Stanislav Grigoriev’s “Ancient Indo-Europeans”

I had seen bits and pieces of SA Grigoriev’s ideas in various publications, but it’s nice to see this work in its entirety (although the reproduction of the maps doesn’t seem to be very good). From the conclusion:

The Indo-European problem is a complex one, combining linguistic and archaeological evidence. In linguistics Gamkrelidze and Ivanov have suggested a system and a fundamental solution. Convincing linguistic models uniquely localising the Indo-European homeland in the Balkans, or even in the North Pontic area or Central Europe, are lacking.

Often criticism of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov has been reduced to no more than a statement that archaeological evidence in favour of it is absent. As we see, this does not correspond to reality (and, by the way, did not correspond to reality before the publication of this book).

There are a number of facts to prove the connections of North Eurasian and European cultures with the Near East, whilst convincing examples to demonstrate the reverse connections do not now exist.

There is a purely historiographic tradition, not substantiated by facts. For the long years this tradition flourished it proved impossible to flesh it out with arguments, although skilled scholars attempted to do so. Therefore, hypotheses about the northern origin of the Indo-Europeans have practically nothing which can be used today in support, either linguistic or archaeological.

The archaeological model suggested here is not complete in many respects. Many parallels may raise doubts, as it has not always been possible to back them up with completely identical artefacts. But in the consideration of distant migrations and subsequent cultural transformations, such complete similarity may be wanting.

Interestingly, Grigoriev’s reconstruction does not seem to agree with G&I’s model in all its details, as the latter suggested the Halafian culture as the archaeological manifestation of the Proto-Indo-European community (picture from Wikipedia on the right).

For reasons of my own (i.e., finding the hiding place of the “West Asian” autosomal component which was introduced to Europe by Indo-Europeans) it might be worth seeking a more “eastern” PIE homeland.

In any case it would be wonderful to get some archaeogenetic data from the Near East. Irrespective of one’s opinion on the IE problem, most everyone would agree that this is a critical region for understanding the prehistory of Eurasia.

Stanislav Grigoriev’s “Ancient Indo-Europeans”

The Bronze Age in Caucasus

Uruk migrants in the Caucasus

According to the text Uruk Migrants in the Caucasus by Konstantine Pitskhelauri the period between the 4th and 3rd millennia B.C. was the time of great cataclysmic events in the Caucasus; its cultural advances were influenced by changes within its boundaries as well as interactions with the outside world.

At the end of the 5th and in the 4th millennia B.C. large masses of Uruk migrants had settled in the South, and later in the North Caucasus. Assimilation of cultures of the newcomers and residents, as a result, caused their “explosive” development paving the way to the formation of the Maikop culture in the North Caucasus and the Kura-Araxes culture in the South Caucasus.

The most significant occurrence of this epoch was the appearance of a large number of peoples of Mesopotamian cultural identity who contributed to speeding up the rhythm of its cultural development, adding “explosive” character to its progress.

During this period the South Caucasus experienced two powerful waves of Middle Eastern expansion: the first at the time of Late Neolithic culture of Sioni in the 4th-5th millennia B.C., and the second at the period of Tsopi culture in the Late Neolithic Age, at the end of the 5th and the first half of the 4th millennium B.C., which is known as the Uruk expansion era. Later, in the second half of the 4th and throughout the 3 rd millennium B.C., during the Early Bronze Age the Kura-Araxes culture of the Caucasus spread throughout the greater part of the Caucasus, Eastern Anatolia, northern parts of Iran, Middle East and even Europe.

In this context, recent archaeological finds in the Southern and Northeastern Caucasus gave yet another, entirely new nuance to scientific researches into the ancient past of the Caucasus. They made it clear that incursion of these peoples into the Caucasus was not a onetime event, but continued for a significantly long period. Reasoning by the topography of the archaeological finds in Mesopotamia, it becomes clear that large masses of migrant settlers from that area did not move straight along the route to Transcaucasia in order to reach the destination faster. Actually, they settled down in every region of the Caucasus, in the mountains and flatlands, in areas where they could maintain a lifestyle familiar to them.

It seems obvious that from that period on, two cultures of the Caucasus that had been at different stages of development could coexist peacefully on the basis of their mutual participation in metallurgical manufacturing; it was this type of communal economy that gave impetus to a speedy development of the local culture. This is well illustrated by the metallurgical items of the Kura-Araxes culture, which is significantly more advanced in comparison with the preAeneolithic culture.

At present the situation has changed drastically. On the basis of a whole series of radiocarbon analyses, it has been proved [15; 82] that burial mounds of the ancient pit-grave culture are of a significantly later period in comparison with Maikop archaeological sites. This allows scholars to assume that the tradition of building this type of burial mounds emerged precisely in the Maikop culture. Its ties with Levant and Mesopotamian antiquities point to its earlier origin [15: 97].

At the same time, a whole range of chronological data obtained with radiocarbon analysis has established that the settlements and burial mounds of the South Caucasus containing Uruk artefact are coexistent with the Maikop culture [13: 149-153] and, accordingly, the ancient pit-grave culture and its burial mounds belong to a later period.

Therefore, today we cannot possibly ascribe the emergence of this kind of burial mounds in the Maikop culture as well as similar contemporaneous sites in the South Caucasus to the influence of the steppe zone cultures. Moreover, there were no adverse conditions that would have prevented emergence of this type of burial mounds in the Caucasus itself

UPDATE: Also relevant a book chapter on The Caucasus – donor and recipient of materials to and from the ancient near east, and a talk by EN Chernykh in a recent conference on the topic of Caucasus as the Bridge Between the Settled Farming and the Pastor.

Uruk migrants in the Caucasus

The Caucasus – donor and recipient of materials to and from the ancient near east

Origins of the Maykop phenomenon

Origins of the Maykop phenomenon by Mariya Ivanova seems to argue against the “Uruk expansion from Mesopotamia” hypothesis and point towards Central Asia, with the author finding parallels of the Maykop culture in the Kura valley and Lake Urmia area. That would certainly fit the bill of a more “eastern” PIE homeland if we accept, as many do, an IE identity for at least elements within the Maikop culture.

Graves and settlements of the 5th millennium BC in North Caucasus attest to a material culture that was related to contemporaneous archaeological complexes in the northern and western Black Sea region. Yet it was replaced, suddenly as it seems, around the middle of the 4th millennium BC by a “high culture” whose origin is still quite unclear.

This archaeological culture named after the great Maikop kurgan showed innovations in all areas which have no local archetypes and which cannot be assigned to the tradition of the Balkan-Anatolian Copper Age.

The favoured theory of Russian researchers is a migration from the south originating in the Syro-Anatolian area, which is often mentioned in connection with the socalled “Uruk expansion”. However, serious doubts have arisen about a connection between Maikop and the Syro-Anatolian region. The foreign objects in the North Caucasus reveal no connection to the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris or to the floodplains of Mesopotamia, but rather seem to have ties to the Iranian plateau and to South Central Asia.

