pass, then one has
to present both as equally likely. Particularly if the choice of null
is subjective. Its only when one hypothesis appraoches failure and
the other does not then one can bias the conclusion. Its not an issue
of feilds so much as good versus bad science, overgeneralization of a
trend reflects bad statistics.

> So I learned, that I would have to translate statements from one
> branch of science into another, and could not just transfer
> them. So when I excavated some elk droppings from around 1200,
> and biologists told me there were no elk at that time in SH ...
> I knew I would not have to look for some importer of elk
> droppings, or for some industrial process requiring them.
>
> It is like the question about the origin of the Etruscan people,
> depending on what data you consider and what branches of science
> are involved, your conclusions will vary. Linguistics shows no
> close connections to the Tuscany region, archaeology is positive
> about an autochthonous development with later large incursions
> of celtic and roman people, and genetics, as you stated, is able
> to differentiate between Etruscan, Roman (which after all was an
> etruscan town) and Celtic.

But the problem is as Doug will tell you, by and large Celtic is
cultural, it is a word used by outsiders to describe differences
between themselves and others they may have 'overgeneralized' about.
Celtic for me is the culture and people the greeks called the Celtoi,
which is definable at the genetic level, IMO, since they were the
first, and whatever they were defines celtic and whatever is not
them is something else. what came around the Po river valley is
something I cannot define as connected to the same people, although
there may be a relationship. On the western side the word gall, gaul,
gal, gael, etc is used at some frequency and derived in use by the
people who were being called. It seems to be very fitting with the
genetic relationship and gene flow patterns, except in scandinavia,
slovakia, hungary where the term gothic seems to have become a
dominant usage. I haven't research the goths so much.

If you want to get back to why I consider the key issue here is the
language differences and how language arose, the scandinavia, the
germanic and the slavic languages there appears to be no parsimony
with estabilishable genetic trails, celtic appears to have
transeferred across genetic lines, although I cannot rule out some
elite religious or political class in switzerland going to england
and ireland, at least there is a principle line of langauge. With old
germanic and slavic both seem to appear out of the 'blue'.

> None of these statements is 'truer' than the others, and of
> course there is no 'truest' statement.

One looks for parsimony. Truth lies at the intersection of valid
perspectives, the more valid perspectives one has on the truth, the
closer one will be to that truth, and parsimony is how different
perspectives will be reconciled.

On the issue of the tuscans, the genetic links to the preneolithic
peoples of europe is a key issue, if tuscany was dominated by
Sardinia, Greeks or Aramaics then one would expect the contribution
from similar autochthonous peoples in the regions to be minimal, but
this is shown not to be the case, with the relationship to the basque
indicating potential and preferential trading or genetic exchange
links. Since they are intermediate between IE speakers in the east
and the basque the language may be expected to be not classifyable to
modern language groups.
The reality is that except a few islandic cultures (tasmans for
instance) there are very few isolated peoples, gene flow exists in
all directions except against the most formadible barriers, in which
gene flow occurs into a 'trash bin' of line extinction. We consider
the last to be almost immaterial since common reasoning would not
have genes being thrown sharks and high mountain glaciers. Settlement
bias of course can convert all generalistic thinking, per chance if
one family of maritime traders makes it 1000 miles by accident to a
new continent, that line will have disproportionate representation,
after which all subsequent attempts will have lower and the general
rule kicks back in again. Therefore without waves of people genes
flow pretty much at a trickle, and so substantive genetic evidence is
usually the result of longer term diffusion results. This is the
assumption, and if the impact of group X is as great as group Y, and
group Y has the claim of invader, the group X must have compensated
by having some longer term cultural relationship or lived
considerably close or had some unusual transportation modality (like
carrib indians, for instance).
And circumstantial argument for a move are the Pas Valley and
Basque. They live very close to each other, and have very different
genetic makeup, in fact all peoples of the region have to distinct
HLA to be considered paleolithic or early holocene coinhabitants. The
basque are closer to the Irish, oddly. How do these two groups not
share genetic relationship when the basque share a relationship with
the Tuscans. Of course if you move the basque by a few 100 miles that
problem solves itself. It also brings the basque closer to the
sardinians, who do have a relationship. There is even some potency
that the basques may have once lived in corsica, forced out when
early middle eastern settlers migrated to where they currently
dominate. The oddity of this, is that appears to be some circum
iberian gene flow to all the NW peoples of iberia. Even more odd is
this, the basque are the european node of A29 cw16 B44, which is from
west african, and appears to have traveled up the western coast. It
should be at highest frequency in southern portugal. Not only do
Basque share at the HLA similarities specific to sardinians, but
these similarities are not found on the Baeleric Islands, and the
sardinians share similarities at other genetic levels with the
basque. The similarities between sardinians and corsicans shows the
SW sardinians are most similar to corsicans, not northern as one
would expect. The punctate distribution amoung peoples is something
much more obvious in native americans and austronesians than in
europe. In addition there are increased frequencies of a couple of
other north african genes specifically in NW iberia, including the
PAS, but without evidence of PAS/Basque gene flow.
Once again general arguments fail, you can't have a gentle movement
westward of the basque, the Pasiegos have no modern european
counterpart from which to have migrated from, you have mysteriously
high levels of african genes some to one and some to all, central
portugal has more north africa and middle eastern genes than s.
portugal and n. portugal. IOW the central complicity of the genetics
in some areas is unfathomable without alot more information and
population specific markers, and the truth is that understanding
required for valid perspectives is incomplete. at least with regard
to how 4 groups connect. As presented earlier the evidence of the
goths which I did not know about, shows the explanation of the A1-B8
haplotype frequecies all the way to albania. But how does it explain
the A1-B8 frequencies going into china, then one ask the question
where there were 'other' goths to the north and east, and what was
the relationship of protogoths and scythians.
My opinion is that most of the important genetic movements
occurred in the prehistoric, when populations were smaller and a few
people would have a greater impact. Even so many historic migrations
from historic people, did not have scribes or anyone to document what
they did and 'history' is 100s of years after the fact embellished
mythos, Atlantis and such.
Archaeology is the surrogate for history and the prehistoric, such
that its task becomes all the more difficult since it has no
crosschecks anymore, except genetics (either that of remains, or
intercomparisons of extant populations) and as numbers are smaller so
are the archaeological artifacts that represent them, at some point
in time you go back to 100s or 1000s of years of occupation and no
known artefacts, at which point you only have the genetics,
confidence, calibration issues, rate evolution, etc.



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