Does genetics prove Iran/Armenia is the original land of Indo-Europeans?

Strabo lived in the 1st century BCE-1st century CE. Alexander the Great lived in the 4th century BCE. Here is a map of Alexander's empire at its greatest extent.

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Why would it be surprising that Greek armor and burials would be found in Iran after Alexander?

Conquest of an empire is one thing and migration from a land to another land, is another thing. Persians also conquered a large part of Asia, Europe and Africa but it doesn't mean Persians migrated to those lands too.
 
This could be mix of local WHG and Steppe people but because Steppe admixture is itself very mix so the bias is in favour of local WHG component, are you getting what I am saying parts of Yamnaya's components could easily be confused with local WHG component hence give you much lesser values.
Yes, although the specific mix fits more closely with Iberian ATP3, which itself fits more closely with prior Steppe-infused Balkanic samples. This suggests to me that Steppe-infused Chalcolithic Balkanic people most likely didn't all 'die in childhood, restricted to the tell towns', but spread across Southern Europe - into both Iberia and Italy - some time in advance of Yamnayans. And that these were predominantly the people with whose descendants later North Levantine immigants admixed in Southern Italy.
 
Conquest of an empire is one thing and migration from a land to another land, is another thing. Persians also conquered a large part of Asia, Europe and Africa but it doesn't mean Persians migrated to those lands too.

We know that there were Greek colonies in different areas of the Black Sea and in the Middle East. Additionally, conquering armies would have brought "hangers on" and established governments would have brought officials, courtesans, sometimes wives, etc.
 
It can be - anything is possible. But is it likely that real ancestry is the total opposite of what the genetics indicate? No.

I've just checked up on the history, and find that it doesn't look wrong at all:
1. In the early 1st millennium BC, Italy was influenced by the Orientalising Period, in which Assyrian, Syrian and Phoenician culture moved in - my best-fit model estimates the greatest degree of Eastern admixture as coming from Northern Levant.
2. The Assyrian empire of that era extended from Northern Levant almost to South Urmia, which is where my Iranian sample from that same era was located, and not far from where my Armenian samples were located only a couple of hundred years earlier.
3. In that same period, bilingual inscriptions have been found in Phoenician and an IE language in Neo-Hittite sites in the Northern Levant.
4. The earliest-attested Italic dates to the Orientalising Period.

The autosomal closest fit actually matches surprisingly well with this.

We have no firm evidence where the Italic languages originated, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that they migrated over to Italy with these 'orientals'.
Yes everyone in the Middle East all at once for some reason thought to themselves: "LETS GO TO ITALY" and thus they went and all was good. Let's not forget that ashkenazim are from Armenia in eastern turkey.. elhaik had the same conclusion!! Brilliant man btw.

Now go off and spread the word about them dang ol I-talens or them no good dang-ol Jews...better yet, get a life or at the very least spread your dumb agendas in other forums.
 
i just dont see how as its the iranians or armenians who have R haplogroups.

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if indo european languages were oroginally spoken by sais groups then we would see more J along the paternal line.

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It can be - anything is possible. But is it likely that real ancestry is the total opposite of what the genetics indicate? No.

I've just checked up on the history, and find that it doesn't look wrong at all:
1. In the early 1st millennium BC, Italy was influenced by the Orientalising Period, in which Assyrian, Syrian and Phoenician culture moved in - my best-fit model estimates the greatest degree of Eastern admixture as coming from Northern Levant.
2. The Assyrian empire of that era extended from Northern Levant almost to South Urmia, which is where my Iranian sample from that same era was located, and not far from where my Armenian samples were located only a couple of hundred years earlier.
3. In that same period, bilingual inscriptions have been found in Phoenician and an IE language in Neo-Hittite sites in the Northern Levant.
4. The earliest-attested Italic dates to the Orientalising Period.

The autosomal closest fit actually matches surprisingly well with this.

We have no firm evidence where the Italic languages originated, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that they migrated over to Italy with these 'orientals'.
Yet it's possible IE Italics moved in from Balkans or the Alps when Phoenicians were moving with lower intensity to Sicily etc.
 
Kind of. To my understanding, it proves that there was some sort of proto-Indo-European speaking people (as Reich calls them, the pre-proto Indo Europeans) in Armenia/western Iran. According to Reich, the Proto-Anatolians moved westward from there (I seem to recall reading somewhere that it's thought that the Proto-Anatolians might have been around Lake Van before moving westward, but I'm not sure why the reason for this is), and the rest moved northward and mixed with EEHG to become the Yamnaya, who then split and became all non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans.

I have a few issues with this, however. A) Arguably, this does prove that Armenia/Iran is the Indo-European homeland, and really, shouldn't Reich's Pre-Proto-Indo Europeans be called Proto-Indo-Europeans? The "pre-proto" part bothers me, especially because it's still commonly held that the Anatolians (Hittites, Luwians, etc) were Indo-Europeans, just a branch that split off very early. B) While they've found some skeletons in Armenia from the Middle/Late Bronze Age with European Steppe ancestry (which suggests that the people were Yamnaya-derived) there's 1) no reason to assume that these people were Armenian-speakers and not another group, such as Cimmerians and 2) there's a lack of Steppe-derived ancestry in your modern Armenian, which means that whoever these Steppe people were, if they were the ones to introduce the Armenian language to the region, they were either a very, very small group or somehow introduced their language without mixing with the native populations (who modern Armenians are descended from) and then died off/disappeared/migrated elsewhere. If they migrated elsewhere, you would assume that there would be an Armenian language or Armenian names appearing somewhere else than NE Turkey/modern Armenia. The only thing I can think of is perhaps these people moved slightly west to Cappodocia or SE Anatolia because there are some ancient names there that could potentially be of Armenian origin, such as Mount Erciyes (Mt. Argeus/Harkasos), Haria, Melia, Togarma, Armatanna, Aravanna, etc. But some/all of these names could also be from Anatolian IE or from some other IE language.

I just don't understand why we still call the Yamnaya the Proto-Indo Europeans and the European Pontics the Urhemeit, when clearly it had a preceding culture. Seems like it's kind of moving the goalposts a bit. In the case of Armenians and Iranians, it makes more sense to me that they just stayed in the same general region than went all the way around the Black and Caspian Seas, respectively. And as I said, I know that modern-Armenians are more similar to EBA samples that they've found in Armenia than they are to some MLBA samples, which have Steppe ancestry. I don't know much about Iranian genetics though.

Do you have any thoughts on Sergent's Zagros theory?


Thank You. "Pre-PIE" (or Proto-Proto-PIE) seems quite a dubious characterization, simply because we don't have a valid means of distinguishing between pre-PIE and PIE. As you mention in your post, early or later splitting can always account for both genetic and linguistic anomalies which appear not to adhere to rigid theoretical models, which make some ideal assumptions. (Differential splitting is also what makes linguistic analysis near useless, when it comes to the question of PIE). To be fair, you have to consider that researchers like Reich are under immense pressure and quasi-lobbying from those with ethnocentric tendencies. Because saying your ancient ancestors were Armenians/Iranians doesn't go too well over the dinner table. But, indeed, the early PIE populations are reflected by the signature proportion of Anatolian and Iranian/CHG, which formed at a front at the nexus between the S. Caucuses, NW Iran and E Turkey, sometime between the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. The Iranian/South Caucasus homeland is extraordinarily sound. :)
 

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