Recent excavations in the Southwest Caspian Sea region are enabling a new perspective about the interactions between the “Orient” and Continental Europe. On the one hand, it is becoming gradually apparent that a gigantic area of interaction evolved already in the early 4th millennium BC which extended far beyond Mesopotamia; on the other hand, these findings relativise the traditional importance given to Mesopotamia, because innovations originating in Iran and Central Asia obviously spread throughout the Syro-Anatolian region independently thereof.

Origins of the Maykop phenomenon

The Maikop Singularity

According to The Maikop Singularity: The Unequal Accumulation of Wealth on the Bronze Age Eurasian Steppe? by Philip L. Kohl the Maikop parallels with northern Mesopotamia or, more broadly, with the ancient Near East, and the seemingly consistent and growing number of calibrated radiocarbon determinations (currently more than 40 such dates; E. N. Chernykh personal communication) not only date the Maikop phenomenon more securely but also suggest some connections -albeit hard to specify- with larger historical processes, such as the north Mesopotamian, and later Uruk expansion into eastern Anatolia.

The calibrated radiocarbon dates suggest that the Maikop culture seems to have had a formative influence on kurgan burial rituals and what now appears to be the later Pit-Grave (Yamnaya) culture on the Eurasian steppe (Chernykh and Orlovskaya 2004a: 97).

In other words, the fact that such a symbolic Mesopotamian practice is attested in the richest known “royal,” or chiefly, Maikop burial must have significance not only for the earlier dating of the Maikop culture, but also for determining aspects of its cultural affiliation and formation.

Other scholars have focused on the northern steppe component of the Maikop culture. … V. A. Trifonov (2004: 58-60) in a reappraisal and comparison of the so-called royal tomb at Arslantepe with the Novosvobodnaya-phase Maikop burials, reverses the arrow of cultural transmission and borrowing and argues for an eastern Anatolian Chalcolithic origin of the Novosvobodnaya tombs, such as documented at Korucutepe. Thus, if Trifonov is correct, and if the calibrated radiocarbon dates securely place Maikop chronologically before the emergence of the Pit-Grave (Yamnaya) horizon, then somewhat counterintuitively, the origins of raising large barrows or kurgans above the broad, flat expanse of the steppes may not have been indigenous but may have been derived from eastern Anatolia or the northern periphery of the greater ancient Near East.

It is probably futile to seek a single source from which the Maikop culture emerged.

The Maikop Singularity

Stanislav Grigoriev’s “Ancient Indo-Europeans”

I had seen bits and pieces of SA Grigoriev’s ideas in various publications, but it’s nice to see this work in its entirety (although the reproduction of the maps doesn’t seem to be very good). From the conclusion:

The Indo-European problem is a complex one, combining linguistic and archaeological evidence. In linguistics Gamkrelidze and Ivanov have suggested a system and a fundamental solution. Convincing linguistic models uniquely localising the Indo-European homeland in the Balkans, or even in the North Pontic area or Central Europe, are lacking.

Often criticism of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov has been reduced to no more than a statement that archaeological evidence in favour of it is absent. As we see, this does not correspond to reality (and, by the way, did not correspond to reality before the publication of this book).

There are a number of facts to prove the connections of North Eurasian and European cultures with the Near East, whilst convincing examples to demonstrate the reverse connections do not now exist.

There is a purely historiographic tradition, not substantiated by facts. For the long years this tradition flourished it proved impossible to flesh it out with arguments, although skilled scholars attempted to do so. Therefore, hypotheses about the northern origin of the Indo-Europeans have practically nothing which can be used today in support, either linguistic or archaeological.

The archaeological model suggested here is not complete in many respects. Many parallels may raise doubts, as it has not always been possible to back them up with completely identical artefacts. But in the consideration of distant migrations and subsequent cultural transformations, such complete similarity may be wanting.

Interestingly, Grigoriev’s reconstruction does not seem to agree with G&I’s model in all its details, as the latter suggested the Halafian culture as the archaeological manifestation of the Proto-Indo-European community (picture from Wikipedia on the right).

For reasons of my own (i.e., finding the hiding place of the “West Asian” autosomal component which was introduced to Europe by Indo-Europeans) it might be worth seeking a more “eastern” PIE homeland.

In any case it would be wonderful to get some archaeogenetic data from the Near East. Irrespective of one’s opinion on the IE problem, most everyone would agree that this is a critical region for understanding the prehistory of Eurasia.

Stanislav Grigoriev’s “Ancient Indo-Europeans”

Origin of Early Transcaucasian Culture (aka Kura-Araxes culture)

Origins, Homelands and Migrations: Situating the Kura-Araxes Early Transcaucasian ‘Culture’ within the History of Bronze Age Eurasia by Philip L. Kohl summarizes current understanding of the emergence, nature and subsequent southwestern and southeastern spread of the early Transcaucasian (eTC) or Kura-Araxes ‘culture-historical community’ (Russian: obshchnost’) and then places this complex cultural phenomenon in the context of the larger early Bronze Age world of the Ancient Near east and the western eurasian steppes.

Akhundov (2007) recently uncovered pre-Kura-Araxes/Late Chalcolithic materials  from the settlement of Boyuk Kesik and the kurgan necropolis of Soyuq Bulaq in  northwestern Azerbaijan, and Makharadze (2007) has also excavated a pre-Kura-Araxes  kurgan, Kavtiskhevi, in central Georgia.

Materials recovered from both these recent  excavations can be related to remains from the metal-working Late Chalcolithic site  of Leilatepe on the Karabakh steppe near Agdam (Narimanov et al. 2007) and from  the earliest level at the multi-period site of Berikldeebi in Kvemo Kartli (Glonti and Dzavakhishvili 1987). They reveal the presence of early 4th millennium raised burial  mounds or kurgans in the southern Caucasus.

Similarly, on the basis of her survey work  in eastern Anatolia north of the Oriental Taurus mountains, C. Marro (2007) likens chafffaced wares collected at Hanago in the Sürmeli Plain and Astepe and Colpan in the eastern  Lake Van district in northeastern Turkey with those found at the sites mentioned above  and relates these to similar wares (Amuq E/F) found south of the Taurus Mountains in  northern Mesopotamia.

The new high dating of the Maikop culture essentially signifies that there is no chronological hiatus separating the collapse of the Chalcolithic Balkan centre of metallurgical production and the appearance of Maikop and the sudden explosion of  Caucasian metallurgical production and use of arsenical copper/bronzes.

More than  forty calibrated radiocarbon dates on Maikop and related materials now support this high  chronology; and the revised dating for the Maikop culture means that the earliest kurgans  occur in the northwestern and southern Caucasus and precede by several centuries those of the Pit-Grave (Yamnaya) cultures of the western Eurasian steppes (cf. Chernykh and Orlovskaya 2004a and b).

The calibrated radiocarbon dates suggest that the Maikop ‘culture’ seems to have had a formative influence on steppe kurgan burial rituals and what now appears to be the later development of the Pit-Grave (Yamnaya) culture on the Eurasian steppes (Chernykh and Orlovskaya 2004a: 97).

