What does genetics say about the origin of Germanic people?

[Cyrus]

I asked in this thread: Is there any linguistic evidence to prove Goths came from Scandinavia? and as you see there is almsot no linguistic evidence, now what about genetic evidences?

We know Gothic culture existed in the Crimea until the 17th century but why the frequency of Germanic haplogroups is very low in the Gothic land?

[Ygorcs]

Because we know that Gothic language (language is not necessarily tied to DNA) survivedjust in an isolated mountainous corner of Crimea (it was really a remote remnant, not a thriving language there), and we also know from countless ancient documents as well as archaeological evidence that Goths had a massive emigration from their Eastern European homeland into the Balkans and later to Western Europe (an in their Eastern European homeland they were almost certainly already heavily mixed with local non-Germanic people - you know, people's language is not dependant on people's genetics, people can keep their language even if they mix with and absorb others). Besides, it's always a mistake to assume that present-day Y-DNA haplogroups in any area are representative of the Y-DNA makeup ~1,700 years ago. It's not just that people move, mix or are displaced or replaced genetically. It's also that due to many random factors some lineages are successful here, but not there, some boom and some bust (or boom and then bust), and we all know how incredibly tumultuous the history of the former homeland of Goths has been in the last 1500 years. Even in the absence of any major genetic change (autosomally), the Y-DNA distribution may change completely just due to genetic drift. Modern Y-DNA distributions can and often are very deceiving, especially when we know for a fact that large-scale emigrations and immigrations happened.

EDIT: Also, of course, one needs to be reminded that the Goths were not "Proto-Germanic" nor some sort of "archaic Germanic" museum pieces. They were highly mobile people that together with other Eastern Germanic peoples formed a later branch descended from Proto-Germanic speakers. When we first know about them, they are contemporary to West Germanic people in Germany and North Germanic people in Scandinavia, they aren't some sort of "older people". It's useless to use them as some sort of proxies for what the earliest ancestors of those who would much later become Germanic speakers were like.

[Ygorcs]

I have a genetic question: Why we see a large number of blonde people in the west of Iran, especially around Gotvand/Dezful? One of the most famous people who was born in this region is Mohammad-Ali Ramin, Iran's former Vice Minister of Culture and a presidential advisor:


You have probably read about the physical appearance of ancient Gutians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutian...cal_appearance

Some photos of rural people in Gotvand/Dezful area in the north of Khuzistan: http://www.khouznews.ir/fa/news/17227/%D8%B9%D8%B4%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1-%D8%AE%D9%88%D8%B2%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%A8%D9%87-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%AA-%D8%AA%D8%B5%D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B1

Oh my God, are you - you, the one complaining about Germanic racism and nationalism a few messages earlier - getting into this ludicrous blonde = Germanic = Indo-European thing? Now this is just too much, because you previously had baseless claims, but at least they were purported to sound minimally scientific. Blonde hair and light eyes are not "Germanic", far less "Indo-European", and they certainly predate any PIE-speaking people's migration. Come on... Besides, these blonde-haired people of Iran and other parts of the Middle East (and we all know they're a minority even in the hotspots of blondeness in that region, let's be honest, ok?) do not look "Germanic", their features are different. There are more things about one's phenotype than the hair or eye color. And, of course, none of those visual traits say anything about the actual ancestry of the populatioin. Is that just a desperate "curiosity" because of the obvious fact that there is virtually no connection between Germanic-speaking populations and (ancient or modern) Iranian populationsin the last 4,000 years when you consider actual genetic ancestry? (and even parental markers, it's just disingenuous from you to portray Germanic and Iranian people as R1b+R1a hybrids, because first Iranian people are NOT just R1b+R1a, secondly there is no such a thing as 'R1b' or 'R1a' people at all, those are just paternal markers and not reliable indicators of a people's full genetic structure, and thirdly because obviously the main subclades of R1b and R1a found in higher frequency in Iran are NOT the same found in higher frequency in Germanic nations)

[Cyrus]

Because we know that Gothic language (language is not necessarily tied to DNA) survivedjust in an isolated mountainous corner of Crimea (it was really a remote remnant, not a thriving language there), and we also know from countless ancient documents as well as archaeological evidence that Goths had a massive emigration from their Eastern European homeland into the Balkans and later to Western Europe (an in their Eastern European homeland they were almost certainly already heavily mixed with local non-Germanic people - you know, people's language is not dependant on people's genetics, people can keep their language even if they mix with and absorb others). Besides, it's always a mistake to assume that present-day Y-DNA haplogroups in any area are representative of the Y-DNA makeup ~1,700 years ago. It's not just that people move, mix or are displaced or replaced genetically. It's also that due to many random factors some lineages are successful here, but not there, some boom and some bust (or boom and then bust), and we all know how incredibly tumultuous the history of the former homeland of Goths has been in the last 1500 years. Even in the absence of any major genetic change (autosomally), the Y-DNA distribution may change completely just due to genetic drift. Modern Y-DNA distributions can and often are very deceiving, especially when we know for a fact that large-scale emigrations and immigrations happened.
EDIT: Also, of course, one needs to be reminded that the Goths were not "Proto-Germanic" nor some sort of "archaic Germanic" museum pieces. They were highly mobile people that together with other Eastern Germanic peoples formed a later branch descended from Proto-Germanic speakers. When we first know about them, they are contemporary to West Germanic people in Germany and North Germanic people in Scandinavia, they aren't some sort of "older people". It's useless to use them as some sort of proxies for what the earliest ancestors of those who would much later become Germanic speakers were like.

I hope you don't say again that I didn't understand what you meant, do you mean the mass migration of Goths from Scandinavia to the southeast of Europe is a myth, yes? I think if there were genetic evidences from the ancient skeletons, you would certainly mention them.
And is it possible that we consider a real migration from the west of Iran (land of Gutians) to the southeast of Europe (land of Goths) and finally Scandinavia (Gotland)?

