What does "Iranian related ancestry" mean?

[Ygorcs]

I agree with you. But concerning the above statement (multiple waves from Iran or a very close southern region), I think I can say Grigoryev supported a not too far hypothesis, which I don't accept at all, by the way.

But how based on archaeogenetics was what he wrote? I guess not much if at all. The relationship between the steppe expansion and IE is a virtual consensu nowadays. The divergence that still exists is where Anatolian fits in that history and if its unusual position means an ultimate homeland more to the south in the Caucasus/Northernmost Zagros or not.

 

[MOESAN]

Indeed, I was always sure that Brazil was actually Irish and is definitely the Hy-Brazil Atlantic island of the Celtic legends.

I'm interested in surnames:
Brazil/Brassil would be a gaelic name of Scotland/Ireland (gaelic 'bres': "strife") and in France the surname Soudan is from the term 'sultan' = "sovereign", adopted from Turkic itself from Arabic, and not from the African country name Soudan (from arabic balad as-sūdaan "country of the blackmen" from aswad) = "black"
all that could be sources of inspirations for amateurs of phonetic mergers.

 

[Shahmiri]

Similar looking or sounding names or words are not convincing at all. They are coincidental. Was Canada named after the Kannada people of India? No. The papers you keep citing in regards to genetics and otherwise are not really supporting your theory at all, yet you somehow manage to ignore what is being laid out in these papers.

Ok, nothing could come from Iran in any period, similar names are just coincidental, those who lived in Iran had no language or culture, first they migrated to a mysterious land and learned language and then they came to Greece and Sicily, but no one should think any ancient or modern place name in these lands could be related to Iran, a land without any language.

 

[Shahmiri]

As I see you don't want to find historical facts but you just want to deny any relation between ancient cultures in Europe and Iran, whether there was Indo-European or non-Indo-European culture in Iran, it seems the most important thing is just to prove even one word in the European culture couldn't be related to Iran, I don't know what it can be called, geneticists talk about arrival of Iranian related ancestry into Europe in the Middle Bronze Age and no one wants to know what these people brought, it reminds me of this book: The Forbidden History Of Europe

Are the many Iranian words and customs of Europe purely coincidental, or are they the jetissoned refuse left behind by transitory tribes, whose names and lifestyles are lost to eternity?

 

[halfalp]

If a source claims that there is agreement that Linear A is likely Indo-European, it's most probably not a credible source. There is no such agreement. Also, there are some sentences in the language of Keftiu (Crete) in Egyptian documents, unlike Linear A they have of course been properly deciphered, and the sentences make no sense in any Indo-European language branch.

Even if they spoke an Indo-European language, it would still prove nothing. Iranian-related ancestry expansion does not follow the divergence and expansion of the Indo-European language neither chronologically (it started far before the PIE expansion in the LC/EBA, especially in South Asia and Central Asia), or geographically (it never impacted Europe beyond the regions in and around Greece and Italy, regions that, by the way, still had non-Indo-European languages even as late as the Iron Age).

There is also the issue that Iranian-related ancestry actually seems to have been quite diverse and have spread to other regions from quite genetically distinct populations of the Iranian Plateau. The latest genetic study on South Asia demonstrates that the kind of eastern Iranian-related ancestry that spread in South Asia was pretty divergent from the western Iranian ancestry that expanded the most into the Near East and thence to Europe, having split from that other branch about 10,000 years ago or even before that. It's unlikely that those two Iranian Plateau groups spoke the same language family, let alone the same language by the Copper Age or Early Bronze Age.

Do you have a clue on the difference between western and eastern iranian groups?

 

[Shahmiri]

Even if they spoke an Indo-European language, it would still prove nothing. Iranian-related ancestry expansion does not follow the divergence and expansion of the Indo-European language neither chronologically (it started far before the PIE expansion in the LC/EBA, especially in South Asia and Central Asia), or geographically (it never impacted Europe beyond the regions in and around Greece and Italy, regions that, by the way, still had non-Indo-European languages even as late as the Iron Age).

Please make it clear, do you believe these non-Indo-European languages in Greece and Italy which were spoken as late as the Iron Age, relate to Iranian related ancestry?

 

[Shahmiri]

There is no direct source of Iran_Neolithic ancestry into Sicily or anywhere else in Italy, it came in with peoples who had some Iran Neolithic related type ancestry.

Iran_Neolithic related ancestry doesn't mean "it came from Iran in the Neolithic era" but "it existed in Iran in the Neolithic era", when we know it didn't exist in Europe and even Anatolia in the Neolithic era, it means "it came from Iran to Europe in the Bronze Age or later".

