spruithean
Regular Member
- Messages
- 434
- Reaction score
- 118
- Points
- 43
My sources about ancient R1a-M17 are just in Persian, I mentioned one of them in this thread: https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/38596-Wrong-Migration-map-of-haplogroup-R1a-in-Eupedia!
I don't believe that Iran was the original land of proto-Indo-Europeans but just the proto-Germanic people, in all probability PIE people originally lived in Anatolia (modern Turkey). Why you think PIE culture relates to R1a? The earliest known PIE people, like Hittites, had no R1a.
Do you know if your source has published their work outside of Iran for peer-review? Do you have a link that works for the PDF document? If you have the document do you care to translate any conclusions it made or any abstracts or important data and share it with the forum? I would very much like to see ALL the data of this study. If it hasn't been published for peer-review that is VERY suspect and just bad science. I've read the brief overview that your link gives and it's a very broad statement to say that "M198/M17" is associated with "Aryan peoples" when the important lineage found in these regions of Z93 derived, which occurred MUCH later than the formation of M198/M17 (YFull estimates 14,000 YBP, not Bronze Age), Z93 (YFull estimates 5000 YBP, Bronze Age).
I don't think R1a is strictly PIE, I think PIE contained a lot more lineages, much like modern groups of people. Obviously new lineages get introduced, do better than others, etc. There was a recent paper (which I don't remember the date of, however it was only 1-3 years ago) that proposed that Anatolian languages split off early enough from the main root of PIE that Anatolian languages had more of a sister relationship to the rest of PIE. Mathieson et al 2017 had a very interesting conclusion regarding autosomal ancestral components in various parts of Europe and the Middle East (and elsewhere) that support this early split of Anatolian. Uniparental markers are not the main part of aDNA, autosomal DNA also helps provide a better picture and right now it is fairly clear what likely was going on at this point in time.
What we've been talking about with R1a is about ancient samples and how they don't support modern distribution of the clades that are common across Eurasia (ignoring early basal offshoots). We also briefly discussed R1b, which again has varying basal offshoot lineages and specific mutation defined descending lineages with a large spread across the world...
Moving on...
So you believe that Iran is the homeland of the proto-Germanic people? Okay, let me dig into this a bit here, prehistoric Scandinavia most likely did not see a large population shift. This is reflected by the rather high rates of similarity between the autosomal profiles of ancient samples from the Nordic Neolithic and Bronze Ages. If there was a migration from some part of Iran of these proto-Germanic people don't you think for a lack of a better term, an Iranian-derived autosomal component would be found in ancient Scandinavian samples? I would think there would if such a migration took place. Guess what? No component or anything similar to what we know about the various prehistoric populations of Iran shows up (Iran has multiple components as Iran experienced a rather significant population shift in the Late Neolithic).
This is what I already brought up with a continuity of people (not culture) in Southern Scandinavia leading up to the eventual rise of Germanic culture/language. Ygorcs has gone over proto-Germanic and related topics multiple times, but just to throw it in here again, historical linguists have noted the material and social continuity connecting the cultures of the Nordic BA to the pre-Roman Iron Age in N. Europe and this has some implications on the stability and development of the Germanic languages. The current consensus is that the 1st Germanic Sound Shift, the probable defining mark in the development of PGmc happened as late as 500 BCE. I'm not sure how many more times this needs to be said.
Besides, we have ancient DNA from Germanic areas from Migration Period era graves that show most had a strong genetic similarity to Western/Central Europeans and Northern Europeans (the women in some studies showed diverse origins from beyond Central Europe, notably in the Balkans and the eastern part of the steppe close to Kazakhstan.)
Well, THERE you have what's controversial about it. Underhill's conclusions never included a "direct migration from Iran to Scandinavia". You're putting words in his mouth, that's very intellectually dishonest. He just makes a simple claim, based on a sound even if honestly not very reliable premise: if most BASAL CLADES of R1a are found in Iran (btw do you know what basal means? Sometimes I doubt it as I read your answers), then the INITIAL DIVERSIFICATION of R1a (which happened DOZENS OF THOUSANDS of years ago and most definitely had nothing to do with the Copper Age/Early Bronze Age PIE expansion many millennia later) must've STARTED in Iran (started, you know, it obviously does not mean that the entire process of expansion of R1a clades and the appearance of new mutations defining new subclades happened exclusively within Iran outward to other regions, followed by a big stasis for more than 10,000 years, that's an absurdly simplistic view of how population movements and admixture events take place in real life).
Now, what's the evidence for a direct migration from Iran to Scandinavia? The map shows RECENT AND ALREADY DISTINCT CLADES OF R1A-M417 (R1a-M417 is NOT the same as R1a-M17, okay? M417 appeared ~10,000 years after R1a-M17) like Z284, Z282 and Z94 moving from the very same land where R1a and R1a-M17 are both assumed to have appeared, as if in total isolation and stasis for many millennia, DIRECTLY to where they were found in higher frequencies much later, in recent historic times. That's so simplistic and so unlikely thay the map doesn't even merit much discussion. This hypothesis is now even weaker because of all the aDNA evidences showing that R1a was already widespread in Eastern Europe and North Asia millennia before even M417 appeared (and certainly well before PIE "proper" was spoken), and proving that specific clades, including the most important M417, were already present in those regions, far away from Iran, since a very long time ago, so they might have developed there from earlier R1a clades, or they might have migrated to those areas very early (so, nothing to do with the PIE expansion). In any case, this map is really naive: it imagines, with no proof, that, because basal clades of R1a are found in Iran, then it did not just start to diversify there, its entire phylogeny must then have arisen there, from R1a to R1a-M17 to R1a-M417, and it only expanded in the Bronze Age with the specific clades derived from M417 going into separate directions right to where they are found much later, with no intermediary homelands for some 15,000 years between R1a and R1a-M417. How likely is that? Not at all. And it's also not corroborated by the aDNA records.