Haplogroup I:


Haplogroup R1b:


New migration map of R1a:

[Cyrus]

Oh my God, are you - you, the one complaining about Germanic racism and nationalism a few messages earlier - getting into this ludicrous blonde = Germanic = Indo-European thing? Now this is just too much, because you previously had baseless claims, but at least they were purported to sound minimally scientific. Blonde hair and light eyes are not "Germanic", far less "Indo-European", and they certainly predate any PIE-speaking people's migration. Come on... Besides, these blonde-haired people of Iran and other parts of the Middle East (and we all know they're a minority even in the hotspots of blondeness in that region, let's be honest, ok?) do not look "Germanic", their features are different. There are more things about one's phenotype than the hair or eye color. And, of course, none of those visual traits say anything about the actual ancestry of the populatioin. Is that just a desperate "curiosity" because of the obvious fact that there is virtually no connection between Germanic-speaking populations and (ancient or modern) Iranian populationsin the last 4,000 years when you consider actual genetic ancestry? (and even parental markers, it's just disingenuous from you to portray Germanic and Iranian people as R1b+R1a hybrids, because first Iranian people are NOT just R1b+R1a, secondly there is no such a thing as 'R1b' or 'R1a' people at all, those are just paternal markers and not reliable indicators of a people's full genetic structure, and thirdly because obviously the main subclades of R1b and R1a found in higher frequency in Iran are NOT the same found in higher frequency in Germanic nations)

The fact is that the first thing that I read about Gutians in the ancient Akkadian sources and for this reason I researched about the possibility of their Germanic origin, was this historical fact that they were blonde. As you mentioned blonde people are a small minority in Iran, so it seems to be obvious that in the ancient times they left Iran and migrated to another land.
Of course blond hair dates back to at least 11,000 years ago, so it couldn't be related to neither Germanic, nor even Proto-Indo-European people but it can't be denied in the last thousand years it has been most common in the north of Europe where Germanic people live.

[Cyrus]

Other than blond hair, another important physical feature of ancient Gutians which made them different from other people who lived in Iran and closer to Goths and other Germanic people was their physical height, people of Luristan have still the highest average height in Iran and probably the whole Middle East, but we know in the ancient times they were much taller.

For example as you read about an ancient skeleton which was found in Luristan two years ago: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/...found-in-iran/ "The skeleton measured over two meters (6 feet 6 inches) in height, making him a tall man today but a giant among his peers who averaged 160 cm (5 feet 3 inches)."

[Cyrus]

Ygorcs, do you really think that you are rejecting my theory by just saying "WE JUST DON'T KNOW"?!! If you know then you should say that for example these evidences show that the Germanic culture existed in this land before 500 BC or earlier, this thing that you don't know anything about it, doesn't mean that you can reject other theories.

[spruithean]

I asked in this thread: Is there any linguistic evidence to prove Goths came from Scandinavia? and as you see there is almsot no linguistic evidence, now what about genetic evidences?

We know Gothic culture existed in the Crimea until the 17th century but why the frequency of Germanic haplogroups is very low in the Gothic land?

Y-DNA is not the lone DNA remnant of a population, we have seen countless times autosomal remnants of a population in various regions and this is not Germanic specific. Germanic populations are also not R1b+R1a, they are far more than that and the R1b and R1a clades in Europe are quite distant from those found in Iran.

Oh my God, are you - you, the one complaining about Germanic racism and nationalism a few messages earlier - getting into this ludicrous blonde = Germanic = Indo-European thing? Now this is just too much, because you previously had baseless claims, but at least they were purported to sound minimally scientific. Blonde hair and light eyes are not "Germanic", far less "Indo-European", and they certainly predate any PIE-speaking people's migration. Come on... Besides, these blonde-haired people of Iran and other parts of the Middle East (and we all know they're a minority even in the hotspots of blondeness in that region, let's be honest, ok?) do not look "Germanic", their features are different. There are more things about one's phenotype than the hair or eye color. And, of course, none of those visual traits say anything about the actual ancestry of the populatioin. Is that just a desperate "curiosity" because of the obvious fact that there is virtually no connection between Germanic-speaking populations and (ancient or modern) Iranian populationsin the last 4,000 years when you consider actual genetic ancestry? (and even parental markers, it's just disingenuous from you to portray Germanic and Iranian people as R1b+R1a hybrids, because first Iranian people are NOT just R1b+R1a, secondly there is no such a thing as 'R1b' or 'R1a' people at all, those are just paternal markers and not reliable indicators of a people's full genetic structure, and thirdly because obviously the main subclades of R1b and R1a found in higher frequency in Iran are NOT the same found in higher frequency in Germanic nations)

There is but one summary for OP's logic, a special kind of mental gymnastics.

I hope you don't say again that I didn't understand what you meant, do you mean the mass migration of Goths from Scandinavia to the southeast of Europe is a myth, yes? I think if there were genetic evidences from the ancient skeletons, you would certainly mention them.
And is it possible that we consider a real migration from the west of Iran (land of Gutians) to the southeast of Europe (land of Goths) and finally Scandinavia (Gotland)?

Haplogroup I:


Haplogroup R1b:


New migration map of R1a:

https://www.academia.edu/20106155/ON...OF_THEIR_POWER

For fun, something dating from the Wielbark culture, which contained Germanic tribes... notably Goths, Rugii, Gepids to name a few, all of whom are Eastern Germanic tribes that spoke an Eastern branch of the Germanic language family.

Also for fun, from a Wielbark era ancient DNA sample:

Ancient DNA sample: KO_55 100-300 AD Kowalewko Poland Wielbark_Culture I1a3a1a1a-M253>DF29>Z63>BY151>S2078>S2077>Y2245>L1237 Zenczak 2017

Real neat.

