Proto-Germanic Genetics

PROTO-GERMANIC by Frederick from the Human Biodiversity Forum

Though the Germanic family of Indo-European languages is the best documented, and its culture is among the most well analyzed and described, much of its prehistory, from the Proto-Indo-European period to the Proto-Germanic, is not well understood. All the important aspects are considered in numerous studies, with serious publication beginning in the nineteenth century, but few have attempted, especially in recent times, to summarize the best conclusions and most current findings of the various disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to present a survey of the most current evidence for the development of the Proto-Germanic language and culture from the Indo-European. First presented is the linguistic evidence, followed by the archaeological and physical anthropological, and finally the genetic. Some tentative conclusions are reached where possible at the end of the paper.

A Brief Linguistic Outline

In their monumental work, Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov present their now well accepted view of how Proto-Indo-European branched out and developed into the modern families. Their sequence is based on the evidence from the isoglosses, and proceeds thus (paraphrased and simplified, from Volume I):

1) Proto-Indo-European
2) ***
Group A. Hittite, Tocharian, Italic, Celtic
Group B. Indo-Iranian, Greek, Slavic, Baltic, Germanic
3) As Group A divides, Group B does also, eventually leaving Germanic-Baltic-Slavic
4) Proto-Germanic
*** Even as these divisions occur, there are still many shared developments across the various borders, but these are not as great as those causing the divisions.

Of particular interest here is the initial division of Proto-Indo-European into two groups, A and B, before any of the individual dialects begin to seriously diverge and become separated - several stages then must progress before Proto-Germanic itself can finally emerge. This model is a great improvement on the older tree and wave models for the Indo-European family, and may be seen as integrating the two. Proto-Germanic begins in the Group B dialect area - which first loses other dialects while at the same time undergoing continuous development itself - and finally after a considerable period of time, how much is currently unknown, separates from the Baltic-Slavic and becomes the Germanic family as we know it.

After its differentiation, it is well known that the Germanic is influenced for a time by the Celtic and Italic families, mainly in the form of loanwords (culture). In its phonology or grammar it may have as well, but that will probably never be determined. The author, the reader should note, is confident in leaving these influences out of the discussion, just as he is in leaving out the minor shared developments mentioned above, since he is concerned with the deepest origins of Proto-Germanic.

And finally to mention, an important debate still going on concerns the nature of the vocabulary in Germanic which is of dubious Indo-European origin. Since estimates for how much of the vocabulary vary wildly, from a very small set of non-Indo-European origin to at least a third of the Proto-Germanic lexicon, the author will not attempt to discuss individual items or even categories. Of most importance is that there is a debate. Those scholars who believe in a large percentage are generally said to be working in what is called the Germanic Substrate Hypothesis, and they assume the non-Indo-European vocabulary to come from an unidentified non-Indo-European culture. Those on the other side of the debate, however, seeing negligible non-Indo-European influence in Germanic, thus assume little or no such borrowing from another culture or cultures.

The Physical Evidence

The most prominent theory of Indo-European origins is the Kurgan Hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas, and her successors, among them JP Mallory. According to this theory, Proto-Indo-European culture and language had its homeland, or urheimat, in the Pontic-Caspian region perhaps around five thousand years ago, based on the historical linguistic evidence from the comparative method. A series of archaeological cultures, dubbed the Kurgan after their gravesites, is said to match well with the available linguistic evidence both in geography and in aspects of culture.

While problems with the Kurgan Hypothesis do persist, in both distance and time frame, a much clearer identification is possible further north for at least one broad dialect area of early Indo-European, that which includes the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic families. The Corded Ware horizon, an archaeological culture which stretched from Russia to Scandinavia and Germany, encompassed the area where these linguistic families are later found, and importantly it bore some cultural resemblances to the Kurgan culture, as determined from burial practices. While many of the problems of Indo-European prehistory continue to confound scholars, and linguistic-archaeological identifications are often tentative, that of the Corded Ware horizon with the northern branch of Group B dialects seems fairly secure in the minds of most Indo-Europeanists. It is assumed the Kurgan culture radiated to such an extent that it eventually produced, whether through invasion or by other means, a peripheral culture much resembling it, and that that became the Corded Ware horizon.