 

[Palermo Trapani]

Shahmiri: As I have noted I have not in the past got into the Indo-European language or where was the homeland of the people who spoke PIE, but from what I do know, the oldest written evidence of an IE language are from the Hittite's in Anatolia and Northern Levant (Syria), these ancient Hittite texts date to around 1800 BC. So the problem is before the Hittites's, based on what I have picked up, there is no written record of IE or PIE language. So absent any hard evidence, everything Pre-Hittite civilization to me is just at best a "pure speculation/conjecture", I am not sure I would venture to call it an hypothesis because for it to be an hypothesis, that implies to me there is data available to test to support or reject said hypothesis. So to me that brings it back to pure conjecture or at best a theory of where the most likely place the first PIE was spoken It seems to me your threads, and I say that literally "threads" as there are several here that you have started, all seem to want everyone to say Iran was the original source of PIE. As I have stated several times, there is no evidence that we have available prior to the Hittite civilization to test it.

Now related to the Sicani, as someone who has a pretty good understanding of Mesolithic, Neolithic Bronze Age Sicily, etc, there is no extant written evidence of the Sicani language to my knowledge, unlike the Elymian and Siculi languages, which are Indo-european, the Sicani language has not been classified. So who knows maybe Sicani is like the Basque language which is on old European one not related to any other, or at least Scholars have not been able to link it to any other. Or it may be if written evidence of the Sicani language is found, it will be an IE language and similar to what the Elymians or Siculi spoke, or both. So if you are claiming Sicani is related to ancient Indo-Iranian based on similar words, as others have pointed out, that is a real, real, stretch.

So unless the archaeologist find evidence of one people somewhere who wrote their PIE language and there is DNA evidence from the same site and same period, then all this in my view is what I already stated, pure speculation.

 

[ratchet_fan]

Iran_Neolithic related ancestry doesn't mean "it came from Iran in the Neolithic era" but "it existed in Iran in the Neolithic era", when we know it didn't exist in Europe and even Anatolia in the Neolithic era, it means "it came from Iran to Europe in the Bronze Age or later".

Sorry to disappoint you but there were no migrations from Iran to Europe. Multiple migrations the other way did exist though.

 

[Shahmiri]

Sorry to disappoint you but there were no migrations from Iran to Europe. Multiple migrations the other way did exist though.

I know, there has never been any Iranian related ancestry in Europe, these geneticists just want to fool us. Is it really possible that some people from Iran migrate to Europe?

Archeologists also want to fool us, for example look at it:

The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily , By R. Ross Holloway: https://books.google.com/books?id=8_OCAgAAQBAJ

Page 27:

 

[Palermo Trapani]

Shahmiri: You seem to me to have a hard time comprehending what several people have said. It is clear that "some Iranian related ancestry" was part of the overall admixture of the Early European Farmer DNA makeup that came from Anatolia to Europe during the Neolithic. This 2019 paper, the most recent one I have scene on EEF DNA clearly notes the Anatolian Farmers got like close to 90% of their DNA from the earlier Anatolian Hunter Gathers + some 10% from an Iranian related ancestry. I don't think anyone has ever denied some Iran related DNA from Neolithic up to Bronze age as well, was part of the admixture of modern Europeans, or at least some Europeans. It is clear Iran related ancestry (or similar CHG type) entered all of Italy in the Neolithic period in Lazio/Rome (Antonio et al 2019) and Sicily in Bronze Age (Fernandes et al 2020) and I would expect once Neolithic samples from Sicily are published (VandeLoosdrecht et al 2020 pre-print paper) it will be established Iran related ancestry was in Sicily during the Neolithic similar to Lazio/Rome.

Feldman et al. 2019 linked below

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09209-7


Here is a quote from the paper above

"Accordingly, a mixture of AHG and Neolithic Iranians provides a good fit to AAF in our qpAdm modeling (χ2p = 0.296), in which AAF derive most of their ancestry (89.7 ± 3.9%) from a population related to AHG (Supplementary Tables 4 and 6). A simpler model without contribution from Neolithic Iranians (i.e., modeling AAF as a sister clade of AHG) shows a significant reduction in model fit (χ2p = 0.014). This suggests a long-term genetic stability in central Anatolia over five millennia despite changes in climate and subsistence strategy. The additional Neolithic Iranian-related ancestry (10.3 ± 3.9%) presumably diffused into central Anatolia during the final stages of the Pleistocene or early Holocene, most likely via contact through eastern Anatolia."