In other words, sometime around the middle of the 4th millennium BCE or slightly subsequent to the initial appearance of the Maikop culture of the NW Caucasus, settlements containing proto-Kura-Araxes or early Kura-Araxes materials first appear across a broad area that stretches from the Caspian littoral of the northeastern Caucasus in the north to the Erzurum region of the Anatolian Plateau in the west.

For simplicity’s sake these roughly simultaneous developments across this broad area will be considered as representing the beginnings of the Early Bronze Age or the initial stages of development of the KuraAraxes/Early Transcaucasian culture.

The ‘homeland’ (itself a very problematic concept) of the Kura-Araxes culture-historical community is difficult to pinpoint precisely, a fact that may suggest that there is no single well-demarcated area of origin, but multiple interacting areas including northeastern Anatolia as far as the Erzurum area, the catchment area drained by the Upper Middle Kura and Araxes Rivers in Transcaucasia and the Caspian corridor and adjacent mountainous regions of northeastern Azerbaijan and southeastern Daghestan.

While broadly (and somewhat imprecisely) defined, these regions constitute on present evidence the original core area out of which the Kura-Araxes ‘culture-historical community’ emerged.

Kura-Araxes materials found in other areas are primarily intrusive in the local sequences. Indeed, many, but not all, sites in the Malatya area along the Upper Euphrates drainage of eastern Anatolia (e.g., Norsun-tepe, Arslantepe) and western Iran (e.g., Yanik Tepe, Godin Tepe) exhibit – albeit with some overlap – a relatively sharp break in material remains, including new forms of architecture and domestic dwellings, and such changes support the interpretation of a subsequent spread or dispersal from this broadly defined core area in the north to the southwest and southeast.

The archaeological record seems to document a movement of peoples north to south across a very extensive part of the Ancient Near East from the end of the 4th to the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Although migrations are notoriously difficult to document on archaeological evidence, these materials constitute one of the best examples of prehistoric movements of peoples available for the Early Bronze Age.

Origin of Early Transcaucasian Culture (aka Kura-Araxes culture)

Analysis of Maikop crania (Kazarnitsky 2010)

In sum, the results of the multivariate analysis suggest that Maikop people are distinct from all the contemporary and later Eastern European groups of the steppe and forest-steppe zones.

This provides an additional argument in favor of the hypothesis that Maikop burials in Kalmykia attest not merely to the cultural impact of the Maikop community on the steppe tribes (Munchaev, 1994: 168); rather, they were left by a separate group which was unrelated to the local Pit Grave population by origin.

The Southern Caucasoid trait combination revealed by the Maikop series is somewhat similar to that shown by the contemporaneous groups of the Northern Caucasus and southern Turkmenia. Clearly, this does not imply a direct connection with any of these regions.

The Near Eastern parallels are no less suggestive (Bunak, 1947: 77). Thus, a small series from Al-Ubaid in southern Mesopotamia, dating from the 4th millennium BC, is characterized by dolichocrany (cranial index, 72.6), a high face, medium wide, high and sharply protruding nose, and wide palate (Keith, 1931: 239–241). Regrettably, the number of measurements is too small to warrant a reliable comparison with the Maikop series.

However, the isolated position of the Maikop group in Eastern Europe, its vague resemblance to the Southern Caucasoids of the Caucasus and Southwestern Central Asia, and the Near Eastern cultural affinities of Maikop and Novosvobodnaya (Munchaev, 1994: 170) indirectly point to Near Eastern provenance.

Analysis of Maikop crania (Kazarnitsky 2010)

Craniological and dental signatures of Out-of-Armenia

Bioarchaeological Analysis Mutual Relations of Populations Armenian Highlands and Eurasia Using Craniological and Dental Nonmetric Traits published in Asian Culture and History Vol. 4, No. 2; July 2012, by Anahit Yu. Khudaverdyan is a multidimensional craniometric analysis of more than 254 ethnic groups of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages from the territory of Eurasia.

On the basis of the received information, cluster analysis was done and has shown the genetic condensations of ethnoses and vectors of relatives or, conversely, distinctions between them. Craniometric and odontologic investigation of the Bronze Age is interesting and in connection with discussion about the origin of Indo-Europeans and about the place of their ancestral home.

Different aspects of the problem of the ancestral home of Indo-Europeans are far from completely resolved and generate lively debate in the pages of scientific publications. New anthropological data allowed identification of alien Mediterranean characteristics influencing various ethnic Eurasian groups and revealed evidence of a migratory stream from the Armenian highlands and the Caucasus. This research provided new evidence of patterns of ethnic contact and intermixture in Western Eurasia.

From the paper on the craniological results one can see a clear link between the Armenian highlands samples and the Western Europe samples (the Arcvakar sample – 17 close phenetic links are revealed). The samples from the Georgia (Samtavro /Late Bronze Age – II period) and Iran (Tepe Gissar III), Uzbekistan (Sapallitepe) are identified as the samples with closest affinities samples from Ukraine (Shirochanski) and Poland, Germany (Corded Ware culture) in particular.

This suggests that some of the European genes do actually stem from this area. So, mediterranean connections from Armenian highlands, Georgia and Central Asia are distinctly fixed in Western Europe and in the Middle-Late Bronze Age.

If true, it is suggested that the dispersal of the Indo-European languages have been accompanied by migration and some gene flow from the Armenian highlands homeland to the various historical seats of the Indo-European languages. The different rates of genetic drift and external gene flow may have contributed to the morphological differentiation and diversification amongst the different Eurasian populations.

Cluster analysis has revealed a craniological series having analogies (on a complex of craniometric, odontologic characters) with representatives of the population of the Armenian highlands, the Caucasus, the Near East and Central Asia. The initial starting area (or one of the intermediate areas), as indicated by the anthropological data, would seem to be the Armenian highlands, and the Caucasus as a whole.

Craniological and dental signatures of Out-of-Armenia

Proto-Indo-European and North Caucasian

Quite consistent with Dienekes idea that Proto-Indo-European is related to the West Asian autosomal component.  This component occurs at a a level  greater than 50% level in modern North Caucasian speakers, is absent in Europe prior to 5,000 years ago, and occurs at levels greater or equal to 10% in most present-day Indo-European speakers from Europe.

In the text Areal Typology of Proto-Indo-European: The Case for Caucasian Connections Ranko Matasović re-examines the evidence for early contacts between Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and the languages of the Caucasus. Although he were not able to find certain proofs of lexical borrowing between PIE and North Caucasian, there are a few undeniable areal-typological parallels in phonology and grammar.

Some features generally attributed to PIE are not found in the majority of languages of North and Northeastern Eurasia, while they are common, or universally present, in the languages of the Caucasus (especially North Caucasus). Those features include the high consonant-to-vowel ratio, tonal accent, number suppletion in personal pronouns, the presence of gender and the morphological optative and, possibly, the presence of glottalized consonants and ergativity.

