Gutians : 'namrûtum' - what's in a word ?

bicicleur 2

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Light skin alleles are not in the Y-DNA zone.
Nonetheless some allele may have originated in a certain succesfull tribe and gotten dispersed through that tribe.

In a recent study, the homeland of R1a was recognised as nothern Iran / Eastern Anatolia.
Some R1b* (M343) have been identified among Iranians.

The Gutians lived 2150 BC in the northern part of Zagros mountains, between the Elamites (with whom they were allies) and the Caspian Sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutian_people

were they light-skinned ?
[h=2]Physical appearance[edit][/h]According to the historian Henry Hoyle Howorth (1901), Assyriologist Theophilus Pinches (1908), renowned archaeologist Leonard Woolley (1929) and Assyriologist Ignace Gelb(1944) the Gutians were pale skinned and blonde haired.[12][13][14][15] This identification of the Gutians as fair haired first came to light when Julius Oppert (1877) published a set of tablets he had discovered which described Gutian (and Subarian) slaves as namrum or namrûtum, meaning "light colored" or "fair-skinned".[16][17] This racial character of the Gutians as blondes or being light skinned was also taken up by Georges Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 and later by historian Sidney Smith in his Early history of Assyria(1928).[18][19] Ephraim Avigdor Speiser however criticised the translation of "namrum" as "light colored". An article was published by Speiser in the Journal of the American Oriental Society attacking Gelb's translation.[20] Gelb in response accused Speiser of circular reasoning.[21] In response Speiser claimed the scholarship regarding the translation of "namrum" or "namrûtum" is unresolved.[22]

If the translation by Gelg is correct, their skin must have been markedly lighter than the skin of other tribes in the area.

Were they some R1a or R1b tribe that did not cross the Caucasus into steppe and that is now extinct (R1a) or almost extinct (R1b*) ?
 

Were they some R1a or R1b tribe that did not cross the Caucasus into steppe and that is now extinct (R1a) or almost extinct (R1b*) ?
Perhaps they've crossed from the Steppe to Zagros?
 
Where ever they might came from, or if they weren't just natives of the region, they were likely the ancestors to the Mitanni and later the Medes. Medes were called by the Assyrians as Gutians. Iranian sources regard to Gutians as part of the Medes. As I wrote in another thread in my opinion they were Indo Europeans.
 
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i think mitanni and medes are different. Mitanni choose to anatolia and syria become their ancestor. Medes are iranian people :D

So are Mitanni, they were Indo_Iranian too.
 

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