Do Yakuts have any genuine Turkic ancestry?

[Peterski]

Or are they just linguistically Turkicized natives of the region? The Early Medieval sample from Yakutia is pretty much the same as modern Yakuts, even though it predates the arrival of Yakut language to the region (if I'm not mistaken):


Distance to: RUS_Yana_MA:Yana_Young [dated to 1050-1250 AD]
0.03114707 Yakut
0.04020740 Sakha
0.06699746 Dolgan
0.11528888 Evenk
0.11599602 Todzin
(...)


Although Late Neolithic samples are admittedly different:


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:yak021
0.05577941 Yukagir_Tundra
0.06523120 Nganassan
0.06558116 Even
0.08384846 Evenk
0.10701579 Koryak
(...)


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:Kamenka1
0.06760518 Yukagir_Tundra
0.06767126 Nganassan
0.07179231 Even
0.07866252 Evenk
0.11835146 Todzin
(...)


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:Kamenka3
0.06285526 Yukagir_Tundra
0.07155585 Even
0.07406188 Nganassan
0.08215681 Evenk
0.11427256 Koryak
(...)


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:N4b2
0.06300490 Yukagir_Tundra
0.07509860 Evenk
0.08004853 Even
0.08145025 Nganassan
0.08825834 Todzin
(...)

[Leto]

I think they do but large scale assimilation obviously happened.

[Peterski]

I think they do but large scale assimilation obviously happened.

When did the linguistic (Turkic-speaking) ancestors of Yakuts come to Yakutia?

That Yana_Young [dated to ca. 1050-1250 AD] could not be a Yakut-speaker?

[Zoro]

Or are they just linguistically Turkicized natives of the region? The Early Medieval sample from Yakutia is pretty much the same as modern Yakuts, even though it predates the arrival of Yakut language to the region (if I'm not mistaken):


Distance to: RUS_Yana_MA:Yana_Young [dated to 1050-1250 AD]
0.03114707 Yakut
0.04020740 Sakha
0.06699746 Dolgan
0.11528888 Evenk
0.11599602 Todzin
(...)


Although Late Neolithic samples are admittedly different:


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:yak021
0.05577941 Yukagir_Tundra
0.06523120 Nganassan
0.06558116 Even
0.08384846 Evenk
0.10701579 Koryak
(...)


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:Kamenka1
0.06760518 Yukagir_Tundra
0.06767126 Nganassan
0.07179231 Even
0.07866252 Evenk
0.11835146 Todzin
(...)


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:Kamenka3
0.06285526 Yukagir_Tundra
0.07155585 Even
0.07406188 Nganassan
0.08215681 Evenk
0.11427256 Koryak
(...)


Distance to: RUS_Yakutia_Ymyiakhtakh_LN:N4b2
0.06300490 Yukagir_Tundra
0.07509860 Evenk
0.08004853 Even
0.08145025 Nganassan
0.08825834 Todzin
(...)


Present day Yakuts are genetically much closer to Even than to anything else. I’m basing this both on IBS and IBD which are whole chunks of shared DNA. I even remember going down to smaller chunks of 2.5cM and minimum 150 SNP chunks which can reflect admixture from 1500 years ago not seeing any particular attraction to Central Asian Turkics or Turks or Kurds. In fact I saw the opposite where they shared chunks with Finns more than West Asians again confirming that genetically they’re like other Siberians.

Wrt to Yakut vs Han Kurds marginally pick Yakut. In fact they even prefer Even to Yakut slightly. S. Asians orefer Han for obvious reasons

To me this indicates that the original Yakuts that migrated north under pressure were perhaps Turkics and with time their original DNA got diluted by mixing with Siberian neighbors such as Even

[Komintasavalta]

Present day Yakuts are genetically much closer to Even than to anything else.

In my global f2 matrix based on the Reich dataset (https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?23677-R-scripts-for-ADMIXTOOLS-2&p=798523&viewfull=1#post798523), Yakuts are closer to Dolgans than to Evens, but Dolgans are basically a subgroup of Yakuts:


$ curl -s https://pastebin.com/raw/B1t0ESsj|tr -d \\r|awk -F, 'NR==1{for(i=2;i<=NF;i++)if($i==x)break;next}$1!=x{print$i,$1}' x=Yakut -|sort -n|head
.00049 Dolgan
.00273 Even
.00284 Buryat
.00297 Evenk_FarEast
.00313 Khamnegan
.00313 Mongol
.00324 Kalmyk
.00356 Tuvinian
.00387 Oroqen
.00443 Altaian

[Peterski]

^^^ According to Wikipedia and Britannica, Dolgans are basically Evenks who adopted a Turkic language.

[Komintasavalta]

^^^ According to Wikipedia and Britannica, Dolgans are basically Evenks who adopted a Turkic language.