Proto-Indo-European and North Caucasian

Languages of the Caucasus map

The Caucasus revisited (Yunusbayev et al. 2011)

Genes and Languages in the Caucasus

Y chromosomes of Dagestan highlanders

Genetic structure of West Eurasians

The Bronze Age Indo-European invasion of Europe

The Indo-European invasion of the Baltic

Differential relationship of ANI to Caucasus populations

Investigating East Asian admixture in Balkans/Anatolia/Caucasus

Huge study on Y-chromosome variation in Iran

rolloff analysis of Lezgins as Sardinian+Burusho

The Early History of Indo-European Languages by Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov

Linguistics, the scientific study of language, can reach more deeply into the human past than the most ancient written records. It compares related languages to reconstruct their immediate progenitors and eventually their ultimate ancestor, or protolanguage. The protolanguage in turn illuminates the lives of its speakers and locates them in time and place.

The science developed from the study of the Indo-European superfamily of languages, by far the largest in number of languages and number of speakers. Nearly half of the world’s population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language; six of the 10 languages in which Scientific American appears–English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish–belong to this superfamily.

Over the past 200 years, linguists have reconstructed the vocabulary and syntax of the postulated Indo-European protolanguage with increasing confidence and insight. They have tried to unravel the paths by which the language broke into daughter languages that spread throughout Eurasia, seeking at the origin of those paths the homeland of the protolanguage itself.

The early investigators placed the homeland in Europe and posited migratory paths by which the daughter languages evolved into clearly defined Eastern or Western branches. Our work indicates that the protolanguage originated more than 6,000 years ago in eastern Anatolia and that some daughter languages must have differentiated in the course of migrations that took them first to the East and later to the West.

The Early History of Indo-European Languages

Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov

Ugrians and the Bashkirs

Baskirs:

The Bashkirs is a Kipchak group formed in the early medieval period in the context of the Turkic migrations. They speak the Bashkir language, pertaining to Kypchak branch of the Turkic languages. The Bashkirs are mainly Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi madhhab.

They are indigenous to Bashkortostan extending on both sides of the Ural Mountains, on the place where Europe meets Asia. Groups of Bashkirs also live in the republic of Tatarstan, Perm Krai, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Samara and Saratov Oblasts of Russia, as well as in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and other countries.

Besides their Turkic ancestry, Ugrian and Iranian contributions have also been discussed in Russian ethnographic literature. Genetically, R1b1a1 (2011 name) has been found to occur with comparatively high frequency among the Bashkirs in Bashkortostan (62/471 = 13.2%).

Accordance with all paleontological and anthropological findings presume the roots of the Bashkir people likely to the Andronovo culture. Recent studies regard Turkic and Ugrian theories as the most possible ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs.

Ugric or Ugrian languages are a hypothetical branch of the Uralic language family. The term derives from Yugra, a region in north-central Asia. They include three subgroups: Hungarian (Magyar), Khanty (Ostyak), and Mansi language (Vogul). The last two have traditionally been considered single languages, though their main dialects are sufficiently distinct that they may also be considered small subfamilies of 3–4 languages each.

A common Proto-Ugric language is posited to have been spoken from the end of the 3rd millennium BC until the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in Western Siberia, east from the southern Ural mountains.

However, recent reconstructions of Uralic have not generally found support for Ugric. Of the three languages, Khanty and Mansi have traditionally been set apart from Hungarian as Ob-Ugric, though features uniting Mansi and Hungarian in particular are known as well.

The largest of the Ugric people are Hungarians numbering 14,500,000. Hungarians live in the Carpathian Basin, where they have independent state – Hungary. Khanty (21.000) and Mansi (12.000) peoples live in the Ob river area of Russia, mostly in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. There is also a significant Khanty population in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Khanty and Mansi together are called Ob-Ugrians.

The Hungarian language is traditionally classified in a Ugric branch of the Uralic languages, though the Ugric similarities may be due to an areal influence that also included Samoyedic. The Uralic languages may have separated sometime around 4000 to 2000 BC.

Climate changes around 1300 BC resulted in the northward expansion of the steppes which compelled several groups within the proto-Ugric people to turn to the nomadic lifestyle. This change was strengthened by the several proto-Iranian groups living south of them who had been practicing pastoral nomadism and whose influence on the proto-Ugric people can be proven by several loanwords in their languages. The formation of the Hungarian language occurred around this time (between 1000 BC and 500 BC) and can be localized to the southern regions of the Ural Mountains.

Following a further climate change around 800 BC that caused the expansion of the taiga, the nomadic proto-Ugric groups (probably the ancestors of the Magyars) had to move southward; thus they separated from the ancestors of the Khanty and Mansi peoples.

The Hungarian Urheimat (Hungarian: magyar őshaza) is the theoretical original homeland of the Magyars. The term urheimat comes from linguistics and tends to be reserved for discussion about language origin. As applied to national origin, it refers to the area where ancestors of the Magyars formed an ethnic unity, speaking a language ancestral to Hungarian, and practising Nomadic pastoralism. There is a consensus that the Hungarian urheimat in this ethnogenetic sense must have been located somewhere in the steppe zone south of the Ural Mountains.

One view states that the Magyar Urheimat is the same as the Ugric language group’s urheimat on the western side of the Ural Mountains. The territory of Yugra tends to be identified as the Ob-Ugric languages urheimat and not the earlier Ugric period; and thus the western side of the Urals in the vicinity of the Kama river is considered to be the Ugric language urheimat.

It is believed that the Magyars emerged from this western Ural Urheimat, based upon early language influence from Permic peoples. Herodotus in the 5th century BC probably depicted the ancestors of Hungarians when mentioning the Yugra people living west of the Urals.

Another view claims that the urheimat is roughly the same area as Yugra to the east of the Ural Mountains, where the Khanty and Mansi peoples live today. The time when the proto-Magyars moved westwards from the regions east of the Ural Mountains and settled down in Bashkiria (around the region where the Kama River joins the Volga) is still under debate.

Their movement may have been caused by new migrations of peoples in the 4th century AD, but it may have also connected to the appearance of a new archaeological culture (Kushnarenkovo culture) in the region in the 6th century AD.

Approaches based on “map-stratification” have compared burial sites, ornamental motifs (tulips, cranes), leather and felt garments, mythological images, sacrificial cauldrons, folk poetry, folk music, lullabies, together with written documents and genetic findings to narrow down the most likely Magyar urheimat to the grassy land surrounded by four freshwater lakes (Caspian, Aral, Balkhash, and Baikal).

From this land the migration of proto-Magyars progressed west, probably by more than one route, mainly via the Yekaterinburg-gap of the South-Ural mountains (indicated by cemeteries), to Levedia and later to Etelköz where they became the allies of the Khazars. Genetic evidence has linked early Magyars eastward as well to the Uyghurs, living in East-Eurasia around the town of Ürümqi (today in China).

The origin of the “Magyar” expression (the self-definition of the Hungarians) could prove the period when the separation of the proto-Hungarians and the groups speaking proto-Ob-Ugric languages took place, but there are several theories on its origins; the word may be composed of two parts (magy and ar) or it may have been borrowed from a proto-Iranian language.

Words similar to the proposed magy element of the word are also used by the Khanty and Mansi peoples (referring to one of their groups /mos/ or to themselves /mansi/ respectively) which suggest that it is of Ugric origin and it possibly means “those who speak”. The assumed ar element of the word may be either of Ugric or Turkic origin and it probably means “man”.