The fact is that the first thing that I read about Gutians in the ancient Akkadian sources and for this reason I researched about the possibility of their Germanic origin, was this historical fact that they were blonde. As you mentioned blonde people are a small minority in Iran, so it seems to be obvious that in the ancient times they left Iran and migrated to another land.
Of course blond hair dates back to at least 11,000 years ago, so it couldn't be related to neither Germanic, nor even Proto-Indo-European people but it can't be denied in the last thousand years it has been most common in the north of Europe where Germanic people live.

Couldn't possibly be the nature of dominant over recessive genes. You know the whole dark hair, dark eyes being dominant over the recessive blue and blond.

Other than blond hair, another important physical feature of ancient Gutians which made them different from other people who lived in Iran and closer to Goths and other Germanic people was their physical height, people of Luristan have still the highest average height in Iran and probably the whole Middle East, but we know in the ancient times they were much taller.

For example as you read about an ancient skeleton which was found in Luristan two years ago: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/...found-in-iran/ "The skeleton measured over two meters (6 feet 6 inches) in height, making him a tall man today but a giant among his peers who averaged 160 cm (5 feet 3 inches)."

Various African populations are quite tall, are they also descended from Germanic Goths?

Ygorcs, do you really think that you are rejecting my theory by just saying "WE JUST DON'T KNOW"?!! If you know then you should say that for example these evidences show that the Germanic culture existed in this land before 500 BC or earlier, this thing that you don't know anything about it, doesn't mean that you can reject other theories.

Ah yes the old argument "because it's not there and isn't attested right when I want it to be means it didn't exist". We see cultural continuation in the period leading up to the Germanic era, we also see a very interesting genetic aspect both autosomally and an expansion of haplogroups in Scandinavia (that are still there to this day).

This thread is like walking into a revolving door and not getting out.

[Cyrus]

Y-DNA is not the lone DNA remnant of a population, we have seen countless times autosomal remnants of a population in various regions and this is not Germanic specific. Germanic populations are also not R1b+R1a, they are far more than that and the R1b and R1a clades in Europe are quite distant from those found in Iran.

When you want to connect a people to modern Germanic people, it doesn't matter that they have Germanic haplogroups or not, but when I talk about the opposite thing, the same haplogroups can't be related to each other!!
It is just in your own imagination that R1a and R1b clades in Europe are quite distant from those found in Iran, genealogists have just found R1a-M17 and R1b-L23 in Iran, and we know 99℅ of R1a and R1b haplogroups in Europe are either the same or descend from these clades.
I don't know why you don't want to use any type of logic!

[spruithean]

No, I think you have a clear lack of understanding of phylogeny and how haplogroups "work". You just need to take a look at YFulls tree of the Y-chromosome.
Cyrus, you are also aware that it is expensive to do deep clade tests on samples, right? You are aware that ancient samples may not be high enough quality to do a deep analysis, yes? The samples you reference in Iran are from older studies which predate the technology we now have to do deep haplogroup analyses. I'm not going to begin to explain these concepts because I encourage you study them on your own without bias to confirm your own preconceived notions.

And the OLDEST SAMPLES we have found from ancient times for various R1b and R1a haplogroups you refer to have been found in the Pontic Steppe. We can keep beating this argument to death and we will clearly get absolutely nowhere because you are hellbent on proving that everything came from Iran or has some connection to Iran. Again, you refer to your naysayers as "nationalists" when your own behaviour is suspect.


I would love to actually keep reading these discussions and maybe see some well known scholars with legitimate credentials report what you report, but you keep posting conjecture and sources from obscure documents as "sources" when they are at best secondary sources or completely filled with holes, or entirely pseudoarchaeological (like Heyerdahl). Heyerdahl and those like him make conclusions based on coincidences and through the impression that something can't be discovered or created in two different populations far removed from each other. I refer to your response about Egyptians, the Mesoamerican cultures never once encountered Egyptians, these people both independently designed pyramids. That does not make them a related people. It's a geometric shape that all humans can see and think up in their mind. Heyerdahl made fantastical claims and sought out to prove if various voyages were possible, yet he didn't confirm if they were plausible or feasible. Just because you can float a raft somewhere far away does not mean ancient people did or even would bother, let alone have the technology to do so. I'm referencing is ridiculous voyages of Kon-Tiki (which was an insult to Polynesians) and the Ra voyage.


Your argument is tired, this discussion is tired. It's obvious you aren't willing to actually take a look at what people have provided you on this forum and I'm assuming elsewhere as well.

[Cyrus]

No, I think you have a clear lack of understanding of phylogeny and how haplogroups "work". You just need to take a look at YFulls tree of the Y-chromosome.
Cyrus, you are also aware that it is expensive to do deep clade tests on samples, right? You are aware that ancient samples may not be high enough quality to do a deep analysis, yes? The samples you reference in Iran are from older studies which predate the technology we now have to do deep haplogroup analyses. I'm not going to begin to explain these concepts because I encourage you study them on your own without bias to confirm your own preconceived notions.
And the OLDEST SAMPLES we have found from ancient times for various R1b and R1a haplogroups you refer to have been found in the Pontic Steppe. We can keep beating this argument to death and we will clearly get absolutely nowhere because you are hellbent on proving that everything came from Iran or has some connection to Iran. Again, you refer to your naysayers as "nationalists" when your own behaviour is suspect.
I would love to actually keep reading these discussions and maybe see some well known scholars with legitimate credentials report what you report, but you keep posting conjecture and sources from obscure documents as "sources" when they are at best secondary sources or completely filled with holes, or entirely pseudoarchaeological (like Heyerdahl). Heyerdahl and those like him make conclusions based on coincidences and through the impression that something can't be discovered or created in two different populations far removed from each other. I refer to your response about Egyptians, the Mesoamerican cultures never once encountered Egyptians, these people both independently designed pyramids. That does not make them a related people. It's a geometric shape that all humans can see and think up in their mind. Heyerdahl made fantastical claims and sought out to prove if various voyages were possible, yet he didn't confirm if they were plausible or feasible. Just because you can float a raft somewhere far away does not mean ancient people did or even would bother, let alone have the technology to do so. I'm referencing is ridiculous voyages of Kon-Tiki (which was an insult to Polynesians) and the Ra voyage.
Your argument is tired, this discussion is tired. It's obvious you aren't willing to actually take a look at what people have provided you on this forum and I'm assuming elsewhere as well.

