Ancient DNA indicates 3,000 years of genetic continuity in the Northern Iranian Plate

[FR9CZ6]

Why is everyone surprised that R1a is missing in ancient iran? Their modern R1a is all Z93 and was therefore turkic, it looks like turkic people invaded and mixed heavily with iranians from the 11th century, probably mostly paternally -

"Based on descendant testing, it appears most likely that the sultans of the Ottoman dynasty belonged to haplogroup R1a-Z93. This has not been officially confirmed yet. All sultans of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) descend in patrilineal line from Osman I, making it one of the longest reigning Y-chromosomal lineage in history."

Bold claim. There are some R-Z93 subclades in Iran which can be possibly associated with more recent migrations from Central Asia, however the majority belong to branches which diverged long ago and contain mostly Iranian and sometimes also Indo-Aryan speaking groups or their neighbors and are uncommon among Turkic people or in the north. Based on the study with the largest sample size R1a makes up around 14% of the haplogroups in Iran, there are probably some significant regional differences. Most likely it wasn't higher historically, at least there's no reason to assume it. Now we have like 7 new samples from historical periods? Two of them are twins. With this sampling there was a big chance for not finding any R1a even if it was present in a population. In the Parthian period the Parni were probably only a small elite so I'm not surprised these individuals from the era are just average locals genetically. The previous Iron Age samples from Iran were mostly from the western Zagros, Lake Urmia region, almost exclusively from Hasanlu 800-1000BC. Of course it was full of R1b-Z2103, the region was probably more affected by an older migration wave which reached Armenia too than by Iranians at the time. So I definitely wouldn't conclude that there was no R-Z93 in ancient Iran, but it was likely a smaller lineage carried by not more than 10 or 15% of the population in certain areas it was probably even lower.

[parasar]

Why is everyone surprised that R1a is missing in ancient iran? Their modern R1a is all Z93 and was therefore turkic, it looks like turkic people invaded and mixed heavily with iranians from the 11th century, probably mostly paternally -

"Based on descendant testing, it appears most likely that the sultans of the Ottoman dynasty belonged to haplogroup R1a-Z93. This has not been officially confirmed yet. All sultans of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) descend in patrilineal line from Osman I, making it one of the longest reigning Y-chromosomal lineage in history."

That would depend also on the type of Z93.
The Swat Valley samples were Z93. 
I12450, 824-792 BC, Butkara II, Swat Valley, R1a1a1, Z93>Z94
I12457, 1044-922 BC, Loebanr, Swat Valley, R1a1a1b, Z93>Z94, Y40
I2955, 431-168 BC, Saidu Sharif, Swat Valley, R1a1a1b, Z93>Z94 (xY3, Z2124)

Y40 and Y3>L657 are on the FT197453 branch parallel to Z2124, and the Turki samples I think are all on the Z2124 line.

[RCO]

When there's a big migration or invasion like the Southern CIHG movement to the EHG steppe or in Europe, the autosomal components will decisively change in a clear replacement just like the European EHG + WHG + EEF populations, and important changes in the Y-DNA clades with new locally young star-like expansions of newly related clades from a single local founder in the same territory. The autosomal components getting the new admixture of the invasion like the CIHG into the steppe and Europe had a decisive change in the composition and places of the previous plot positions.
In the Northern Iranian samples no new Y-DNA and no new big admixtures changed the local population as we still can observe the continuities even in the modern Y-DNA structure and in the article showing the continuity of the Iranian plot positions, only minor genetic events from other historical movements or migrations like the Arabs, Turks and Mongols invasions concentrated more in some regions and not in others.

[RCO]

"We know" - not, that's your subjective opinion without any attested ancient DNA before the arrival of the new data from core Iranian ancient DNA from core regions like Gilan and the Southern Caspian Sea, as I always wrote here and in other fora.

You failed to understand my point: genetic continuity can never prove linguistic continuity.
Please, feel free to explain how it could, in theory.


Here is my comment about the mistakes of Paul Heggarty's latest opinions:
https://genarchivist.net/showthread.php?tid=203&pid=45951#pid45951

Genetic continuity is plainly related to linguistic continuity if you are in your ethnicity (and won conflicts/wars for {or in} your territory), the question is what type of genetic continuity you have related to your ethnic ancestral language.
You can have one, two or three items here, if you have all three you do belong in good part to a consolidated ethnolinguistic, ethnohistoric and ethnonational group:
- Y-DNA matches from your ethnic and linguistic group.
- mtDNA matches from your ethnic ad linguistic group
IBD or genetic autosomal matches bigger than 20 cM with your ethnic and linguistic group.