Those who assume that the expression ar originated from a Turkic language, also think that it may refer to a Turkic tribe that joined to a group of the proto-Ugric peoples and thus the two groups formed the Magyar people.

The linguistic heritage of the Hungarians comes from Finno-Ugric peoples. A branch of Uralic speakers migrated from their earlier homeland near the Ural mountains and settled in various places in Eastern Europe, until they conquered the Carpathian Basin between the 9th and 10th centuries.

Genetically, the present-day Hungarian population preserves much of an older European genetic makeup. The vast majority of the Hungarian population in the 10th and 11th centuries, according to genetic and palaeoanthropological studies, showed features of European biological descent.

During the 4th millennium BC, the Uralic-speaking peoples who were living in the central and southern regions of the Urals split up. Some dispersed towards the west and northwest and came into contact with Iranian speakers who were spreading northwards.

From at least 2000 BC onwards, the Ugrian speakers became distinguished from the rest of the Uralic community. Judging by evidence from burial mounds and settlement sites, they interacted with the Andronovo Culture, furthermore, the type of Hungarians of the Conquest period shows related features to that of the Andronovo people.

In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Hungarians moved to the west of the Ural Mountains to the area between the southern Ural Mountains and the Volga River known as Bashkiria (Bashkortostan) and Perm Krai.

In the early 8th century, some of the Hungarians moved to the Don River to an area between the Volga, Don and the Seversky Donets rivers. Meanwhile, the descendants of those Hungarians who stayed in Bashkiria remained there as late as 1241.

The Hungarians around the Don River were subordinates of the Khazar khaganate. Their neighbours were the archaeological Saltov Culture, i.e. Bulgars (Proto-Bulgarians, Onogurs) and the Alans, from whom they learned gardening, elements of cattle breeding and of agriculture. Tradition holds that the Hungarians were organized in a confederacy of seven tribes. The names of the seven tribes were: Jenő, Kér, Keszi, Kürt-Gyarmat, Megyer, Nyék, and Tarján.

Saltovo-Mayaki is the name given by archaeologists to the early medieval culture of the Pontic steppe region roughly between the Don and the Dnieper Rivers. Their culture was a melting pot of Onogur, Khazar, Pecheneg, Magyar, Alan, and Slavic influences. During the ninth century the Saltovo-Mayaki culture was closely associated with the Khazar Khaganate, and archaeological sites from this period are one way that historians track the geographic scope of Khazar influence.

Around 830, a rebellion broke out in the Khazar khaganate. As a result, three Kabar tribes of the Khazars joined the Hungarians and moved to what the Hungarians call the Etelköz, the territory between the Carpathians and the Dnieper River, (today’s Ukraine). The Hungarians faced their first attack by the Pechenegs around 854, though other sources state that an attack by Pechenegs was the reason for their departure to Etelköz.

The new neighbours of the Hungarians were the Varangians and the eastern Slavs. From 862 onwards, the Hungarians (already referred to as the Ungri) along with their allies, the Kabars, started a series of looting raids from the Etelköz into the Carpathian Basin, mostly against the Eastern Frankish Empire (Germany) and Great Moravia, but also against the Balaton principality and Bulgaria.

Haplogroup R1b, with focus on R1b1a2 (the most common form in Europe) and R1b1a1

R1b is a sub-clade within the much larger Eurasian MNOPS “macro-haplogroup”, which is one of the predominant groupings of all the rest of human male lines outside of Africa, and this whole group, along indeed with all of macro-haplogroup F, is believed to have originated in Asia.

The Paleolithic origins of R1b are not entirely clear to this day. The point of origin of R1b is thought to lie in Eurasia, most likely in Western Asia. T. Karafet et al. estimated the age of R1, the parent of R1b, as 18,500 years before present.

Early research focused upon Europe. In 2000 Ornella Semino and colleagues argued that R1b had been in Europe before the end of Ice Age, and had spread north from an Iberian refuge after the Last Glacial Maximum.

Age estimates of R1b in Europe have steadily decreased in more recent studies, at least concerning the majority of R1b, with more recent studies suggesting a Neolithic age or younger. Only Morelli et al. have recently attempted to defend a Palaeolithic origin for R1b1b2.

Irrespective of STR coalescence calculations, Chikhi et al. pointed out that the timing of molecular divergences does not coincide with population splits; the TMRCA of haplogroup R1b (whether in the Palaeolithic or Neolithic) dates to its point of origin somewhere in Eurasia, and not its arrival in western Europe.

Barbara Arredi and colleagues were the first to point out that the distribution of R1b STR variance in Europe forms a cline from east to west, which is more consistent with an entry into Europe from Western Asia with the spread of farming.

A 2009 paper by Chiaroni et al. added to this perspective by using R1b as an example of a wave haplogroup distribution, in this case from east to west. The proposal of a southeastern origin of R1b were supported by three detailed studies based on large datasets published in 2010. These detected that the earliest subclades of R1b are found in western Asia and the most recent in western Europe.

While age estimates in these articles are all more recent than the Last Glacial Maximum, all mention the Neolithic, when farming was introduced to Europe from the Middle East as a possible candidate period.

Myres et al. (August 2010), and Cruciani et al. (August 2010) both remained undecided on the exact dating of the migration or migrations responsible for this distribution, not ruling out migrations as early as the Mesolithic or as late as Hallstatt but more probably Late Neolithic. They noted that direct evidence from ancient DNA may be needed to resolve these gene flows.

Lee et al. (May 2012) analysed the ancient DNA of human remains from the Late Neolithic Bell Beaker site of Kromsdorf, Germany identifying two males as belonging to the Y haplogroup R1b.

Analysis of ancient Y DNA from the remains of populations derived from early Neolithic settlements such as the Mediterranean Cardium and Central and North European LBK settlements have found an absence of males belonging to haplogroup R1b.

Some of the oldest forms of R1b are found around the Caucasus, in Iran and in southern Central Asia, a vast region where could have roamed the nomadic R1b hunter-gatherers during the Ice Age. Haplogroup R1* and R2* might have originated in southern Central Asia (between the Caspian depression and the Hindu Kush).

A branch of R1 would have developed into R1b then R1b1 and R1b1a in the northern part of the Middle East around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (circa 20,000 years ago), while R1a migrated north to Siberia. R1b1a presumptively moved to northern Anatolia and across the Caucasus during the Neolithic, where it split into R1b1a1 (M73) and R1b1a2 (M269).

The Near Eastern leftovers evolved into R1b1c (V88), now found at low frequencies among the Lebanese, the Druze, and the Jews. The Phoenicians (who came from modern day Lebanon) spread this R1b1c to their colonies, notably Sardinia and the Maghreb.

R1b1a2 (the most common form in Europe) and R1b1a1 is closely associated with the diffusion of Indo-European languages, as attested by its presence in all regions of the world where Indo-European languages were spoken in ancient times, from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the Indian subcontinent, including almost all Europe (except Finland and Bosnia-Herzegovina), Anatolia, Armenia, European Russia, southern Siberia, many pockets around Central Asia (notably Xinjiang, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan), without forgetting Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal. The history of R1b and R1a are intricately connected to each others.

