R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 in the Bronze Age Levant (16th century BC)

From the Agranat-Tamir paper:

"The two outliers from Megiddo (three including the sibling pair) provide additional evidence for the timing and origin of gene flow into the region. ... The reason these individuals are distinct from the rest is that their Caucasus- or Zagros-related genetic component is much higher, reflecting ongoing gene flow into the region from the northeast. The Neolithic Levant component is 22%–27% in I2200, and 9%–26% in I10100. These individuals are unlikely to be first generation migrants, as strontium isotope analysis on the two outlier siblings (I2189 and I2200) suggests that they were raised locally. This implies that the Megiddo outliers might be descendants of people who arrived in recent generations. Direct support for this hypothesis comes from the fact that in sensitive qpAdm modeling (including closely related sets of outgroups), the only working northeast source population for these two individuals is the contemporaneous Armenia_MLBA..."

(The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant, 2020)
 
^^That isn't good enough for some people. They want to create elaborate, speculative stories.
 
16th century B.C. sampels in the Levant is just way too late to matter in the PIE discussion. If steppe admixture arrived there by that time we should be talking of Mycenaean Greeks, Indo-Aryans, Indo-Iranians, Proto-Armenians, Hittites. The Balkans, Armenia, Iberia and Italy as south as Sicily already had steppe ancestry since any centuries before. We're very far from the time of a "IE homeland". The most likely candidates for a presence in the Levant in the 16th century B.C. IMO are the Mitanni (and related Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian groups starting to expand and settle in parts of West Asia, including Iran) and perhaps whoever lived in BA Armenia (could they really be Proto-Armenians hidden in the historical record until the IA? I don't know, that'd be bizarre).

Actually, even 2300-2500 B.C. is too late for PIE, the common language had almost certainly started splitting more than 1,000 years earlier (first between Anatolian and Late PIE), and by 2500 B.C it was already a small Indo-European family of closely related but no so similar languages. PIE (including Anatolian) was probably spoken in the Early Copper Age, around or even before 6,000 years ago. Sumerians' written texts were novel compared to that. Steppe populations' admixture may have already diffused southward as early as the Late Copper Age or at the very early part of the Bronze Age. Besides, Sumerians are known to have had a very long and wide sphere of international contacts (trade and perhaps some cultural exchange, too). So, by 2500-2300 B.C. we could be seeing Sumerians and intermediaries between Sumerians and other peoples getting a word from Indo-European-speaking groups, but not PIE people themselves.
 
Shahmiri said:
Northeast European one seems to be Uralic culture, not Indo-European. Of course some scholars talk about a common Indo-Uralic origin but about Proto-Indo-European there was also a Semitic adstrate, as I see most of scolars already believe in a Proto-Indo-European homeland in the south of Caucasus.
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Do you really think the entirety of Northeastern Europe was uniformly Uralic as far back as 5,000-7,000 years ago? Ancient lands, especially in places that hadn't seen the massive expansion of a few farming populations yet, were far more diverse than most moderns realize.
 
Philjames100 said:
What about the Tocharian thing?
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This theory that Tocharians were the same Tukri in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian and Elamite sources was first proposed by Walter Henning. The name of Tocharian is believed to be from proto-Iranian Tuxri, so the original name could be Tukri, "k" has been changed to "x" in the proto-Iranian because it is in a consonant cluster.
Of course ancient Tuxri people who lived in Takhar province of Afghanistan in the 2nd century BC were probably an Iranian-speaking people but it seems to be possible that their original language was Tocharian and their original land was in the west of Afghanistan (Iran).
 
Analysis by Eurogenes from 2019:


"A couple of months ago I suggested that populations associated with the Early to Middle Bronze Age (EMBA) Catacomb culture were the vector for the spread of steppe ancestry into what is now Armenia during the MLBA. After taking a closer look at the Lchashen Metsamor samples, I now think that the peoples of the Sintashta and related cultures were also important in this process. If so, they may have moved from the steppe into Transcaucasia both from the west via the Balkans and the east via Central Asia, and brought with them spoked-wheel chariots. I don't have a clue what language they spoke, but I'm guessing that it may have been something Indo-European."