Speaking for me, I am not denying Iranian related ancestry from Neolithic to Bronze Age is part of the source ancestry of some, maybe many, Europeans. And while I can't speak for anyone else, I don't get the sense anyone else in this thread is either, I found found 95% of the people that post here are either well versed in what the research says or when presented with the research studies, tend to to accept what it states. That does not mean people don't critically read papers (they should) but while yes there are some folks with there own personal troll agendas, the mods and advisors here do a good job of keeping those folks in check.

Iran is a country with a great history going back to the Persians, and archaeologist document it has had humans living there going way, way back. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just ignorant in my view.

With all that said, your view that PIE homeland was ancient Iran is again something that is just your conjecture. Fine, you are entitled to it, as I have I said I am agnostic on where the PIE homeland was.

 

[MOESAN]

But how based on archaeogenetics was what he wrote? I guess not much if at all. The relationship between the steppe expansion and IE is a virtual consensu nowadays. The divergence that still exists is where Anatolian fits in that history and if its unusual position means an ultimate homeland more to the south in the Caucasus/Northernmost Zagros or not.

Gregoryev based himself only on archeology, artefacts, tools or weapons, if I remember well. Nothing genetic. It doesn't check the genetic modifications over time and places and doesn't seem in accord with the distribution of IE languages families, at first sight at least.

 

[MOESAN]

Iran_Neolithic related ancestry doesn't mean "it came from Iran in the Neolithic era" but "it existed in Iran in the Neolithic era", when we know it didn't exist in Europe and even Anatolia in the Neolithic era, it means "it came from Iran to Europe in the Bronze Age or later".

The problem is that for me, there were surely few pure "Iran Neol" auDNA people in Iran at Bronze Age and Later: the concerned paper about "Iranian Neol" in Western Mediterranea seems very weird to me: it seems they tried absolutely to distinguish Anatolian and Iranian later heritages as components, spite it seems that at Bronze and even before, there was an autosomal cline between West Anatolia and Iran, being no pop purely Anatolian Neol or Iran Neol, only some dominance of one of them at the extremities of the cline. My believing to date is that this famous "Iranian Neol" was send to Western Mediterranea by one or more ethny of Anatolia North Middle East, via Egea or Greece or CYprus (choice), not real geographic Iran. Maybe I am wrong?

 

[Ygorcs]

Please make it clear, do you believe these non-Indo-European languages in Greece and Italy which were spoken as late as the Iron Age, relate to Iranian related ancestry?

I can't be sure because we don't even know much about what those languages were like. But I do think some languages spoken from the Central-Eastern Mediterranean all the way to South Asia were originally spoken by Iran_Neolithic populations, however I do not think they all belonged to the same language family. My idea is that the Iranian Plateau of the early Neolithic era had a lot of linguistic diversity in consonance with its geographical diversity and very large territory. Among modern language families my main bets for language families derived from some initially mostly Iran_N people would be Dravidian (Eastern Neolithic Iranians) at least 1 of the Caucasian language families from Western Neolithic Iranians (I'd guess Northeast Caucasian, because it is the most likely to be distantly related to Hurrian-Urartian, which also had a reach that correlates strongly with the spread of Iran_N admixture in Anatolia and the Levant).

Homer claimed that besides the obviously Hellenic Achaeans and Dorians Crete had 2 indigenous populations: the Eteocretans (probably the descendants of the decadent Minoan society) and the Kydonians. Were they perhaps not just different ethnic groups, but different linguistically too, even speaking different language families? Crete seems to have received Bronze Age Anatolia influence (with much more CHG and Iran_N embedded into its genetic structure) via the Dodecanese islands, and Minoans had only a minority of that kind of ancestry. Who knows if they shifted their originally EEF language or not? I'd say it's definitely possible and plausible, but we can't say anything else.

I think it's likely that some Iran_N-related languages were spoken in the Mediterranean basin, but they had become mostly extinct by the Early Iron Age when most written documents started to be made.

 

[Ygorcs]

By the way what do you guys make of the North Picene language? It looks "Indo-European-ish" in some final syllables that are quite similar to typical Indo-European grammar particles, but AFAIK the roots are very non-Indo-European-ish. What is it then? Doesn't look Italic or Celtic.

mimniś erút gaareśtadeś rotnem úvlin partenúśpolem iśairon tetśút tratneši krúviśtenag trút ipiem rotnešlútúiś θalú iśperion vúlteś rotem teú aiten tašúrśoter merpon kalatneniś vilatoś paten arnúiś baleśtenag andś etšút iakút treten teletaúnem polem tišú śotriś eúś

 

[Ygorcs]

Do you have a clue on the difference between western and eastern iranian groups?