OK, I don't know how haplogroups work, if you know please answer this question: Haplogroup R1b1a2a1a has been found in Khuzistan (Gotvand/Dezful area that I mentioned), what does it mean?
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...4/#!po=2.13675

[spruithean]

OK, I don't know how haplogroups work, if you know please answer this question: Haplogroup R1b1a2a1a has been found in Khuzistan (Gotvand/Dezful area that I mentioned), what does it mean?
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3399854/#!po=2.13675

Thankfully this study actually listed the SNP in question so we don't need to figure out which ISOGG tree they used, so we don't need to pursue the endless alphabet soup that is the ISOGG tree. The SNP they reference is M412, which is phyloequivalent to L51, S167, PF6536, MF39636, etc. The study you reference is about modern distribution, which is very different from ancient distribution, this can be seen in more than just haplogroup R1b, for example certain clades of haplogroup I2 were found in paleolithic samples in Scandinavia, yet I2 is relatively uncommon in Scandinavia, it is overshadowed by R1b, R1a and I1. I2 was really quite abundant in the very ancient samples across Europe, yet it was clearly replaced by other lineages during a very obvious rapid growth of R1b, R1a and I1 in the Bronze Age timeframe.

R-L51 (aka M412) was found in the Samara region with the Khvalynsk (5th millennium BC) https://indo-european.eu/2018/05/hap...-4250-4000-bc/
Again, this is found in a culture that is contemporaneous/subsequent to cultures of the Pontic-Caspian steppe such as Repin, Khvalynsk and Yamnaya. The samples they have found an related L23 clades in the Samara region and Pontic-Steppe related cultures is very telling. As this is quite some time before the testing of modern Y-chromosome distribution in modern Iranians that you cite. These ancient samples fit with the timing of the eventual rise of Proto-Indo-Europeans who eventually spread westward and eastward (with the Indo-Iranian group branching off toward Iran and India).

https://indo-european.eu/2018/04/ear...ng-migrations/

If we look at YFull, they list that R-L51 formed 6100 years before present and diversified 5700 ybp. It's descending branches notably R-L52 and R-S1200, R-U106 and R-Z2118 have wide ranges due to proliferation of these lineages. What are the modern terminal SNPs of these Iranian R-L51/M412s? Were they tested for anything further than M412? Are they M412*? An ancient sample is quite a bit more telling than the modern distribution.
The paper you cite even states

"Proto-Iranians tribes from Central Asian steppes arrived in the Iranian plateau in the fifth and fourth millennium BP, settled as nomads and further separated in different groups."

and the go on to say

"By the third millennium BP, Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes North of the Black Sea, while Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians occupied the western part of the Iranian plateau. Other tribes began to settle on the eastern edge, as far East as on the mountainous frontier of north-western Indian subcontinent and into the area which is now Baluchistan. The nowadays Iranian territory had been occupied by Medes (Maad) in the central and north-western regions, Persians (Paars) in the south-western region and by Parthians (Parthav) in the north-eastern and eastern regions of the country. In the 6^th century BC Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire (the first Persian Empire), which started in South Iran and spread from Libya to Anatolia and Macedonia, encompassing an extraordinary ethno-cultural diversity"

It would seem logical that Proto-Iranians carrying various R haplogroups, namely clades belonging to the L51 branch and various R1a branches would have spread this lineage in various directions with the migrations and movements of Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Scythians, Alans, Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Parthians, etc. and more specifically the Iranian-speaking populations who moved into the Iranian plateau would be responsible for introducing R-L51/M412 into the area introducing it as a lineage from which a portion of the modern Iranian population descends from.

[Cyrus]

Thankfully this study actually listed the SNP in question so we don't need to figure out which ISOGG tree they used, so we don't need to pursue the endless alphabet soup that is the ISOGG tree. The SNP they reference is M412, which is phyloequivalent to L51, S167, PF6536, MF39636, etc. The study you reference is about modern distribution, which is very different from ancient distribution, this can be seen in more than just haplogroup R1b, for example certain clades of haplogroup I2 were found in paleolithic samples in Scandinavia, yet I2 is relatively uncommon in Scandinavia, it is overshadowed by R1b, R1a and I1. I2 was really quite abundant in the very ancient samples across Europe, yet it was clearly replaced by other lineages during a very obvious rapid growth of R1b, R1a and I1 in the Bronze Age timeframe.
R-L51 (aka M412) was found in the Samara region with the Khvalynsk (5th millennium BC) https://indo-european.eu/2018/05/hap...-4250-4000-bc/
Again, this is found in a culture that is contemporaneous/subsequent to cultures of the Pontic-Caspian steppe such as Repin, Khvalynsk and Yamnaya. The samples they have found an related L23 clades in the Samara region and Pontic-Steppe related cultures is very telling. As this is quite some time before the testing of modern Y-chromosome distribution in modern Iranians that you cite. These ancient samples fit with the timing of the eventual rise of Proto-Indo-Europeans who eventually spread westward and eastward (with the Indo-Iranian group branching off toward Iran and India).
https://indo-european.eu/2018/04/ear...ng-migrations/
If we look at YFull, they list that R-L51 formed 6100 years before present and diversified 5700 ybp. It's descending branches notably R-L52 and R-S1200, R-U106 and R-Z2118 have wide ranges due to proliferation of these lineages. What are the modern terminal SNPs of these Iranian R-L51/M412s? Were they tested for anything further than M412? Are they M412*? An ancient sample is quite a bit more telling than the modern distribution.
The paper you cite even states and the go on to say
It would seem logical that Proto-Iranians carrying various R haplogroups, namely clades belonging to the L51 branch and various R1a branches would have spread this lineage in various directions with the migrations and movements of Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Scythians, Alans, Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Parthians, etc. and more specifically the Iranian-speaking populations who moved into the Iranian plateau would be responsible for introducing R-L51/M412 into the area introducing it as a lineage from which a portion of the modern Iranian population descends from.