At least in my f2 matrix and in G25, Dolgans are closer to Yakuts than to Evenks or Evens though. But there's a a pretty big genetic difference between Far Eastern Evenks and Evenks from the Transbaikal, and I don't remember seeing samples of Evenks from the western or northern parts of the Evenk territory, or from Evenkia which occupies a huge area in the middle of Krasnoyarsk Krai.

Dolgans may also have assimilated Yukaghiric people (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Долганы):

> The Dolgan people developed in the 19th - early 20th centuries from those who moved in the 18th century after the arrival of the Muscovite kingdom and the Russian Empire from the rivers Lena and Olenyok Evenks, Yakuts, local Evenks, individual Enets families and the so-called tundra peasants [7] [9]. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, published at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, notes that "some part of the Yakuts moved to the Yenisei province, to the Turukhansk region, where they managed to completely obyakut Dolgan - a small Tungus tribe, just like the Russians, abandoned in the far corners of the Yakutsk Territory" [10]. V. V. Ushnitsky in his work "The Tungus clans of Yakutia in the 17th century: questions of origin and ethnicity" writes:
> > There are two points of view on the origin of the Dolgans. The first is that the Dolgans are an ethnic group that is independent in origin, with its own independent culture and language, and the second is that the Dolgans are one of the groups of northern Yakut reindeer herders. The historical figure of Dygynchi, the prince of the Dolgans, deserves attention. He is also mentioned on the Yana as the prince of the "Yukaghirs". Apparently, the Dolgans fled to Yana to the Yukaghirs. His image entered the folklore of the northern Yakut reindeer herders under the name Darinchi, his son Yungkeebil already lived and acted on Olenka. Thus, it is quite characteristic that the northern Yakuts of the Yukaghir-Tungus hero (Yungkeebil means "Yukagir") were already considered their hero. According to V. A. Keymetinov, the ethnonym Dolgan belonged to the mestizo groups [11].
> For a long time, the Dolgans did not have a common self-name and they called themselves by the name of the clan. The ethnonym "Dolgan" comes from the name of one of the Evenki clans "Dolgan" / "Dulgaan" (lit. "middle", "middle", "inner"). Since 1935, the official name Dolgan - Sakha was adopted in the Taimyr National District [12]. According to the 1939 census, the Dolgans were assigned to the Yakuts [13], and according to the 1959 census, according to the dictionary of nationalities, they were distinguished as a separate people, but when published they were attributed to the Yakuts [14].
> ...
> The Dolgan language is part of the Yakut group of Turkic languages. It is based on the Yakut language, which was influenced by Evenki. According to E. I. Ubryatova, the Dolgan language developed as a result of the spread of the Yakut language among the Evenks of the Dulgan clan at the end of the 16th century and later among other groups of Evenks [21].

Yakuts in general expanded fairly late:

https://i.ibb.co/yqT9CVC/sibir.png

In this map made by Nykyus, green is Tungusic, yellow is Turkic, and dark pink is Yukaghiric (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/more-possible-siberian-tags.1156514/page-3):

https://i.ibb.co/tqBqtcQ/a23bc7cd6b22.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/cbJggq3/6f8c5fe33965.jpg

[Kaspias]

"Scholars have suggested dates for the migration ranging from the early 11th to the 13th centuries. Their exodus was no doubt traumatic; before their displacement, the Yakut raised horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and camels, but only horses and cattle survived the transition. They originally seem to have had knowledge of the Old Turkic script (“Turkic runes”), but literacy was not maintained. Sophisticated metallurgy, however, was, giving the Yakut an advantage over other Siberian peoples (groups such as the Evenks could work iron, but could not smelt it from raw ore). Military knowledge was also retained. The armored Yakut cavalry met by the first Russian interlopers were said by some to resemble the knights of medieval Europe."

Turkic group who left Baikal looks like to be a military elite just like we see in the case of Bulgaria. It looks like they are just organized the local society and provided the Turkic culture which will make them easier to survive due to the military traditions.

However, we have only Yana_MA to model Yakuts with. They get more than 10 distances with anything else, so we might be lacking the required local samples yet and Yana_MA samples might be from the homogenized Turkic era. Although I believe that my first statement is true due to the HGs, it's not that clear yet.

They shift from the Central Asian migration line and pull towards a more exotic admixture.

https://i.ibb.co/RBLgKNb/Ads-z.png

[Kaspias]

When did the linguistic (Turkic-speaking) ancestors of Yakuts come to Yakutia?

That Yana_Young [dated to ca. 1050-1250 AD] could not be a Yakut-speaker?

The accepted theory is in between 1000-1100. There are also some other theory suggests they left the region Baikal during Tiele (https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiele) & Dingling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingling).

[Sora]

They're as Turkic as Turkish people, and even less