Armenia_MBA_Lchashen
Kura-Araxes_Kaps 0.788±0.043
Sintashta_MLBA 0.212±0.043
chisq 14.871
tail prob 0.315451


‘Early chariot riders of Transcaucasia came from…’ (Thursday, April 18, 2019)
 
Eurogenes again (2016):

"Armenia_EBA or Kura-Araxes shows strong affinity to Caucasus populations, particularly those from the Northeast Caucasus. This is very cool, and it makes a lot of sense, because historical linguists and archaeologists generally consider Kura-Araxes people to have been early speakers of Hurrian, an ancient language thought to be closely related to present-day Northeast Caucasian languages.

But what's going on with Armenia_MLBA? I really didn't expect to see Latvians and Swedes sitting near the top of this graph. Clearly, someone from the north, closely related to present-day people from around the Baltic Sea, moved into the Armenian Plateau during or just before the Middle Bronze Age. But who were they?

I don't have a clue, but f4-stats suggest that they may have also been closely related to the Sintashta people of the Middle Bronze Age Ural steppes, who do appear very Northern European in terms of genome-wide genetic structure. The time frame fits, so does the expansive and militaristic nature of the Sintashta Culture."


Armenia_MLBA
Armenia_EBA 0.799±0.069
Sintashta 0.201±0.069

chisq 7.181 tail prob 0.618257


‘Hurrians and the others’ (Tuesday, October 4, 2016)
 
In 2019 Eurogenes also looked at an individual buried at Tel Shaddud in Israel (near Megiddo), dated to c.1250 BC, who was found to have R1b-M269.

First a description of the individual:

"A Canaanite individual from a clay coffin burial in Tel Shaddud (ca.1250 BC), reported as of hg. R1b1a1b-M269, has been interpreted as a Canaanite official residing at this site and emulating selected funerary aspects of Egyptian mortuary culture, apparently connected to the administrative centre at Bet Sheʽan during the 19th and 20th Dynasties." p.195 / Link 2

Eurogenes:

“Surprisingly, individual I2062 is listed in the anno files as belonging to Y-haplogroup R1b1a1a2, which is also known as R1b-M269. The reason that this is a surprise to me is because R1b-M269 is closely associated with the Bronze Age expansions of pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe … intriguingly, his autosomes do show a subtle signal of Yamnaya-related ancestry from the Pontic-Caspian steppe that is missing in earlier ancients from the Levant. …

Samples associated with the Kura-Araxes or Early Transcaucasian culture are particularly strong references for the eastern ancestry in I2062. This probably isn't a coincidence, and it might also explain his Y-haplogroup, because, at its maximum extent, the territory occupied by the Kura-Araxes culture stretched all the way from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to the southern Levant.”

'R1b-M269 in the Bronze Age Levant’ (Monday, April 22, 2019)
 
Map posted with the above article:

Kura-Araxes_Early_Transcaucasian_phenomenon.jpg


ETC = Early Transcaucasian culture / Kura-Araxes culture

https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2014_num_40_2_5643
 
Ygorcs said:
16th century B.C. sampels in the Levant is just way too late to matter in the PIE discussion. If steppe admixture arrived there by that time we should be talking of Mycenaean Greeks, Indo-Aryans, Indo-Iranians, Proto-Armenians, Hittites. The Balkans, Armenia, Iberia and Italy as south as Sicily already had steppe ancestry since any centuries before. We're very far from the time of a "IE homeland". The most likely candidates for a presence in the Levant in the 16th century B.C. IMO are the Mitanni (and related Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian groups starting to expand and settle in parts of West Asia, including Iran) and perhaps whoever lived in BA Armenia (could they really be Proto-Armenians hidden in the historical record until the IA? I don't know, that'd be bizarre).