Thanks for your reply, as you see in Table 1, these haplogroups have the highest frequency in Iran:
1. R1a-M198
2. R1b-L23
3. J2a-M530
4. J1c3
Is it true that J1 and J2 relate to Semitic, Elamite, Hurrian, ... people but R1a and R1b relate to Indo-Europeans? Who were these Indo-European people? Were they Indo-Iranians? Or Celtic people? Or proto-Indo-Europeans?
The interesting point is that Iranian Assyrians have the highest frequency of R1b-L23 (55.6℅).

[Ygorcs]

I hope you don't say again that I didn't understand what you meant, do you mean the mass migration of Goths from Scandinavia to the southeast of Europe is a myth, yes? I think if there were genetic evidences from the ancient skeletons, you would certainly mention them.
And is it possible that we consider a real migration from the west of Iran (land of Gutians) to the southeast of Europe (land of Goths) and finally Scandinavia (Gotland)?

No, I'm clearly referring to the unquestionably and vastly documented migration of Goths and other East Germanic peoples into the territory of the Roman Empire, with part of them going as far west as Iberia. They migrated en masse and dispersed through several different parts of the territory of the Roman Empire, and subsequently their former homeland in Eastern Europe was subject to profound transformations and intense population movements not just during the Migration Period (with Slavs, Turks, Magyars etc.), but even in recent centuries with the expansion of the East Slavic borders southward.

The R1a map you posted is not exactly "new", you know... And it's "controversial" to say the least.

Autosomally the evidences for a reasonably recent (as in after the divergence of PIE into several distinct language families) migration from Iran to North Europe is virtually null, and the Y-DNA evidences, especially if you consider aDNA (modern Y-DNA distributions are often misleading, as I said), don't seem to back that hypothesis up much better.

[spruithean]

Thanks for your reply, as you see in Table 1, these haplogroups have the highest frequency in Iran:

1. R1a-M198
2. R1b-L23
3. J2a-M530
4. J1c3

Is it true that J1 and J2 relate to Semitic, Elamite, Hurrian, ... people but R1a and R1b relate to Indo-Europeans? Who were these Indo-European people? Were they Indo-Iranians? Or Celtic people?

Haplogroup J1 and J2 are interesting haplogroups.

The oldest finding of J1 comes from the Satsurblia Cave in Georgia, which is estimated to date to 13,200 BCE. Certain J1 branches are associated with Semitic groups, notably J-P58 (J1c3 in the Iranian Y-chromosome study you cited, the SNP at that time was referred to as PAGE08). Right now the theory for J-P58 appears to to be that it expanded from the more southerly portions of the Levant across the Arabian peninsula in the Bronze Age, some specific clades of J-P58 such as J-Z18297 and J-ZS227 (this one includes the haplotype most commonly believed to be Cohanim), there is another SNP known as FGC12, which seems to be linked to the expansion of Arabic populations in medieval period. There are some haplogroups which are suspected to be linked with Phoenicians, however we don't quite have enough evidence to solidify these links. Now a haplogroup can't exactly be Semitic, Celtic, Slavic, etc. it can merely be associated with these various ethnolinguistic groups. J1 haplogroups do show up in Europe in lower frequencies.

J2 is a much more seemingly widespread haplogroup with an estimated origin somewhere in the Middle East sometime 15,000-22,000 years ago. The oldest sample of J2 belongs to J2a in remains in the Hotu Cave in Iran, this sample dates to 9100-8600 BC (Lazaridis et al reported this in 2016) and another sample found Georgia in Kotias Klde dates from 7940-7600 BC (Broushaki et al reported this in 2016). J2 has an obviously strong presence in Western Asia, however it is also found in Europe and is the most commonly associated lineage with the spread of cereal farming from the Fertile Crescent through to Anatolia and eventually Europe. However this lineage isn't the only likely farmer lineage. Other farmer lineages include G2a, E1b1b and T1a.

However, surprisingly, in 2015, Mathieson et al tested 13 Early Neolithic farmers, specifically their Y-DNA in NW Anatolia these samples were dated to 6500-6200 BC) and only 1 sample belonged to J2a. Lazaridis in 2016 tested 44 ancient NE samples only 2 belonged to J2, same goes for 100 samples tested in Neolithic European sites and yet again only two J2 samples were found. J2 is seemingly absent from Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Indo-European cultures. Interestingly J2 samples have been found if I recall correctly, Minoan sites, which is quite fascinating.

Are you referring to R1b and R1a in Western Asia and specifically Iran? Haplogroups of R1b such as R-PF7562 (estimated to have formed in the Early Bronze Age) are found in the Balkans, Turkey and Armenia, a branch of R-L23 (EBA in Pontic Steppe), specifically R-Z2103 (Bronze Age) is found in Eastern Europe and West Asia. We have to remember that R1b is a HUGE haplogroup, infact we would more accurately refer to it as a paragroup. We have to realize that R1b split into many different haplogroups, one very early branch of R1b, R-V88 is found more commonly in Africa. We can only attach certain haplogroups and their dispersion to PIEans, others are explained by different independent lineages that parted ways with their relatives who would later go on to the PIE homeland.