You keep talking of the older R1a-M17 in a quite suspicious Iranian study that nobody ever heard about in any other scientific publication (you yourself told me that), and which claims controversial things like "R1a (as a whole) is associated with Aryan peoples". R1a-M17, okay? Now we are here talking about aDNA samples from the Pontic-Caspian steppe with R1a-M417 specifically only a few centuries after M417 is supposed to have been born, and aDNA samples already with Z93 and other subclades derived from M417 in Eastern Europe and North-Central Asia.
Honestly, you either don't understand this subject enough to notice the huge holes in your claims, or you just don't want to understand, because that would mean having to change your cherished "theory" accordingly to fit the evidences (which is what everyone with a scientifically oriented mind does, but not people obsessed with a pet hypothesis).
I'll just quote this to echo it, since I'm a bit bored of rehashing the same information over and over. Basal lineages of R1a are an entirely different situation to lineages associated with M417. R-M420* is very different from R-M417, so let's look at why R-M420* (note the asterisk) is not the same as R-M459 and why R-M420* (note the asterisk) cannot be the ancestor of R-M459 (which is the node that branches into R-M459*, R-YP1272 and R-M198/M17)
Imagine R-M420 as the father of a family if you will, he has three sons their names are M420*, YP4141 and M459 because these are siblings they cannot be the parents of one another. M420* is an early offshoot of the M420 lineage that is negative for defining SNPs that define YP4141 and M459 lineages. M420* is a separate lineage, related to the others but not the ancestor of the others, the fact that it is found in Caucasus and Iran (it's also found in Europe BTW) doesn't really mean much compared to where the ancient DNA is found and STR diversity is not a strong argument. STRs are difficult to calculate dates accurately with (they are rarely accurate).
Also, just because we feel like citing Wikipedia every now and then in this thread:
"R1a-M198: is common in Iran, more so in the east and south rather than the west and north; suggesting a migration toward the south to India then a secondary westward spread across Iran.[131] Whilst the Grongi and Regueiro studies did not define exactly which sub-clades Iranian R1a haplogrouops belong to, private genealogy tests suggest that they virtually all belong to "Eurasian" R1a-Z93.[132] Indeed, population studies of neighbouring Indian groups found that they all were in R1a-Z93.[133] This implies that R1a in Iran did not descend from "European" R1a, or vice versa. Rather, both groups are collateral, sister branches which descend from a parental group hypothesized to have initially lived somewhere between central Asia and Eastern Europe.[134]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_peoples#Genetics (second bolding emphasis mine)
Look from LGM to spread of IE languages theres 15,000 years or so, so why should we think in this long time there could have been only handful of migrations of peoples in Central Asia, Iranian plateau, Pontic steppe, Asia minor, Europe. There could have been many migrations, many extinctions of old lineages which left the ancient samples, but we should focus the current major migrations from Bronze age which left the biggest mark on these regions, for exmple if we see J2 lineages they don't exists in large percentages in Neolithic turkey, Europe but after bronze age they become more dominant yet they were present in neolithic too but in minuet numbers.
Certainly, I agree. This is a huge span of time and it doesn't take very much for entire lineages or groups of people to disappear (sort of why autosomal DNA is important in ancient DNA). I recommend reading all the studies one can and rather than jumping to any conclusions weighing the evidence. Why R1a became so heavily discussed in this thread is because of the confusion with nomenclature we've ended up discussing various lineages many of which are basal lineages which are quite a bit different from the important lineages that we find today from Europe to India. J2 is one of those confusing ones, we expected to find it in high numbers in Early Farmer samples and instead we found rather low numbers. There are definitely a lot of theories flying around , I think eventually one of theories or a combo of the theories will be correct.
Is it true that the oldest samples of R1a-M17 have been found in Germany? Is it possible that they were actually the Germanic people who migrated to Iran in the 3rd millennium BC?
Who ever said that R-M17 was found in Germany? Are we confusing nomenclature yet again? Markod has just linked that one of the earliest samples was found at Lake Baikal in Siberia.
Wait so the Germanic people migrated to Iran? Or they migrated out of Iran? Or they did both? What are you saying exactly? What tribe moved to Iran? Germanic people in the 3rd millennium BC?! What? Anachronistic much? The proto-Germanic language hadn't even developed yet and Germanic people we mentioned much much later in historical documents. Proto-Germanic language developed (and developed as late as 500 BC) out of pre-Proto-Germanic in southern Scandinavia and it's possible that IE was brought to southern Scandinavia with the Corded Ware culture in the 3rd millennium BC.