R1b* (that is R1b with no subsequent distinguishing SNP mutations) is extremely rare. The only population yet recorded with a definite significant proportion of R1b* are the Kurds of southeastern Kazakhstan with 13%.

However, more recently, a large study of Y-chromosome variation in Iran, revealed R1b* as high as 4.3% among Persian sub-populations. In a study of Jordan it was found that no less than 20 out of all 146 men tested (13.7%), including most notably 20 out of 45 men tested from the Dead Sea area, were positive for M173 (R1) but negative for P25 and M269, as well as the R1a markers SRY10831.2 and M17, a study indicates that they are all R1b2-v88.

Hassan et al. (2008) found an equally surprising 14 out of 26 (54%) of Sudanese Fulani who were M173+ and P25-. Wood et al. report 2 Egyptian cases of R1-M173 which were negative for SRY10831 (R1a1) and P25 (R1b1), out of a sample of 1,122 males from various African countries, including 92 from Egypt. Such cases could possibly be either R1b* (R-M343*) or R1a* (R-M420*)

R1b1*, like R1b* is rare. As mentioned above, examples are described in older articles, for example two in a sample from Turkey, but most cases, especially in Africa, are now thought to be almost mostly in the more recently discovered sub-clade R-V88.

Most or all examples of R1b therefore fall into subclades R1b1a (R-V88) or R1b1b (R-P297). Cruciani et al. in the large 2010 study found 3 cases amongst 1173 Italians, 1 out of 328 West Asians and 1 out of 156 East Asians. Varzari found 3 cases in the Ukraine, in a study of 322 people from the Dniester-Carpathian region, who were P25 positive, but M269 negative. Cases from older studies are mainly from Africa, the Middle East or Mediterranean, and are probable cases of R1b1a (R-V88).

R1b1a is defined by the presence of SNP marker P297. In 2008 this polymorphism was recognised to combine M73 and M269 into one R1b1a cluster. The majority of Eurasian R1b is within this clade, representing a very large modern population. Although P297 itself has not yet been much tested for, the same population has been relatively well studied in terms of other markers.

R1b1a1 (2011 name) is defined by the presence of SNP marker M73. It has been found at generally low frequencies throughout central Eurasia, as in Anatolia, Caucasus, Urals, Hazara, but has been found with relatively high frequency among particular populations there including Hazaras in Pakistan (8/25 = 32%); and Bashkirs in Bashkortostan (62/471 = 13.2%), 44 of these being found among the 80 tested Bashkirs of the Abzelilovsky District in the Republic of Bashkortostan (55.0%). Four R-M73 men were also found in a 523-person study of Turkey, and one person in a 168-person study of Crete.

The origins of the Hazara have not been fully reconstructed. Significant Inner Asian descent – in historical context Mongolian and Turkic – is impossible to rule out because the Hazara’ physical attributes, facial bone structures and parts of their culture and language resemble those of Mongolians and Central Asian Turks. Thus, it is widely and popularly believed that Hazara have Mongolian ancestry. This is partially supported by genetic tests.

Some Hazara tribes are named after famous Mongol generals, for example the Tulai Khan Hazara who are named after Tolui, the youngest son of Genghis Khan. Some believe Hazara are descendants of Mongol soldiers and their Persian Shia wives who settled in Bamiyan following the 1221 siege of Bamiyan. Theories of Mongol or partially Mongol descent are plausible, given that the Il-Khanate Mongol rulers, beginning with Oljeitu, embraced Shia Islam. Today, the majority of the Hazara adhere to Shia Islam, whereas Afghanistan’s other major ethnic groups are mostly Sunni. However, the Sunni and Ismaili Hazara population, while existent, have not been extensively researched by scholars.

Another popular theory proposes that Hazara are descendants of the Kushans, the ancient dwellers of Afghanistan who are believed to have built the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Its proponents find the location of the Hazara homeland, and the similarity in facial features of Hazara with those on frescoes and Buddha’s statues in Bamiyan, suggestive. However, this belief is contrary not only to the fact that the Kushans were Tocharians, but also to historical records which mention that in a particularly bloody battle around Bamiyan, Genghis Khan’s grandson, Mutugen, was killed, and he allegedly ordered Bamiyan to be destroyed in retribution.

The theory, and the one accepted by most scholars, however, is that Hazara are a mixed group. This is not entirely inconsistent with descent from Mongol military forces. For example, Nikudari Mongols settled in eastern Persia and mixed with native populations who spoke Persian. A second wave of mostly Chagatai Mongols came from Central Asia and were followed by other Mongolic groups, associated with the Ilkhanate and the Timurids, all of whom settled in Hazarajat and mixed with the local, mostly Persian-speaking population, forming a distinct group.

Genetically, the Hazara are primarily eastern Eurasian with western Eurasian genetic mixtures. While it has been found that “at least third to half of their chromosomes are of East Asian origin, PCA places them between East Asia and Caucasus/Middle East/Europe clusters”.

Genetic research suggests that the Hazaras of Afghanistan cluster closely with the Uzbek population of the country, while both groups are at a notable distance from Afghanistan’s Tajik and Pashtun populations. There is evidence of both a patrimonial and maternal relation to Mongol peoples of Mongolia.

Mongol male and female ancestry is supported by studies in genetic genealogy as well, which have identified a particular lineage of the Y chromosome characteristic of people of Mongolian descent (“the Y-chromosome of Genghis Khan”).

This chromosome is virtually absent outside the limits of the Mongol Empire except among the Hazara, where it reaches its highest frequency anywhere. These results indicate that the Hazara are also characterized by very high frequencies of eastern Eurasian mtDNAs at 35%, which are virtually absent from bordering populations, suggesting that the male descendants of Genghis Khan, or other Mongols, were accompanied by women of East Asian ancestry. Women of Non-eastern Eurasian mtDNA in Hazaras are at 65% most which are West Eurasians and some South Asian.

R1b1a1 (2011 name) is defined by the presence of SNP marker M73. It has been found at generally low frequencies throughout central Eurasia, but has been found with relatively high frequency among particular populations there including Pakistani Hazaras (8/25 = 32%).

However, the most frequent paternal Haplogroup type found amongst the Hazara’s in the same study was haplogroup C-M217 at 40%(10/25) with Haplogroup O3 (Y-DNA) at 8% (2/25) both which are Eastern Eurasian males ancestry associated with the Mongols and Kazakhs.

The Bashkirs as a Kipchak group formed in the early medieval period in the context of the Turkic migrations. Besides their Turkic ancestry, Ugrian and Iranian contributions have also been discussed in Russian ethnographic literature. Genetically, R1b1a1 (2011 name) has been found to occur with comparatively high frequency among the Bashkirs in Bashkortostan (62/471 = 13.2%). Accordance with all paleontological and anthropological findings presume the roots of the Bashkir people likely to the Andronovo culture. Recent studies regard Turkic and Ugrian theories as the most possible ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs.