The map for R1b from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age may be of interest to you as it places M343 somewhat north in the Iranian region, which then a descending branch of P25 heads further west where it splits into P297 and V88, the former heading north and the latter heading south through the Levant. The branch that heads north splits into M269 (which heads to the Pontic Caspian steppe) and M73 heads east. M269 eventually migrates toward the Balkans and a descending clade of L23 fans out in multiple directions, with a migration into Anatolia (this branch is labelled R-Z2103), obviously some very old lineages of R1b that may be very private (meaning not widespread) may exist in Iran or the Iranian diaspora.

Attachment 11088

The same thing can be said of the R1a paragroup, it has a WIDE dispersion and it has many branches to its tree, again showing that some branches are of different geographic origins. I recommend you take a look at the R1a haplogroup page here on Eupedia's mainpage, and more specifically the Indo-Iranian section of the page. It explains that the Proto-Indo-Iranian speakers seemed to have originated in the Sintashta-Petrovka culture (from 2100-1750 BC) east of the Ural Mountains, with an ancient sample of R-Z93 being found quite east in the range of the most likely PIE homeland it lines up with this proposed theory. The lineages which appear in Iranian locations are extremely old, with M343 estimated to have formed 22,800 years before present with a TMRCA (diversification) of 20,400 years before present.

An interesting read that mentions some ancient R1b Y-DNA from the Iranian Neolithic as well as basal R-M343* finds in Kazakhstan and Iran, all of which support a southern migration route through Iran https://indo-european.info/ie/R1b-M3...nter-Gatherers

https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplo...l#Indo-Iranian, there is even an interesting entry for both the Tarim mummies and Turkic speakers and their connection to R1a.

The people who brought R-Z93 (and associated, notably the descending branch of Z94) lineages to Iran would obviously be the Proto-Indo-Iranian people in the case of Iran, other IE groups made their way elsewhere. This is why the map on Eupedia's R1a page for the Neolithic to Bronze Age migration is the "most accurate" we have (at least on this site) right now because it takes into account the ancient samples and the timing of the formation of the branches. Obviously some branches of R1a could have trickled in to Iran through entirely different routes. We need ancient DNA from Iran to better build up the information and help improve things. Now, referring to the R1a map again, obviously it isn't a hardline map, obviously various lineage groups can go off in their own direction, so groups in the Balkans could have jumped across to Anatolia, Caucasus populations with R1a could have had minor migrations into the Middle East and elsewhere. Certain branches of R1b (excluding the old basal ones) may have hitched a ride with the Iranian speakers as they made their way into Iran (which on the R1b map would look like they took a U-turn.)

In regards to these maps, they are not set in stone, they are subject to change and they will change with time as more data comes in. As Ygorcs says aDNA is proving to be a bit more solid than Y-DNA, obviously so as Y-DNA is uniparental and all it takes is one merchant, soldier of fortune, refugee, etc for a lineage to end up somewhere and expand. So far the aDNA that supports the more current accepted theories.

The Celtic end of the Indo-European tree is more likely nestled in central Europe in terms of its origin, this is seen in archaeological record of Bronze Age Europe. Obviously there was a later migration of Celts into Anatolia after some of these Gaulish tribes had been exhausted from warring with Greek kingdoms.

[Yetos]

Thanks for your reply, as you see in Table 1, these haplogroups have the highest frequency in Iran:
1. R1a-M198
2. R1b-L23
3. J2a-M530
4. J1c3
Is it true that J1 and J2 relate to Semitic, Elamite, Hurrian, ... people but R1a and R1b relate to Indo-Europeans? Who were these Indo-European people? Were they Indo-Iranians? Or Celtic people? Or proto-Indo-Europeans?
The interesting point is that Iranian Assyrians have the highest frequency of R1b-L23 (55.6℅).

about J2a and J2b don't be so sure,
The Lazarides 2016 and 2017 pappers were a surprise.
and maybe in future will find more surprises about these 2,
S Caucasos have more to tell us, and surprise us.

for example, why most of J2b is connected with East and asian populations,
there is a seperated, isolated, high peak pool, in Dalmatia.
or what common have Aegean with Urals?

link
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...o-major-clades

[Ygorcs]

Thanks for your reply, as you see in Table 1, these haplogroups have the highest frequency in Iran:
1. R1a-M198
2. R1b-L23
3. J2a-M530
4. J1c3
Is it true that J1 and J2 relate to Semitic, Elamite, Hurrian, ... people but R1a and R1b relate to Indo-Europeans? Who were these Indo-European people? Were they Indo-Iranians? Or Celtic people? Or proto-Indo-Europeans?
The interesting point is that Iranian Assyrians have the highest frequency of R1b-L23 (55.6℅).

There's no such a thing as a categorical association of any more basal clade of a haplogroup, let alone basal ones like R1a and R1b (both of which have at least 20,000 years old), with one and only language family. Y-DNA haplogroups don't "speak languages", and most of them are too old and too dispersed to be associated with just one language group.

R1b and R1a most certainly do not relate to Indo-Europeans as a whole. Some specific and more recent subclades of them may have expanded together with Indo-European languages (and I don't think generic R1b-L23 has a lot to do with that process, but rather specifically R1b-Z2103 and R1b-L51), but even that is just a correlation, not a necessary link between one and the other, and correlations aren't necessarily causation of course (people may shift their language, become assimilated into other society and so on - even without major genetic changes, see e.g. the case of Hungarians). There was no "R1b people" or "R1a people", but just people who carried much more of this or that haplogroup, and two peoples carrying much of the very same haplogroup can be and often are in fact very different from each other genetically.