If you are matching one ethnic or national language, if you are matching Indo-European and Ancient Iranian samples (Yes, I do), you are related to a genetic continuity and linguistic continuity related to this group (your group) and you can observe and estimate when, how and where your Y-DNA, mt-DNA and most of your genetic blocks have been in the past with your languages via genetic and linguistic matches.

[Jaska]

Genetic continuity is plainly related to linguistic continuity if you are in your ethnicity (and won conflicts/wars for {or in} your territory), the question is what type of genetic continuity you have related to your ethnic ancestral language.

Totally wrong. Genetic continuity to some extent is evident practically everywhere, while linguistic continuity is young practically everywhere. You can never reliably see from DNA, which language the people spoke. Read the examples from my earlier message.

Please, think about it. Try to explain your method: how could you see from DNA, which language the ancient people spoke? You will understand it eventually, so why not rather sooner than later?

[billh]

Beating the retreat from the Steppe hypothesis
Paul HeggartyPaul Heggarty
https://www.academia.edu/127485847/Beati...hypothesis

The new paper thus makes various statements as if of fact, citing their own past papers, but which are entirely at
variance with other perspectives, not least from archaeology. It opens with the claim that “people of the Yamnaya
archaeological complex and their descendants … transformed … South Asia” (among other places, but again
incongruously omitting Iran), for which the Steppe hypothesis has long imagined the ‘descendant’ culture responsible as
Andronovo. But there is “absolutely NO archaeological evidence for any variant of the Andronovo culture either reaching
or influencing the cultures of Iran or northern India in the second millennium. Not a single artifact of identifiable
Andronovo type has been recovered from the Iranian Plateau, northern India, or Pakistan” (Lamberg-Karlovsky
2005: 155). There was no such “transformation” of South Asia by Yamnaya or their descendants.
In search of another candidate, Narasimhan et al. (2019) sought out samples from the Oxus (or ‘BMAC’) civilisation, but
again effectively drew a blank: no significant Steppe ancestry, but largely Iranian continuity instead. What the main
BMAC culture site at Gonur Depe does host, however, already by 4250 BP, is a burial of a horse and wagon with bronze
wheel rims, and perhaps even soma (or haoma) preparation — supposedly good markers of early Indo-Iranic, for
example, but genetically not from the Steppe. Indeed while their ultimate origins would lie in the Caucasus/Zagros
homeland, there is no strong case for excluding that the long evolution into the distinctly Iranic branch proceeded in or
near what is now Iran, and the distinctly Indic branch on the Indus, spreading then also along the Ganges.
Other than citing their own earlier papers, on other branches of Indo-European this paper leaves rather too much unsaid.
They recognise the major ancestry component in the homeland region of “Neolithic people from [the] Zagros”, and in
Figure 1b this component is hiding in plain sight: right alongside their CLV cline, next to its source end, and labelled
‘Iran’. Far more than any minor Steppe ancestry, too little too late, it is this ancestry component, from the Indo-
European family’s Caucasus/Zagros homeland, that remains predominant in speakers of Iranic and Indic to this day
(see Haak et al. 2015: Fig. S6). Narasimhan et al. (2019) seek to rule out that it simply spread eastwards bearing Indo-
Iranic, but Maier et al. (2023) concede that they cannot; see also Broushaki et al. (2016).

The Lazaridis study is a tawdry attempt to synthesize the Steppe and Out-of-Armenia hypotheses of Indo-European origin. But Heggarty seems to think it is a sly trick to brand an Out-of-Armenia reality as something more nebulous, when in reality it's an attempt to sue for peace with the Steppe crowd after getting so much backlash for the premature conclusions of the Southern Arc study. Something had to be released, after all, to counter the pro-Steppe-hypothesis Nikitin study. 

He really needs to give it a rest, he has humiliated himself with his ridiculous study that nobody cares about anymore. Nothing about this recent paper could possibly overturn the Steppe hypothesis, as literally every other ancient Iranic group has Steppe ancestry. We know the Laz Culture is Steppe-derived. We know the Scythians are Steppe-derived. We know the Hephthalites, Sogdians, Wusun, and Swat Culture are Steppe-derived. It is beyond a stretch to suggest that the Neolithic expansion in Europe, and the Neolithic expansion in the subcontinent, belonged to the same linguistic expansion, considering the distinctness of the two expanding groups.