In 2010, Myres et al. report that out of 193 R-M73 men found amongst 10,355 widespread men, “all except two Russians occurred outside Europe, either in the Caucasus, Turkey, the Circum-Uralic and North Pakistan regions.”

R1b1a2 (2011 name) is defined by the presence of SNP marker M269. R1b1a2* or M269 (xL23) is found at highest frequency in the central Balkans notably Kosovo with 7.9%, Macedonia 5.1% and Serbia 4.4%.

The most commong R1b subgroup in Europe is R-M269 and the most common subgroup is R-L23 which encompasses the vast majority of European R-M269 chromosomes. It is interesting to see where R-M269(xL23) is concentrated. In Europe I see cases in Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Russia, the Ukraine.

It is most prominent, however, in the Balkans, where every population except Croatia mainland (N=108) possesses it. In the Caucasus it does not exist except in the northeast. In Turkey and Iran there is some, albeit it is not clear in which regions.

Kosovo is notable in also having a high percentage of descendant L23* or L23 (xM412) at 11.4% unlike most other areas with significant percentages of M269* and L23* except for Poland with 2.4% and 9.5% and the Bashkirs of southeast Bashkortostan with 2.4% and 32.2% respectively.

Notably this Bashkir population also has a high percentage of M269 sister branch M73 at 23.4%. Five individuals out of 110 tested in the Ararat Valley, Armenia belonged to R1b1a2* and 36 to L23*, with none belonging to subclades of L23.

European R1b is dominated by R-M269. It has been found at generally low frequencies throughout central Eurasia, but with relatively high frequency among Bashkirs of the Perm Region (84.0%). This marker is also present in China and India at frequencies of less than one percent. The table below lists in more detail the frequencies of M269 in various regions in Asia, Europe, and Africa.

The frequency is about 71% in Scotland, 70% in Spain and 60% in France. In south-eastern England the frequency of this clade is about 70%; in parts of the rest of north and western England, Spain, Portugal, Wales and Ireland, it is as high as 90%; and in parts of north-western Ireland it reaches 98%. It is also found in North Africa, where its frequency surpasses 10% in some parts of Algeria.

From 2003 to 2005 what is now R1b1a2 was designated R1b3. From 2005 to 2008 it was R1b1c. From 2008 to 2011 it was R1b1b2.

As discussed above, in articles published around 2000 it was proposed that this clade been in Europe before the last Ice Age, but by 2010 more recent periods such as the European Neolithic have become the focus of proposals.

A range of newer estimates for R1b1b2, or at least its dominant parts in Europe, are from 4,000 to a maximum of about 10,000 years ago, and looking in more detail is seen as suggesting a migration from Western Asia via southeastern Europe. Western European R1b is dominated by R-P310.

It was also in this period between 2000 and 2010 that it became clear that especially Western European R1b is dominated by specific sub-clades of R-M269 (with some small amounts of other types found in areas such as Sardinia).

The routes of Neolithic migrations from the Near East are presently intensively debated among scholars of various disciplines. Recent studies suggest that haplogroup R1b1a2-M269, which is the most common lineage in the European populations, was spread with first farmers via Anatolia to Europe during the Neolithic transition. These studies, however, did not include indigenous populations from the Armenian plateau, though it has played a key role in the ancient human migrations since early Paleolithic.

We used a total of 358 Y-chromosomal data collected in three Armenian geographic groups from eastern and western parts of the Armenian plateau and comparative datasets of various European populations to assess the genetic contribution of the region to the spread of haplogroup R1b1a2-M269 north- and westward.

The frequency of this lineage in eastern Armenian populations is higher compared with eastern European populations (including Anatolia) and lower than in Western Europe. The rate of the variance and age of the R1b1a2-M269 is the highest in western Armenian population among all datasets considered. In addition, there is a strong correlation between the genetic and geographic distances of the populations studied thus reflecting the directions of pre-Neolithic and Neolithic migrations from the Near East.

Within Europe, R-M269 is dominated by R-M412, also known as R-L51, which according to Myres et al. (2010) is “virtually absent in the Near East, the Caucasus and West Asia.” This Western European population is further divided between R-P312/S116 and R-U106/S21, which appear to spread from the western and eastern Rhine river basin respectively.

Myres et al. note further that concerning its closest relatives, in R-L23*, that it is “instructive” that these are often more than 10% of the population in the Caucasus, Turkey, and some southeast European and circum-Uralic populations. In Western Europe it is also present but in generally much lower levels apart from “an instance of 27% in Switzerland’s Upper Rhone Valley.”

The phylogenetic relationships of numerous branches within the core Y-chromosome haplogroup R-M207 support a West Asian origin of haplogroup R1b, its initial differentiation there followed by a rapid spread of one of its sub-clades carrying the M269 mutation to Europe.

Phylogeographically resolved data for 2043 M269-derived Y-chromosomes from 118 West Asian and European populations assessed for the M412 SNP that largely separates the majority of Central and West European R1b lineages from those observed in Eastern Europe, the Circum-Uralic region, the Near East, the Caucasus and Pakistan shows that within the M412 dichotomy, the major S116 sub-clade shows a frequency peak in the upper Danube basin and Paris area with declining frequency toward Italy, Iberia, Southern France and British Isles.

Although this frequency pattern closely approximates the spread of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), Neolithic culture, an advent leading to a number of pre-historic cultural developments during the past ≤10 thousand years, more complex pre-Neolithic scenarios remain possible for the L23(xM412) components in Southeast Europe and elsewhere.

In addition, the sub-clade distribution map, Figure 1h titled “L11(xU106,S116)”, in Myres et al. shows that R-P310/L11* (or as yet undefined subclades of R-P310/L11) occurs only in frequencies greater than 10% in Central England with surrounding areas of England and Wales having lower frequencies.

This R-P310/L11* is almost non-existent in the rest of Eurasia and North Africa with the exception of coastal lands fringing the western and southern Baltic (reaching 10% in Eastern Denmark and 6% in northern Poland) and in Eastern Switzerland and surrounds.

In 2009, DNA extracted from the femur bones of 6 skeletons in an early-medieval burial place in Ergolding (Bavaria, Germany) dated to around 670 AD yielded the following results: 4 were found to be haplogroup R1b with the closest matches in modern populations of Germany, Ireland and the USA while 2 were in Haplogroup G2a.

Population studies which test for M269 have become more common in recent years, while in earlier studies men in this haplogroup are only visible in the data by extrapolation of what is likely. The following gives a summary of most of the studies which specifically tested for M269, showing its distribution in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia as far as China and Nepal.

R1b1a1 is one of two major lines stemming from P297, the other one being the line leading to M269. R1b1a1 and M269 are thought to have had a common ancestor as recently as 8000 BC according to a number of individuals calculations. So, the R1b1a1 and M269 shared a starting point in the early Neolithic somewhere. It is thaught that M269, V88 and R1b1a1 are all oldest in Southwest Asia.

R1b1a1 is dated to c. 6000 BC and dates the common P297 ancestor of it and M269 at 8000 BC. So, these are siblings who are far closer related to each other than either is with V88. So understanding the ancestors of M269 during the Neolithic is probably best achieved by looking tangentially at R1b1a1.