The fact that modern Iranian Assyrians have the highest frequency of R1b-L23 also demonstrates another caveat: Y-DNA frequencies are extremely subject to genetic drift due to many things (genetic bottleneck, drift by relative isolation, random ascendancy of some lineages at the detriment of others i.e. social/sexual selection etc.). A former minor lineage may rise to very big frequencies in just a few centuries, but it won't change the fact that that lineage was not particularly related to that population in its origin. Without aDNA that caveat becomes even more problematic. Be careful when dealing with Y-DNA haplogroups, all sorts of wrong conclusions have been drawn from naive understandings of what they mean and how they work.

[spruithean]

Thank you including this, I didn't think to include this as a caveat. It is an excellent post.

[Ygorcs]

Ygorcs, do you really think that you are rejecting my theory by just saying "WE JUST DON'T KNOW"?!! If you know then you should say that for example these evidences show that the Germanic culture existed in this land before 500 BC or earlier, this thing that you don't know anything about it, doesn't mean that you can reject other theories.

You're splitting hairs. Firstly, it's not "we just don't know": it's "we don't have evidences for your claims, period". If you don't have enough evidence for a very unusual claim, then wait and search for evidences, and only after you find them create a fancy hypothesis to explain the evidences. That's how science works. If you think science is only about positing hypothesis no matter how unsubstantiated and fanciful they are, and not also about rejecting hypotheses based on thin air when in fact there is no evidence available, then you know nothing about science, man. Do you think scientists only make hypotheses, they don't equally reject possible hypotheses based on the fact that there's not enough evidence for those claims? Think again. You should first be a bit humble and read and learn, and then devise your own hypotheses when you can at least interpret the genetic and archaeological data correctly (for we have seen multiple times in these threads that you don't get even some very basic concepts and you sound confused and mistaken about many topics).

By the way, there is a lot of archaeological evidence of continuit from the Nordic Bronze Age to the early unquestionably (attested) Germanic cultures.

Where did you take this dating 500 B.C.? From the fact I told you Proto-Germanic is dated to roughly between 500 B.C.-1 A.D.? Really? That only proves once again to me how little you understand of the scientific matters you're trying to usein an ad hoc way to prove your "pet theory", while it's obvious that you aren't really interested in the history of those peoples as a whole, just as an instrument to prove that you're right (of course it must have nothing do with your being from Iran, but okay...). When we say Old Latin is dated to roughly between ~750 B.C. and ~200 B.C. we are obviously not claiming that before 750 B.C. no Latin-like language was spoken around Rome, and Old Latin can only have come from a place far away, or that Old Latin just "appeared" out of the blue. It's just an approximate period where a language with all the characteristics, because languages don't ever stop evolving, the transition from one language to the other is smooth and slow, with no clear rupture. Similarly, it is obvious that when Proto-Germanic is dated to ~500 B.C. at the earliest it does not mean that its earlier linguistic forms (pre-PGM) were not spoken and could not be found in the same territory or somewhere nearby. Portuguese came from Latin, but the evolution was in situ, and there was obviously linguistic and (partially) cultural continuity from the Latin-speaking times to the Portuguese-speaking times. Ditto for what must've happened from a pre-PGM language to a Proto-Germanic language: languages evolve gradually, Proto-Germanic appearing in ~500 B.C. does not mean that the Proto-Germanic-speaking culture and people also appeared in ~500 B.C. You're confusing everything, and these are really basic concepts.

[Ygorcs]

When you want to connect a people to modern Germanic people, it doesn't matter that they have Germanic haplogroups or not, but when I talk about the opposite thing, the same haplogroups can't be related to each other!!
It is just in your own imagination that R1a and R1b clades in Europe are quite distant from those found in Iran, genealogists have just found R1a-M17 and R1b-L23 in Iran, and we know 99℅ of R1a and R1b haplogroups in Europe are either the same or descend from these clades.
I don't know why you don't want to use any type of logic!

That's maybe because Spruithean understands Y-DNA phylogeny and ancient population genetics better than you and knows fully well that it isn't R1a-M17 (by the way R1a-M17 is not the same as R1a-M417, okay? R1a-M17 is basal R1a) and R1b-L23 are not particularly to Germanic people at all, but only specific and obviously more recent subclades: R1b-U106, R1a-Z284 and R1a-L664. And even that is just a correlation, not necessarily a categorical link, because Germanic people obviously neighbored other peoples and exchanged genes with them. What are the frequencies of those Y-DNA clades in Iran? I doubt they exist in non-negligible frequencies.

[spruithean]

In response to the the frequencies of those haplogroups in Iran, here is the table provided by the 2012 study cited earlier:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...-0041252-t001/
Upon further inspection of these, just for the fun of it I see I-M253 listed in the chart in somewhat low frequencies, in populations which are close to the Caspian sea, which did see a Kievan Rus' expedition. Just a fun bit of information, for me at least.

Lets discuss the continuity of the Nordic Bronze Age and its successors...

We see sites in the plains of Denmark and southern Sweden where the population had been quite stable, and this stability dates back to the Neolithic period, and this stability sort of plays into the arrival of the Corded Ware culture which probably brought the precursors to the Germanic languages. In the 2nd millennium BC we see an expansion of the Nordic BA as it spread toward the Elbe and Oder river estuaries, around 750 BC evidence shows that the culture in the area was shifting towards a more uniform state with the people in this cultural sphere inhabiting areas from southern Scandinavia, North Sea coast and the Baltic coast, in short from the Netherlands to the Vistula in Poland.

I would like to add to this that it has been shared on a genetics oriented blog where the autosomal DNA shows a stability from the Nordic Late Neolithic to the Nordic Bronze Age, and that it seems quite likely that Scandinavia did not experience a major population shift in either the Nordic LN or Nordic BA periods.

Around 250 BC it is understood that there was a probable expansion southwards that introduced five groups of "Germanic" dialects ranging from North, North Sea, Rhine-Weser, Elbe and East Germanic dialects. At the same time the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures were active, so there would have definitely been some interaction between these "Germanic" groups and their more Celtic neighbours. I recall that we find Celtic loanwords in proto-Germanic, at least along the Rhine, which was the natural border and the border the Romans used to attempt to delineate Celt from Germani.