But there are still some lingering problems with this identification as well. First of all, physical anthropologists have noted that the physical type, or morphotype, of the Kurgan people is not at all the same as that found in the Corded Ware horizon burials. The former is a robust type, commonly called Cro-Magnoid or Proto-Europoid, while the latter, smaller boned, falls within the Mediterranoid spectrum. And while this might not at first appear to be a major obstacle, and one might be tempted to somehow derive the Mediterranoid from the Cro-Magnoid, physical anthropologists continually remind us that such a derivation is indeed physically impossible, and thus a Kurgan invasion - at least in the classic sense - is ruled out in the creation of the Corded Ware horizon. Some form of borrowing then must have been responsible. But is it possible, one should ask, for such enormous linguistic and cultural borrowing to occur when two archaeological cultures, in this case the Kurgan and the Corded Ware horizon, do not much, if at all, overlap in their areas?

Perhaps we only have part of the story, since there were other cultures which may have played a role in the development of Proto-Germanic. Immediately preceding the Corded Ware horizon, and for a period coexisting with it, and occupying what would become a large part of its territory in the west, was the Globular Amphora culture. While the physical anthropological record for it is very poor, several archaeologists have speculated, the first being Marija Gimbutas, that the Globular Amphora culture may have included invasive Kurgan elements, in the form of actual people, and that when incorporated into the Corded Ware horizon these may have transferred the language and culture. But unfortunately, the Globular Amphora series is really too small for physical anthropologists to support this theory - Cro-Magnoid elements do seem to appear, but they are not distributed, at least in the record, over the whole culture, as one might expect.

Two even earlier cultures which may have had influences on Proto-Germanic were the Ertebolle and the TRB. The former was an advanced fishing, whaling and hunting culture of the Mesolithic, and occupied what is now Denmark and Sweden. The latter, immediately following it in the Neolithic, occupied much the same but a slightly larger area. Both were mixed in anthropological type, including both Cro-Magnoids and Mediterranoids, but are typically classified by archaeologists as non-Indo-European, due to the fact that they began their existence before is commonly thought possible for their Indo-Europeanization ( assuming the Kurgan Hypothesis). Crucial also is that these two cultures, despite inhabiting that region which would later see the historic arrival of the Germanic peoples, did not show very close similarities to the Kurgan culture in burial practices, etc. However, it was proposed by some Soviet scholars that the peoples ancestral to both the Kurgan on the one hand, and the Ertebolle-TRB on the other, may have derived from a common source population in the very distant past (Telegin).

Genetics

If the archaeological and anthropological evidence are at least suggestive, the genetic evidence for the Proto-Germanic culture might be totally ambiguous. To begin with, there have been some recent studies surveying the haplotypes of the world, and from India to Norway geneticists have found a marker, R1a, which seems to match roughly in its distribution a large part of the Indo-European realm, and which has its maximum frequency in Eastern Europe and Russia, quite close to the Proto-Indo-European homeland of the Kurgan Hypothesis. This has caused many geneticists to assume they have found what they think must be the original Indo-European genetic marker. The logic is simple - invading Indo-Europeans went east to India, and north and west to Europe and Scandinavia. And, further, anyone who lacks the R1a code can "only" descend from non-Indo-European peoples.

But there are many problems with this simplistic view. First, while it is true that R1a does reach to Scandinavia, it is still quite uncommon there, and even more importantly it occurs by far with the most frequency in Norway, having only a small presence in Sweden and Denmark, and in Germany, countries which have been Germanic in language and culture for a good deal longer than has Norway. And problems occur with R1a in the east as well, in the Indo-Iranian lands, for it is present in high caste, more Caucasoid, Indians, as the Kurgan theory predicts, yet is all but absent in the much more Caucasoid Iran.

