Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Ancient Persians are from Southwest Iran, but if we speak about modern Persian speakers, they live in Southwest, Central, North and Northeast Iran.
..............
But the Persians invaded what is now Iran long after the Uruk culture was destroyed.
Seems to me like Omani Arabs and shirazi Persians first followed by Saudi Arabians (Arabian peninsulars) later.
No. Oman is part of the Arabian Peninsula. And Arab trading networks along the eastern coast of Africa are quite ancient. And none of these people destroyed the Uruk culture.
so what was the haplogroups of the Uruk
T, L, J1 ............?
Around 3100 BCE, all Sumerian colonies were suddenly destroyed, and contact ceased for several centuries between Sumer and surrounding regions. What happened ?
The events happen to coincide with the expansion of the Maykop culture (3700-2500 BCE) from the Northwest Caucasus to the Northeast and Central Caucasus, and the consequent displacement and expansion of the Kura-Araxes culture (3400-2600 BCE) from the Caucasus (Daghestan, Georgia, Armenia) toward eastern Anatolia, northern Syria, northern Mesopotamia and north-western Iran. Both Maykop and Kura-Araxes were Bronze Age cultures - the world's two oldest. Both produced an amazing number of metal objects (esp. Kura-Araxes) and metal weapons (esp. Maykop), although the two cultures were radically different in many other respects (burial style, settlement types, stratification of society, artistic style, etc.).
Overall, it seems that both J1 and J2 spread from mountainous regions of Anatolia, the Caucasus and western Iran (Zagros). I believe that J1 and J2 people were originally mountain herders who lived too high in the mountains to practice cereal farming. The original homeland of J1 and J2 might correspond to the region where goats, sheep, cattle and pigs were first domesticated (although R1b surely played a role in the domestication of cattle too, either jointly or independently).
Chiaroni et al. 2010 explain that in more detail. They estimate that J1-P58 started expanding from 7000 BCE, first colonising the Levant, Iraq, Ethiopia, Yemen and Oman. The colonisation of Arabia itself (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrein), northern Syria, Anatolia and Sudan took place during the Bronze Age, between 5000 and 3000 BCE. In light of this, if the timing is correct, it is very possible that J1-P58 was already present in both Sumer and Elam in the 5th and 4th millennium BCE.
It was reported as early as the reign of Shar-Kali-Sharri of Akkad (c. 2100 BCE) that the Gutians, semi-nomadic tribes from the central Zagros mountains, had invaded Mesopotamia, settled in Akkad and Sumer and even came to rule several city-states there. Mountain pastoralists have invaded the plains of the Fertile Crescent during most of ancient history. I believe that many mountain tribes in the Near East were J1 and J2, although in the case of the Gutians they might have been R1b people, as the Gutians were described as fair-skinned and light haired. Rather than an early Indo-European invasion, these Gutians might have been remnants of the R1b (P25, P297, M269 or M73) that did not migrate to the Pontic Steppe.
After giving this some thought...
let me propose that the Mespotamian Uruk civilization was destroyed by the invading Sumerians around 3100B.C. (ironically)
The Sumerians might represent a migration from the periphery of the Uruk influenced economy of the North Caucasus, specifically in the area in or just north of the Maikop cultural area. Having been influenced by, and in communication with North Mespotamian people, a combination of the volitility of the Yamnaya to the north of the Caucasus and the weakness of the core Uruk homeland was cause for the trans-caucasus inmigration into Mespotamia.
In this scenario, the Uruk and the earlier Halafian/Samarran/Ubaidian cultures could be described as Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Euphratean who were conquered by North Caucasian, non-IE Sumerians.
At some point, Sumerian culture imported as its chiefest gods four of the oldest of the PIE pantheon, as well as some cultural and liguistic attributes. This areal influence could have happened in the North Caucasus, Mespotamia, or both.\
**edit** It's worth noting that the Maikop disappears from history at this time. At this time Yamnaya expands in all directions which most likely caused a domino effect on neighboring cultures. So for several reasons seeing a population migrating out of the trans-Caucasus heading south makes sense. Linguistically and cranometrically.
This thread has been viewed 54971 times.