G2a-L140 in Nubia

Philjames100

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I noticed G2a-L140 (which appears to be an Indo-European lineage) was found in two Nubian samples from the Christian period:

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Sirak et al. 2021, Supplementary Information


From Eupedia:

“Contrarily to other branches of G2a, some subclades of G2a-L140 are found uniformly throughout Europe, even in Scandinavia and Russia, where Neolithic farmers had only a minor impact. More importantly, G2a-L140 and its subclades are also found in the Caucasus, Central Asia and throughout India, especially among the upper castes, who represent the descendants of the Bronze Age Indo-European invaders. The combined presence of G2a-L140 across Europe and India is a very strong argument in favour of an Indo-European dispersal.”

Haplogroup G2a (Y-DNA)


According to Gad et al. 2020, Yuya (c.1390 BC), the great-grandfather of Tutankhamun had Y-DNA G2a. Evidence suggests Yuya might have been of Mitanni or other Indo-European origin:

“The Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt suggests a foreign origin [for Yuya]. "it is conceivable that he had some Mitannian ancestry, since it is known that knowledge of horses and chariotry was introduced into Egypt from the northern lands and Yuya was the king's 'Master of the Horse'." It also discusses the possibility that Yuya was the brother of queen Mutemwiya, who was the mother of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and may have had Mitannian royal origins.”

Yuya - wikipedia


Amenhotep III had mtDNA H2b (Gad et al. 2020), which apparently came from the Yamnaya culture and spread into Asia with the Indo-Aryans. This supports the theory that Amenhotep's mother Mutemwiya was a Mitanni princess. Thirteen of the Nubian Christian period samples had the related mtDNA lineage H2a (Sirak et al. 2021), and H2 has been found in two Meroitic Nubian samples, c.350 BC (Cherifi et al. 2020).

“With a Late Glacial age estimate of 14 ka, H2 most likely originated in Eastern Europe or the Caucasus and is divided into three main branches: H2a (c.11 ka), H2b and H2c (both c.8ka ka, respectively). ... a H2a1 lineage from the Russian Steppe Eneolithic (is dated) to earlier than 6 ka, with other H2a1 lineages from the Armenian Chalcolithic and Ukrainian Eneolithic dating to c.6 ka. A basal H2 was also found in the Russian Steppe Eneolithic. ... After 5 ka, H2a appears in the Corded Ware in Poland and in the Bell Beaker culture of Germany, reaching western Europe with the Copper or Bronze Age at 4ka. Additional sequences of H2a have been retrieved from Bronze and Iron Age individuals from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. This earlier H2/H2a seems to be distributed around the Black Sea, before being dispersed from the Steppe with the Yamnaya pastoralist expansions across northern Europe.

H2b, on the other hand, is a minor branch. It contains several ancient samples from Russia, all basal to the rest of the branch, including one individual from the Yamnaya culture and one from the Late Bronze Age Srubnaya culture, both from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region, and five other Bronze Age samples from east of the Volga river: three from Sintashta and two from Krasnoyarsk. Also in a basal position, there are three modern Russian samples (two from the Altai region) and one Danish sequence.

Interestingly, while the vast majority (70%) of H2 modern sequences in our dataset are of European origin, H2b displays a strong South Asian component, with seven samples from Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. The newly published Sintashta and Middle Bronze Age Krasnoyarsk (Russian) sequences (Narasimhan et al. 2018), together with the previously released Yamnaya and Srubnaya, span a period from c.5 to 3.5 ka. These, plus the modern South Asian sequences, support our earlier suggestion that H2b was involved in movements east and southwards from the Pontic-Caspian region into South Asia (Silva et al. 2017), by documenting its progress eastwards across the Eurasian Steppe. The Sintashta Culture in the Ural Mountains, or a “Sintashta-derived” culture (such as the Andronovo), is thought to have expanded eastwards into Central Asia c.3.8 ka, reaching South Asia within several hundred years (Gimbutas 1963; Anthony et al. 1986) and, based on linguistic and archaeological evidence, they are thought to have been responsible for spreading the Indo-European language family across Central and South Asia (Parpola 2015)."


Silva et al. 2019



Adding further detail to the finding that 18th dynasty pharaohs Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun had Y-DNA R1b (R1b-L51 according to Nevgen). (Gad et al. 2020)
 
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Cool! (y) So Yuya and Tutankhamun are also my relatives.

That's not definite yet since we need the full and peer-reviewed paper.
 

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