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I am 95% sure that Herodotus was talking about the Oxus here, which he often confused with the Araxes. If this is indeed so, crossing the river would mean that the Scythians migrated north from Afghanistan and vicinity (Asia), which indeed would place them in neighbourhood of the Massagetae...

Wow, looks like a real melting pot. So many Qs and C, O rather infrequent? Is it the Huns? Looks more like a Yenisseian group. Also super rare R1b-PH200. And 8*J, 4*G & 2*E. Iranic or Turkic?

I'm sure the right population will be found eventually. But I still find the findings in the paper very strange to say the least.

According to Firasat (2007) there's no U5 in the most steppe admixed South Asians, the Kalash. Lots and lots of U4 however: pre-HV = 22.7% HV* = 4.5% H (354, CRS)= 4.5% U2e = 15.9% U4 = 34.1% U7 = 2.3%, J2 = 9.1% J1 = 2.3% T (xT1) = 4.5% Tbh, considering all this I find it extremely...

I misremembered - it's not Mesolithic but Tripolye already! So theoretically an origin in the southern Cacausus can't be excluded. Another interesting mtDNA match between South Asia & Europe: U4d, which has a high frequency in Dereivka and associated cultures of Ukrainian HGs. What is...

It looks like U8b1 is heavily associated with the northern Black Sea: it's in Mesolithic Ukraine, Iron Gates & Baden Culture.

By the way, I went through the mtDNA again because something about the overall composition struck me as odd, but I couldn't put my finger on it. There is something that connects those Indians to the Black Sea and Eastern Europe area that is unlikely to have come from Anatolia or Iran. I then...

I consider this a distinct possbility to be honest. The caste system was only instated in the Gupta period, so perhaps it exaggerated this kind of stratification and expecting lots and lots of R1a already in proto-historic times was really misguided.

I might be missing some, but as far as I know the only Indo-Aryan group that isn't predominantly L657 are the Chitral speaking Kalasha, who carry the Iranian variety Z2124. I've also thought about the Scythians, but how would they have been able to spread their Y-DNA so thoroughly throughout...

Still interesting that Indians at the time of the composition of the Vedas (I think the most famous AIT proponent Witzel put the location of the Rig-Veda in Punjab around 1400 - 1000 B. C. E., right between those samples) and during the lifetime of Buddha should have had an Y-DNA composition...

The evidence is scarce, but Matzinger brings up the possibility of a Paleo-Balkanic macrogroup that includes Illyrian, Phrygian, Greek & Messapian and, of course, modern Albanian. Within this family Albanian seems to be closest to Messapian, but there is too little evidence to say that there's a...

Yes, the author contends that based on the linguistic evidence that both a Thracian and an Illyrian origin for Albanian can be excluded. He notes that there exist similarities with Messapic, another old Balkan language that was spoken in southern Italy at one point.

This is the paper: http://www.albanologie.uni-muenchen.de/downloads/meldungen/gastvortrag_matzinger_nov_2016/muenchen_2_ethnogenese.pdf Not sure if the google translator can make sense of it. If you're interested I'll translate the conclusions that summarize his points.

You are absolutely right that a single basal haplgroup is not a strong argument, but when the weight of the basal types points towards a specific region I think that can be considered at least indicative of a long presence in the region, since it reduces the possibility of an origin in another...

Yes, P297 in Latvia is interesting, but it's far too late and the first human settlements seem to be associated with the Kunda culture. To test a northern origin, one would have to look at samples from LUP Ukraine and Russia. Mezine culture is interesting in that regards. There are some lesser...

There are no ancestral haplotypes, just clades that branched off earlier. That's the point. We have many so many samples from Europe and it seems to be R1b-M269 wasteland. I had thought that M269 could have originated in the vicinity of present day Romania or Bulgaria, but the R1b there is too...

When talking about Bronze Age Kurgans what's usually meant is single-grave mounds, often associated with high-status males. Collective burial mounds seem to exist almost everywhere.

Yes, it's obvious when you look at the South Asian component that probably has but a weak relationship to the Turkic ethnogesis in the eastern steppe, and didn't exist in Anatolia before the arrival of the Turks. It must have been picked up in Central Asia. Assuming contemporary Turkmens are...

Great summary by a Turkish blogger: http://www.haplogruplar.com/the-genetic-structure-of-anatolia-from-the-neolithic-to-the-oghuz-migrations/ Cappadocian Greeks can be modelled as Anatolia_BA + Iran_Neo + Minor Steppe. Modern Turks can be modelled as Cappadocian Greeks mixed with a population...

We don't know what David Reich's point is. The paper was published after the release of his book I think. You need to calm down and ignore what the amateur community thinks. Until recently, amateurs would have you believe that R1b came from some imagined Hyperborea in Siberia. Those who pointed...