MtDna from the Bronze Age Caucasus, including Maykop

[berun]

@Maverick, I suggest you to dwell two years alone in the Rocky Mountains, you could cure so your angry and unversal hate, otherwise i think that i will se you in TV news involved in a school shooting.

 

[Angela]

I still doubt proto IE crossed the Caucasus with cattle.
Didn't cattle arrive on the Pontic steppe along with Balkan copper?

I think the archaeology shows pretty clearly that domesticated animals and copper flowed from the Balkans east onto the steppe. Whether any cattle also came from south of the Caucasus I don't know. Is there anything in the archaeology to show that?

As I said in my original post, the mtDna certainly doesn't support an influx of "CHG" onto the steppe through "Caucasus wives", whether kidnapped or traded for, but it's only six samples altogether, so we'll have to see. I would be tempted to say it was there since the Mesolithic, except that the genetic data shows an increase over time and from south to north of that autosomal component, yes?

 

[Alan]

@Alan

It's not a few mtDNA linking Maykop with Anatolia but four in five, it's an impressive proportion. To that its possible to add up the high freq of G2a, also charactetistic of Anatolian Neolithics. Occam's razor makes the rest. Of course I'm not denying "Iranian" genes from Leylatepe but it will be necessary to wait for Y-DNA and admixtures, but allways taking into account the possible CHG Mesolithics living before all it.

As far as I am aware the high frequency of G2a is of modern Caucasus and I assume it was brought with Proto Kartvellian speakers. I don't believe Kartvellian is a Iran_Neo/CHG tongue. Rather it is an Anatolian_Neo language related to Basque. Modern Caucasus is mixed like ~65% CHG and ~35% Anatolian/Levant_Neo.

Whatever language Maykop spoke I am criticial that it was Kartvelian.

 

[berun]

Modern Caucasus admixture is to take with caution, as this geographic region is debt much to an artificial political consensus. Looking at genes the Caucasus is split mainly between east and west, and my pet idea is that such dualism is the product of a competing northwards colonization of Iran_Neolithics and Anatolia_Neolithics. Actual and old genes point that the first wave to reach NW Caucasus was the Anatolian, but natural neighbour interchange and the Laylatepe influx must have delivered also Iran_Neolitic DNA... which might be differentiated from the local Mesolithic CHG, otherwise everything will be messed.

 

[bicicleur 2]

I think the archaeology shows pretty clearly that domesticated animals and copper flowed from the Balkans east onto the steppe. Whether any cattle also came from south of the Caucasus I don't know. Is there anything in the archaeology to show that?

As I said in my original post, the mtDna certainly doesn't support an influx of "CHG" onto the steppe through "Caucasus wives", whether kidnapped or traded for, but it's only six samples altogether, so we'll have to see. I would be tempted to say it was there since the Mesolithic, except that the genetic data shows an increase over time and from south to north of that autosomal component, yes?

that is my feeling to
after the Epigravettian, there was a continuous flow south to north across the Caucuasus
then, when Sintashta or degrading clmimate ousted many tribes out of the steppe, the direction of the flow reversed untill iron age

 

[Alan]

I admit that I have thought about early R1b cattle herders coming from Iran instead of eastern Anatolia/Armenia. It would make more sense in the light of the Middle Easter admixture found in Yamna being mainly CHG-like and not Anatolian Farmer-like. Cows were domesticated c. 8500 BCE, but didn't appear in the Pontic Steppe/North Caucasus until about 5500 BCE, I think. That leaves an awful lot of time for cattle herders to have first ventured east to Iran before crossing the Caucasus. In fact that may be why we see more R1b (both M269 and M73) in Daghestan than around Maykop in the Northwest Caucasus. So it increasingly looks like I missed a step when I drew an arrow from Kurdistan to the Steppe in my R1b migration map. I should probably have had R1b backtrack east to Iran first, then pass along the Caspian coast through Azerbaijan and Daghestan, which is the typical route to cross the Caucasus.

Yep makes archeologically sense. NW Iran= > Leyla Tepe=> Kura Araxes, Maykop and the Steppes.

 

[Sile]

As far as I am aware the high frequency of G2a is of modern Caucasus and I assume it was brought with Proto Kartvellian speakers. I don't believe Kartvellian is a Iran_Neo/CHG tongue. Rather it is an Anatolian_Neo language related to Basque. Modern Caucasus is mixed like ~65% CHG and ~35% Anatolian/Levant_Neo.

Whatever language Maykop spoke I am criticial that it was Kartvelian.

Wasn't ancient G2a and G2b also found in ancient SE-Anatolia?

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

Maciamo you're a good anthropologist and all, but leave the ludicrous mainstream theories out of this. (which may easily be proven wrong in a few weeks or years from now.)

Just because these findings are there, does not necessarily make them true. Another person, or that same person can do the same testing of this population, and these findings may be gone tomorrow. Stick with the findings that have the most proof to them.

Also, the Kurgan and Anatolian theories/hypothesizes are not necessarily true. They are just exactly that, theories. They can both be only partially true, or not true at all.

And personally, from my own analysis of the Basque language, and my experience with Basque people and culture, it has recently come to my attention that Basque and Vasconic are nothing more than isolated (old European) proto-languages. (just Like proto-Indo-European)

These proto-languages stopped evolving during the Indo-European invasion, and now we have Standard Basque. ​This explains why Basque has one of the least linguistic borrowings in Europe. This would explain why Basque is less developed or organized than say IE or Afro-Asiatic, as the words seem more Like "nonsensical gibberish, and the grammar has no official word order. (unless you count the common "SOV".)

(I am basically saying here, that Basque or Vasconic, is merely an isolated Western European language group, but stopped evolving due to the more prominent Indo-European language group. (during invasion) This may explain why it has so many different functions and complex grammar.

It is possible that proto-Indo-European and proto-Afro-Asiatic started off similar to Basque/Vasconic. Because Basque acts like a more nomadic language. (It has Ergative grammar. Kind of like the isolated Eskimo, or Amerindian languages)

I agree with you on your first statement. Both the mainstream theories and their popular alternatives can be partly or entirely wrong. That being I don't agree with the rest of the statements. It's important to note that there are many languages with free or relatively free word order.

Personally I believe that the PIE had relatively free word order like Latin, Classical, medieval and modern Greek, Persian, Romanian, Albanian, (but also: Finnish, Turkish) etc. Many languages with high or relatively high degree of morphological marking have relatively free word order.

The things being said here are mostly true about Greek too. So there's nothing special about Basque or the languages which have relatively free word order.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_grammar#Syntax

 

[Alan]

Wasn't ancient G2a and G2b also found in ancient SE-Anatolia?

Not as far as I know, Eastern Anatolian samples turned out R1b, L1a so far.