Actually, even 2300-2500 B.C. is too late for PIE, the common language had almost certainly started splitting more than 1,000 years earlier (first between Anatolian and Late PIE), and by 2500 B.C it was already a small Indo-European family of closely related but no so similar languages. PIE (including Anatolian) was probably spoken in the Early Copper Age, around or even before 6,000 years ago. Sumerians' written texts were novel compared to that. Steppe populations' admixture may have already diffused southward as early as the Late Copper Age or at the very early part of the Bronze Age. Besides, Sumerians are known to have had a very long and wide sphere of international contacts (trade and perhaps some cultural exchange, too). So, by 2500-2300 B.C. we could be seeing Sumerians and intermediaries between Sumerians and other peoples getting a word from Indo-European-speaking groups, but not PIE people themselves.
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It really doesn't matter that some people in the Europe or other lands had steppe ancestry before 1,600 BC or even 16,000 BC, the earliest known Indo-Europeans were those who lived in the west Asia, not Iberia or Sicily. Proto-Indo-European is just a hypothetical language, what we know about real Indo-European languages can not be traced back to even 1600 BC, what about 6,000 years ago!

R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 have been found in the same region and the same period where the earliest known Indo-Europeans lived and geneticists believe these haplogroups relate to the origins of Proto-Indo-Europeans. If you want to find older origins, you should search in the same region a few centuries earlier.
 
On the map above, the large circles are known as 'Hyksos bits'. They continue further south into Gaza, not shown on the map. The cluster of five large circles is right on top of Armenia.

The map suggests a movement southwards through the Caucasus. This fits with the 'steppe DNA' seen in Armenia MLBA.

Notice the connection to Greece. There appear to be at least two movements into Greece, one from the steppe (or forest-steppe) and the Balkans, and one originating from the direction of the Caucasus (possibly via the Levant or Anatolia). The Hyksos bits also appear on Cyprus.



(Tel el-Ajjul is in Gaza)

Raulwing 2009
 
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No doubt the expansion of Sintashta and chariots is directly related to the timing of the appearance of this steppe haplogroups and ancestry. There might have been a North Carpathian influence working directly on Sintashta and what we see in the Aegaen is essentially the result of a pincer movement by two branches of the original chariot complex.
 
Shahmiri said:
the earliest known Indo-Europeans were those who lived in the west Asia, not Iberia or Sicily. Proto-Indo-European is just a hypothetical language, what we know about real Indo-European languages can not be traced back to even 1600 BC, what about 6,000 years ago!
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You're mistaking earliest known Indo-Europeans with earliest peoples with writing. Besides, Mycenaean Greek in Southeastern Europe is attested in writing basically as early as Hittite and little clues of Mitanni Aryan.

The PIE reconstruction is just a hypothetical language that is just an approximation of the real language that must've existed, but the common linguistic origin and genealogical relationship between all known IE languages is a very solidly established scientific theory. And by 1500-1600 B.C. they were already diverged since so long ago that they were as dramatically different as Mycenaean Greek, Hittite and Vedic Sanskrit show.

R1a-M417 and R1b-M269 have been found in the same region and the same period where the earliest known Indo-Europeans lived and geneticists believe these haplogroups relate to the origins of Proto-Indo-Europeans. If you want to find older origins, you should search in the same region a few centuries earlier.
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Sources in published studies? The earliest R1b-M269 and R1a-M417 in Northeastern Europe date to before 6000 years ago. The first R1a-M17 and R1b-L23 (which is the actual clade related directly and strongly to the Indo-European expansion, not M269 as a whole) are also found in North Eurasia, including Northwest Eurasia (Europe), and the first R1b was found in Central-Southern Europe (Villabruna Cluster).

Are there really aDNA samples in West Asia older than 5000-6000 years ago belonging to R1b-L23 and R1a-M417? Where?
 
If Proto-Indo-European language is from branch of R1b(Y-DNA). R1a1a(Y-DNA) languages is Para-Proto-Indo-European?
 
Original languages of R1a is Para-Proto-Indo-European?
 
kmak said:
Original languages of R1a is Para-Proto-Indo-European?
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There were most likely related, maybe you can call them Para-Proto-Indo-European, dialects all over Eastern Europe, spoken by R1a and R1b people, including some other haplotypes. The more strict division between R1a and R1b and the exclusion of other lineages is mainly the result of a later founding effect and small scale regional developments, which just got big because some of these small groups exploded demographically later and came to the successful expansion we know of later. Real Pre-Proto-Indo-European was most likely spoken in the Lower Don Culture, this might have been shared with Yamnaya still, but real PIE developed on the Western steppe within Sredny Stog Culture I'd say.
 
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