Finally, the R1a genetic marker is essentially not present in Italic and Celtic Europe, and this brings us to the discussion of another marker, the enigmatic R1b. This is found in a much wider distribution across Eurasia, its range easily encompassing that of R1a. But where R1a is most frequent in Eastern Europe and Russia, R1b is least frequent there but most frequent in Western Europe.

Now while their actual ages are unknown, geneticists seem fairly sure in calling R1b the elder, and some have gone so far as to claim that as it is most frequent in the far west, in the Italic and Celtic nations, it is the European inheritance from Paleolithic hunters, and people with this marker may be Indo-European speaking but are genetically non-Indo-European. But again we run into problems with this sort of grand claim, because it turns out that R1b, just like R1a, had its apparent origin in Central Asia.

Furthermore, R1b appears to have divided itself and developed into a series of local varieties in two distinct directions, one across Russia and through Northern Europe, halting in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, the other going south and west to the Alpine region, and to Southern Europe and the Atlantic Fringe.

Genetics and Isoglosses

So now we must return to Gamkrelidze and Ivanov's model, summarized in the first section of this paper, and note how, startlingly, the distribution of the genetic markers R1b and R1a matches with the division of the Indo-European dialects into Groups A and B. Looking first at the distribution of R1a, we can see that despite its uneven edges, it covers for the most part the same territory as the Group B Indo-European dialects, Germanic and Indo-Aryan, at its fringes, being among them. Then, looking at R1b, we note first how its northern group's distribution also includes the territory of most of the Group B dialects, minus the Indo-Iranian, and thus overlaps to a great extent with R1a. And finally, we are left only to observe the pretty fact that R1b's southwestern group neatly covers the primary area of the Group A Indo-European dialects.

Then what is one to conclude about the origins of Proto-Germanic? In beginning with the division of the various dialects from Proto-Indo-European, we are on the most solid ground. That is, observing the modern distribution of the various Indo-European languages, it is easy to see that the geographical distribution of the Germanic languages does not in any way surprise one after seeing the model provided by historical linguistics, and vice versa.

Moving to the evidence from archaeology and physical anthropology, it turns out that while we may reach some definite conclusions, we must also be reserved. For example, there appears to be nothing wrong with concluding firmly that those who would become the Proto-Germanic peoples were among the peoples of the Corded Ware horizon, since the geography is undeniable. But outside that broad cultural horizon we are essentially lost, since of those cultures preceding or bordering the Corded Ware horizon we are unable to choose which might have contributed to the development of Proto-Germanic. Accepting the Kurgan Hypothesis, we look to the east to the Kurgan culture itself, and perhaps also to the Globular Amphora in Europe as a transmitter. Rejecting the Kurgan Hypothesis, and looking into the Scandinavian-German past, we might see the beginnings of Proto-Germanic in the Ertebolle or the TRB cultures. Or, finally, we might accept some other suggestion, perhaps that the Kurgan culture and the Scandinavian cultures were all Indo-European, broadly speaking, at that all contributed to the development of Proto-Germanic.

The genetic evidence, as seen above, is inconclusive as far as the origins of Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European are concerned, but it can be used to support the linguistic and archaeological evidence. To begin with, the southwestern R1b might be dispensed with as the original genetic code of the bearers of the Group A dialects. Easy enough. The northern R1b, however, shares the Group B dialects with R1a, which phenomenon appears to bring us, to conclude this paper, into one broad realm for making our conclusions:

Accepting the Kurgan Hypothesis, it is more likely that R1a was the defining marker of the original Group B speakers, and thus of the primary ancestors of the Proto-Germanic peoples. But the northern R1b group is found in the Germanic-Baltic-Slavic continuum, and has its highest frequency in the Germanic nations. So, it is reasonable to assume that the special divergences of Proto-Germanic from the mass of Group B dialects were caused by the R1b bearers of the Scandinavian Neolithic and Mesolithic, regardless of their own original speech. Here the Germanic Substrate Hypothesis becomes relevant, but the author admits it is beyond his current understanding of the matter to comment any further.

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