Busting anthropological myths part 1: North Caucasus people(Chechens, and others) are European/white

[Trouble]

This will be part of a series of anthropological myths that exist in people's minds, whether on these forums or real life that I will seek to demolish with facts and logic.

Simply false, the various people of the Caucasus have diversity within themselves but none can be considered European or clustering anywhere near Europeans. In fact, they are decidedly closer to West Asians than anything else. Their phenotypes also appear closer to West Asians, albeit lighter than most.

Unlike Europeans, all Caucasus groups have substantial ancestry from CHG(Caucasus Hunter Gatherers), a type of ancestry that is largely alien to Europe. Some CHG-like admixture reached Europe via Indo-European groups who contained it, but for the most part it's quite distinct even from that.

Some groups like Chechens and North Ossetians have a decent chunk of Indo European Yamnaya ancestry which is roughly similar to the amount you see in southern European groups(about 30%). But they also have a ton of CHG on top of it. This makes them distinct. Other groups like Georgians lack any Indo-European ancestry whatsoever and are even heavier on CHG.



Russians living near the Volga are still closer to British Isles people than they are to Chechens in Grozny.

[Trouble]

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[Celto-Germanic]

Modern Caucasus people actually have far lower CHG than ancient times.

[Trouble]

Modern Caucasus people actually have far lower CHG than ancient times.

Of course. And modern Turks have far less ANF than ancient types. Modern Iranians have far less Iran_N than ancient ones.

It still peaks in the Caucasus. It’s just that modern populations are all heavily mixed compared to 10k years ago.

[Jana]

You don't need to be European to look white, neither all Europeans look white. Don't know which myths you busted since everyone who is into genetics knows Caucasus is non European genetically.

[Immanenz]

Modern Caucasus people actually have far lower CHG than ancient times.

Still CHG was close to IranNeo- they did not look like Brits back than either...

[Nurzat]

the two genes most relevant to lighter skin colour in Europe originated in the Middle East and the Caucasus about 22,000 to 28,000 years ago, and were carried to Anatolia by about 8,500 years ago, where their carriers became associated with the Neolithic Revolution. CHG / pre-CHG seems to be the population that mutated a gene for lighter skin that then got to Europeans from them so European light skin seems to have appeared somewhere near the southwestern shores of the Caspian Sea

[Trouble]

You don't need to be European to look white, neither all Europeans look white. Don't know which myths you busted since everyone who is into genetics knows Caucasus is non European genetically.

Some people both on anthroforums and real life see them as white or euro

[Jana]

Some people both on anthroforums and real life see them as white or euro

Because many of them look white. White is about look. White looking Caucasian is more white in my book than brown looking European.

[War Chef]

Caucasuses has ANE more than anyone else

Ancestral North Eurasian power, bitches 卍