No, I don't. It's a totally novel idea espoused by the South Asian genetics paper that included an IVC "proper" sample. I'm not sure what they really meant by a split between western and eastern Neolithic Iranian groups, if it means a different admixture history after that split or just thousands of years of drift distancing them. Anyway, if they're right, scientists should perhaps try to differentiate the two groups better, because I think a split befo 10,000 years ago is more than enough reason to imply a distinct genetic and linguistic history for people descended from western or eastern groups instead.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/vagheesh/files/piis0092867419309675.pdf

 

[Angela]

The problem is that for me, there were surely few pure "Iran Neol" auDNA people in Iran at Bronze Age and Later: the concerned paper about "Iranian Neol" in Western Mediterranea seems very weird to me: it seems they tried absolutely to distinguish Anatolian and Iranian later heritages as components, spite it seems that at Bronze and even before, there was an autosomal cline between West Anatolia and Iran, being no pop purely Anatolian Neol or Iran Neol, only some dominance of one of them at the extremities of the cline. My believing to date is that this famous "Iranian Neol" was send to Western Mediterranea by one or more ethny of Anatolia North Middle East, via Egea or Greece or CYprus (choice), not real geographic Iran. Maybe I am wrong?

I think you're absolutely right.

By phrasing it the way they have they have confused a lot of people. We're talking about a movement of people into Europe in which the balance had shifted; that's all.

 

[ratchet_fan]

No, I don't. It's a totally novel idea espoused by the South Asian genetics paper that included an IVC "proper" sample. I'm not sure what they really meant by a split between western and eastern Neolithic Iranian groups, if it means a different admixture history after that split or just thousands of years of drift distancing them. Anyway, if they're right, scientists should perhaps try to differentiate the two groups better, because I think a split befo 10,000 years ago is more than enough reason to imply a distinct genetic and linguistic history for people descended from western or eastern groups instead.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/vagheesh/files/piis0092867419309675.pdf

It just seems like the cline between Anatolia_N and Iran_N extended further east than Western Iran. I think it makes sense tbh.

 

[ratchet_fan]

The problem is that for me, there were surely few pure "Iran Neol" auDNA people in Iran at Bronze Age and Later: the concerned paper about "Iranian Neol" in Western Mediterranea seems very weird to me: it seems they tried absolutely to distinguish Anatolian and Iranian later heritages as components, spite it seems that at Bronze and even before, there was an autosomal cline between West Anatolia and Iran, being no pop purely Anatolian Neol or Iran Neol, only some dominance of one of them at the extremities of the cline. My believing to date is that this famous "Iranian Neol" was send to Western Mediterranea by one or more ethny of Anatolia North Middle East, via Egea or Greece or CYprus (choice), not real geographic Iran. Maybe I am wrong?

I agree. Even if it came directly from Iran it would have been at least 40% Anatolia_N. The paper made it sound like Iran_N showed up without Anatolia_N.

 

[Shahmiri]

The problem is that for me, there were surely few pure "Iran Neol" auDNA people in Iran at Bronze Age and Later: the concerned paper about "Iranian Neol" in Western Mediterranea seems very weird to me: it seems they tried absolutely to distinguish Anatolian and Iranian later heritages as components, spite it seems that at Bronze and even before, there was an autosomal cline between West Anatolia and Iran, being no pop purely Anatolian Neol or Iran Neol, only some dominance of one of them at the extremities of the cline. My believing to date is that this famous "Iranian Neol" was send to Western Mediterranea by one or more ethny of Anatolia North Middle East, via Egea or Greece or CYprus (choice), not real geographic Iran. Maybe I am wrong?

Migration and invasion are two very different things, I certainly don't believe that in the Bronze Age some people from Iran invaded and conquered Greece and Italy but they migrated, it is possible that they were forced to migrate and some other people occupied their land.

The most important point is that it is "Iranian related ancestry", not "Anatolian related ancestry" or "Steppe related ancestry" and I don't know why you want to read it another thing, one thing is certainly true and that it is, unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt, ..., in the 3rd, 2nd and 1st millennium BC different people lived in Iran, for example we read about Parhasi (Marhasi) in the east of Elam just in the 3rd millennium BC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marhasi), Sumerian, Akkadian and Elmaite sources say nothing about it in the 2nd millennium, in fact another people live in this region in this period, but Strabo mentions the people of Parrhasii in the northeast of Iran, near to Mukana (Mugan plain) in the southeast Caspian region: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/11G*.html and then we see Parrhasia, form ancient Greek πᾶς (pâs, “all, every”) +‎ ῥῆσις (rhêsis, “speech”) +‎ -ῐ́ᾱ (-íā), as ancient region in south Arcadia, Greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhasia_(Arcadia)