As M269 didnt arise until 2000 years later than R1b1a1 as a clade there is not really much choice, but to use the R1b1a1 as a proxy for all P297 between 6000 and 4000 BC. There just doesn’t seem to be much P297*. In general we should really be trying to understand R1b1a1 more than V88 if we want to understand the line leading to M269. Basically consider the brother rather than the cousin.

R1b1a1 and M269 converge as P297* far too recently c. 8000 BC (early Neolithic) to have been in separate ice age refugia. They don’t have separate histories prior to 8000 BC. So the different distribution of R1b1a1 and M269 cannot relate to them or their ancestral lineages being is separate refugia. They were at the same spot c. 8000 BC.

Its the other branch P297-negative branch (which much later led to V88) that separated off in the Upper Palaeolithic according to Klyosov c. 12500 BC. Now that branch could well have been in a seperate area given the much greater depth of time and the amount of drastic climatic fluctations in the 4000 years or so after that date.

A location in the hearland of early farming is hard to tally with what appears to be R1b doing very little pre-5000 BC. Other than seeing R1b as peripheral to early farming or located somewhere on its margins to the east or north, the only explantation that would place R1b in the heart of farming yet somehow doing very little would be if it recieved a nasty bottleneck. The aridity phase that peaked around 3900 BC seems to have been the most extreme of that era.

Looking at the sequence of skull types in the east end of the steppes it seems that there is three European types moving into the area, with Molgoloid skulls only appearing very late. It would seem almost inevitable that one of those European groups included the ancient R1b1a1 people moving east. The oldest identified presence of European mtDNA around Mongolia and Lake Baikal dates back to over 6,000 years ago.

The Tarim and adjacent area was not settled at all until the Bronze Age. This makes it appear certain that R1b1a1 had a prior life of several thousand years somewhere else. After all it cannot have been on China’s western borders in 6000 BC if the area was not even settled by anyone until several thousand years late. R1b1a1 surely must have arrived in one of the waves of Europeans.

As it stands there is really no case for R1b1a1 coming from Southwest Asia as it is lacking there. It has a presence from Ukraine through central Asia to China. So, given the lack of any evidence of European type peoples in the extreme east of the steppes until Afanasievo it is logical to look to the west along the steppes to Central Asia and the European steppes as the most likely source.

It seems clear that only steppe type groups were equiped to make move in that zone. So, its very hard not to be tempted to see R1b1a1 as an element of Afanasievo. A connection with Afansievo’s move east towards that area from the Urals c. 3300 BC would work.

In 1934 Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman discovered some 200 mummies of fair-haired Caucasian people in the Tarim Basin in Northwest China (a region known as Xinjiang, East Turkestan or Uyghurstan). The oldest of these mummies date back to 2000 BCE and all 7 male remains tested by Li et al. (2010), were positive for the R1a1 mutations. The modern inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Uyghurs, belong both to this R1b-M73 subclade (about 20%) and to R1a1 (about 30%).

The first theory about the origins of the Tarim mummies is that a group of early horse riders from the Repin culture (3700-3300 BCE) migrated from the Don-Volga region to the Altai mountain, founding the Afanasevo culture (c. 3600-2400 BCE), whence they moved south to the Tarim Basin. Another possibility is that the Tarim mummies descend from the Proto-Indo-Iranian people (see above) who expanded all over Central Asia around 2000 BC from the Sintashta-Petrovka culture.

An offshoot would have crossed the Tian Shan mountains, ending up in the Tarim Basin. This theory has the merit of matching the dating of the Tarim mummies. Either way, most of the mummies tested for mtDNA belonged to the Mongoloid haplogroup C4, and only a few to European or Middle Eastern haplogroups (H, K and R).

There is some controversy regarding the possible link between the Tarim mummies and the Tocharian languages, a Centum branch of the Indo-European family which were spoken in the Tarim Basin from the 3rd to 9th centuries CE. It is easy to assume that the Tarim mummies were Proto-Tocharian speakers due to the corresponding location and the Indo-European connection.

However, the Tarim mummies predate the appearance of Tocharian by over two millennia, and Tocharian is a Centum language that cannot be descended from the Satem Proto-Indo-Iranian branch. Other Centum branches being all related to haplogroup R1b, and Tocharian being the only eastern Centum language, it is possible that the Tocharian speakers is instead associated to the Central Asian R1b1b1 (M73) subclade, also found among the modern Uyghurs inhabiting the Tarim basin.

The present-day inhabitants of Central Asia, from Xinjiang to Turkey and from the Volga to the Hindu Kush, speak in overwhelming majority Turkic languages. This may be surprising as this corresponds to the region where the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European speakers expanded, the Bronze-Age Andronovo culture, and the Iron-Age Scythian territory. The explanation is that Turkic languages replaced the Iranian tongues of Central Asia between the 4th and 11th century CE.

Indo-European languages only survived in Slavic Russia and in the southern part of Central Asia, in places like Tajikistan, Afghanistan and some parts of Turkmenistan, while the Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Kyrgyzs, and the modern Pontic-Caspian steppe people (Crimean Tatars, Nogais, Bashkirs and Chuvashs), who carry Indo-European R1a, and to a lesser extent also R1b, lineages, doesn’t speak Indo-European vernaculars.

Proto-Turkic originated in Mongolia and southern Siberia with such nomadic tribes as the Xiongnu. It belongs to the Altaic linguistic family, like Mongolian and Manchu (some also include Korean and Japanese, although they share very little vocabulary in common). It is unknown when Proto-Turkic first emerged, but its spread started with the Hunnic migrations westward through the Eurasian steppe and all the way to Europe, only stopped by the boundaries of the Roman Empire.

The Huns were the descendants of the Xiongnu. Ancient DNA tests have revealed that the Xiongnu were already a hybrid Eurasian people 2,000 years ago, with mixed European and North-East Asian Y-DNA and mtDNA. Modern inhabitants of the Xiongnu homeland have approximately 90% of Mongolian lineages against 10% of European ones.

It appears that Turkic quickly replaced the Scythian and other Iranian dialects all over Central Asia. Other migratory waves brought more Turkic speakers to Eastern and Central Europe, like the Khazars, the Avars, the Bulgars and the Turks (=> see 5000 years of migrations from the Eurasian steppes to Europe). All of them were in fact Central Asian nomads who had adopted Turkic language, but had little if any Mongolian blood. Turkic invasions therefore contributed more to the diffusion of Indo-European lineages (especially R1a1) than East Asian ones.

Turkic languages have not survived in Europe outside the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Bulgarian language, despite being named after a Turkic tribe, is actually a Slavic tongue with a mild Turkic influence. Hungarian, sometimes mistaken for the heir of Hunnic because of its name, is in reality an Uralic language (Magyar).

The dozens of Turkic languages spoken in the world today have a high degree of mutual intelligibility due to their fairly recent common origin and the nomadic nature of its speakers (until recently). Its two main branches Oghuz and Oghur could be seen as two languages about as distant as Spanish and Italian, and languages within each branch like regional dialects of Spanish and Italian.