It's not clear what Caesar first meant by Germani as the origin is unclear, however the border zones of the Celtic and Germanic cultures is fuzzy with each group sharing blatantly obvious similarities, and isn't exactly easy to differentiate Celt from Germani here simply based on archaeology alone (examples being the Gundestrup cauldron). It is theorized that these various blurred groups became fully Germanized through an elite-dominance system (which has parallels in England or the Oksywie transition to Wielbark in Poland, etc.). The Germanic tribes in the better documented Roman period were rather transitory, Eastern Germanic groups were the most migratory.

Western Germanic groups eventually settled down and adopted a more "stationary" lifestyle, while their Eastern counterparts stayed on the move. We know this because the Romans were very detail oriented in their organizations of various tribes as a method they could use for exploitation of differences and pick out certain leaders for their own benefit (the Roman Empire's benefit that is).

To add to the Gothic migrations and a lack of "their" DNA being left behind is easily explained as Ygorcs previously outlined, I would also like to add that we see a greater amount of tribal mixing in Central-East to East Europe with successive waves of incoming migratory tribal confederations, namely Huns, Avars, Alans, Magyars, etc. Interestingly enough, in a recently published paper we see a Hun with R-U106 Y-DNA, an Avar period individual with the Y-DNA haplogroup of I1 and a Magyar era individual with the Y-DNA haplogroup of I1 (however his autosomal DNA shows he was 67% East Asian and 33% European). Y-DNA isn't entirely reliable when searching for the remains of an ancient population as these lines can be replaced by other lineages and clearly one can be entirely autosomally different from their original Y-DNA forebear. Here is the study on the Huns, Avars and Conquerors in Hungary: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/597997v1.full

We actually have a Gepid-era sample from the Balkans that shows a distinct autosomal affinity towards Scythian populations as well as Germanic populations. This is reasonable as the Gepids were one of the important vassals of Attila the Hun. With some of the Gepid chiefs (after their most notable king Ardaric) had names of Turkic origin, namely Giesmus and Mundus. The Huns being a steppe confederation likely contained Scytho-Sarmatian elements which can account for the Gepid admixture of that sample. The Gepids also show in some burials Germanic clothing and Turko-Avar armour, which agrees with them being a vassal of the Huns and later subjugated by the Pannonian Avars.

I think I should add that it is easy to make the mistake of assuming that these cultures were set in stone in terms of the origins of the people, when we should be looking at it from a more fluid sense in that you can have an ethnic core of a group from which the group gets its name, but as you move out to the "periphery" we find more of a mixture of different groups living within a confederation of people, who have been assimilated fully or partially. This is obvious in the Huns and Magyars, Magyars especially who as they moved west from their homeland in the east they incorporated several different groups of people into their ranks, yet the Hungarian language persisted through what seems to be an elite-dominance system. Again this is seen in Anglo-Saxon England, Scandinavian settlement of Normandy (although the resident language was dominant), Kievan Rus' (Scandinavian elite initially)

EDIT: I would like to add the following link which shows the original East Germanic population is linked to Jutland Iron Age and Bell Beaker: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20705-6 , this is an mtDNA based study, however there is an instance of a Y-DNA I-L1237 (subclade of I-Z63) found in this location, and I know of at least one Longobard sample in Collegno (CL63), which the BAM file was analyzed through an independent curious mind who determined that this Collegno Longobard was I-Y2245, which is upstream of L1237. I will note that a decent amount of I1 was found in this Polish study which found the I-L1237, they also found several other branches of I1 in other archaeological periods. The I-L1237 sample stands out most for his dating in the Wielbark culture.

[Cyrus]

The R1a map you posted is not exactly "new", you know... And it's "controversial" to say the least.

What is controversial about it? As you read about haplogroup R1a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a "A large, 2014 study by Peter A. Underhill et al., using 16,244 individuals from over 126 populations from across Eurasia, concluded that there was compelling evidence that "the initial episodes of haplogroup R1a diversification likely occurred in the vicinity of present-day Iran."



As you see it show a direct migration from Iran to Scandinavia, before talking about other things, first you should show me a new study which fundamentally rejects Underhill's theory by of course using valid evidences. As I said in another thread we have also valid genetic evidences that haplogroup R1a-M17 existed in different parts of Iran from at least 6,000 years ago and it has still the highest frequency in this country.

[Cyrus]

As I see almost all researches in the recent years say the same thing about R1a, for example Dr. Csaba Barnabas Horvath says "Present day microsatellite variance would suggest the origin of European R1a somewhere around present day Turkey and Iran. This, according to its’ present distribution in Europe, with higher microsatellite variance in Central Europe than in Eastern Europe or Central Asia, would clearly suggest a route through Anatolia and the Balkans."

[markod]

Around 250 BC it is understood that there was a probable expansion southwards that introduced five groups of "Germanic" dialects ranging from North, North Sea, Rhine-Weser, Elbe and East Germanic dialects. At the same time the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures were active, so there would have definitely been some interaction between these "Germanic" groups and their more Celtic neighbours. I recall that we find Celtic loanwords in proto-Germanic, at least along the Rhine, which was the natural border and the border the Romans used to attempt to delineate Celt from Germani.

The Celtic loans are found in Norse as well. That's why continuity doesn't work, imho. There must have been massive language replacement by a group that had contacts with the Celts. The Jastorf model explains this better.

[nornosh]

Could you meet in the middle regarding the origin of Germanic peoples I mean not Scandinavia not Luristan but maybe Northern Caucasia(Pontic Steppe). The Akkadian vocabulary too could have entered Proto Germanic language by Semitic peoples of Caucasus in bronze age not directly by the Akkadian people.