[RCO]

I agree with Heggarty, if you don't, let's agree to disagree !
We need more ancient samples from the Southwestern Caspian Sea, Northern Iran and Northern Mesopotamia from the Mesolithic to Bronze Age, now we have the new Parthian ancient samples, extremely important to connect Iran_Gilan with the Caucasus and the Volga, the CLV-Iran continuum/cline, the PIE origin.

[DevourerOfCheese]

As for R1a, the area of Iran was more heavily populated than Central Asia and had a more pronounced indigenous component somewhat like the condition with Greece, which is majority J2 and has a minority of R1b; the proto-Persians are from the BMAC, where the steppe lineages were somewhat diluted; and R1a is higher in the east of Iran, closer to the expansion point.

So Iran never experienced any significant depopulation like BA Europe or the IVC?

[Granary]

As for R1a, the area of Iran was more heavily populated than Central Asia and had a more pronounced indigenous component somewhat like the condition with Greece, which is majority J2 and has a minority of R1b; the proto-Persians are from the BMAC, where the steppe lineages were somewhat diluted; and R1a is higher in the east of Iran, closer to the expansion point.

So Iran never experienced any significant depopulation like BA Europe or the IVC?

I'm not a fan of the depopulation theories behind why Europe was so genetically Indo-Europeinized, I think those theories fail to explain how magically every single part of Europe from Greece to Norway, from Ukraine to Spain all were just depopulated at the right time across the entire 3rd millennium BCE just in time for the Indo-European to migrate and take over. These theories surely cannot apply to both late 3rd millenium BCE Spain and early 3rd millennium BCE Scandinavia, right?

[pelop]

I'm not a fan of the depopulation theories behind why Europe was so genetically Indo-Europeinized, I think those theories fail to explain how magically every single part of Europe from Greece to Norway, from Ukraine to Spain all were just depopulated at the right time across the entire 3rd millennium BCE just in time for the Indo-European to migrate and take over. These theories surely cannot apply to both late 3rd millenium BCE Spain and early 3rd millennium BCE Scandinavia, right?

Iberia wasn't really "Indo-Europeanised" though, was it?

[Joey37]

I'm not saying Northern Europe was depopulated; I'm saying it wasn't heavily populated to begin with. The reason Ireland is like 80% R1b isn't because they killed everybody, it is because Ireland was lightly populated when they arrived. The Northern European climate simply does not have the carrying capacity the Mediterranean climate does.

[billh]

I'm not a fan of the depopulation theories behind why Europe was so genetically Indo-Europeinized, I think those theories fail to explain how magically every single part of Europe from Greece to Norway, from Ukraine to Spain all were just depopulated at the right time across the entire 3rd millennium BCE just in time for the Indo-European to migrate and take over. These theories surely cannot apply to both late 3rd millenium BCE Spain and early 3rd millennium BCE Scandinavia, right?

Iberia wasn't really "Indo-Europeanised" though, was it?

Patrilineally it was.

[pelop]

I'm not a fan of the depopulation theories behind why Europe was so genetically Indo-Europeinized, I think those theories fail to explain how magically every single part of Europe from Greece to Norway, from Ukraine to Spain all were just depopulated at the right time across the entire 3rd millennium BCE just in time for the Indo-European to migrate and take over. These theories surely cannot apply to both late 3rd millenium BCE Spain and early 3rd millennium BCE Scandinavia, right?

Iberia wasn't really "Indo-Europeanised" though, was it?

Patrilineally it was.

Yeah, but it's better not to conflate different things, that was the point of my question. You can't use too broad a brush when painting the picture of BA Europe, there were very different processes going on.

[Cejo]

Regarding population density and "Neolithic collapse" scenarios, there is some interesting work that I don't think can be so easily dismissed or glossed over.

Here are a few relevant journals:

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3486

https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/3.../298824988

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...4648#bib49

https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...016-9093-0

I don't know how Iran might differ.

[Granary]

I'm not saying Northern Europe was depopulated; I'm saying it wasn't heavily populated to begin with.  The reason Ireland is like 80% R1b isn't because they killed everybody, it is because Ireland was lightly populated when they arrived.  The Northern European climate simply does not have the carrying capacity the Mediterranean climate does.

This is not a good explanation for anything though, it doesn't matter how small the population of farmer Europe was, the pastoral population was even smaller and the nature of the event doesn't change at all regardless of whether it was 5, 10 or 15 million farmers in Europe