Origin of the Caucasian (Caucasus) race and its descedants

[Guti]

Who was Medea, Princess of Colchis and High Priestess of Artemis/Hecate (connection to Pontic Greeks).

Have you seen a classic movie called Medea from 1969 by Pasolini. It is a heavy but very profound movie to watch, not an easy entertaining kids stuff. But when I watched the movie I felt the pain of Medea at the end, hehe.



By the way, ancient Greeks/Hellenic people saw Aryans in the east to them as 'barbaric' people with a primitive culture.



I don't understand how some dudes claim that the Medes came from Southcentral Asia when they have no evidence at all. At what kind of facts are they basing their theories?
There is no evidence at all that the Medes came from the east.

Actually all facts are pointing to a regional ethnogenesis of the Medes in the eastern Kurdistan region (Rojehelat). The Medes were just local people to those areas. The Hasanlu samples that according to Zoro had 'Turkmenistan-IA type' of ancestry (BMAC) had Y-DNA hg. J2a and hg. R1b. As far as I know hg. R1a-Z94 was not found among them.

[Guti]

When proto-Western Iranics were derived from the 'Central Iranian Cluster' (CIC)/Iran_ChL 7000-8000 years ago, Iran_N didn't exist anymore it was already extinct in Kurdistan/Northwestern Iran. https://journals.plos.org/plosgeneti...l.pgen.1008385

When Western Iranic ethnic groups derived from the Iran_ChL, Iran_N was already gone extinct (heavily diluted with the CHG) from the western parts of the Iranian Plateau. Iran_N is a very archaic extinct component and is not really related anymore to the modern Western Iranics. Iran_N is more related to the 'Indus Valley' civilisation.


Iran_ChL (CIC) is mostly a product of CHG and not Iran_N.




'Central Iranian Cluster' (CIC) or Iran_ChL is a true ancestral component of the Western Iranic people. I think this is the original place of the proto-Aryan CIC/Iran_ChL component.

[Guti]

M937770 I1671 Iran LN

https://www.eupedia.com/genetics/yamna_culture.shtml

When you compare the ration of 'Gedrosia component' between Iran_LN and Yamnaya, you can calculate how much 'Iran_LN ancestry' there is in Yamnaya.


Iran_LN = 57.74% Gedrosia
Yamnaya = 27.42% Gedrosia

Let say Yamnaya = EHG + Iran_LN, then Yamnaya was:

(27.42 : 57.74) x 100 = 47.49% Iran_LN


According to these results here Yamnaya can be modelled roughly as:

52.5% EHG + 47.5% Iran_LN

[Guti]

Modern people who belong to a Caucaso-Iranic race are mostly native Caucasians and native speakers of Western Iranic dialects. Also Eastern Iranics who still are of predominately BMAC/Yaz racial stock can be seen as Caucaso-Iranic people.

Of the ancient people Late Maykop people were very similar to the modernday Caucaso-Iranic people. The first stage of PIEan people were of Caucaso-Iranic race. And even secons stage PIEan Yamnaya culture was for a huge part of Caucaso-Iranic race.
That makes Northern Europeans who have a lot Yamnaya ancestry partly influenced by the Caucaso-Iranic race. Also ancient Greeks (Minoans & MYcennaens) were influenced by the Cauaso-Iranic people. Greeks are European people, but even to this day many modern Greeks are by far more influenced by the Caucaso-Iranic people than by the Semitic Levantine people.


Caucaso-Iranic people:

Native Western Iranic speakers (Guto-Medes)
Native Eastern Iranic speakers who still kept most of their BMAC/Yaz ancestry
Native Caucasians

First stage PIEan
Maykop/Late Maykop people
Ubaid (proto-)Sumerians


Heavily influenced by the Caucaso-Iranic race:

Second stage of PIEans, the Yamnaya people
Ancient Greeks and still to this day many modernday Greeks


Trialeti was a mixture between Yamnaya and non-Yamnaya Caucaso-Iranic people.

[Guti]

This is a nice read of how the Caucasus was (culturally and genetically) influenced by the 'south'/Mesopotamia, and later on how the Caucasus (with Mesopotamian ancestry included) influenced the Steppes.

So, there was a huge migration from the 'south' into the Maykop Horizon before 5000 BC. It is most likely that the people from the 'south' brought some Mesopotamian/Western Iranic paternal lineages (like Y-DNA hg. L, hg. J1 etc.) into the Maykop Horizon. Later on Maykop people gave shape and Indo-Europeanised the people who later became known as the second stage PIEan Yamnaya people.


The Caucasus, an area that today includes parts of Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Iran and Turkey, is a crucial intersection for the history of Europe, both genetically and culturally. Today it is one of the regions of the world with the highest linguistic diversity, and in the past, populations from the Caucasus were instrumental in shaping the genetic components of today's Europeans.

"We assume that in the wake of the Neolithic period, sometime before 5,000 BC when a more sedentary lifestyle with domesticated animals and plants was established, populations from the southern Caucasus spread over the mountains to the north and there met with nomadic populations from the Eurasian steppe," says Dr. Wolfgang Haak, group leader for molecular anthropology at the MPI-SHH and leader of the study.

Over the centuries, an interaction zone was formed, where the traditions of the Mesopotamian civilization and those of the Caucasus met with the cultures of the steppe.

The current paleogenetic study paints a more nuanced picture of mobility during the Bronze Age. People with a distinct southern Caucasus ancestry were already north of the mountain ridges by the 5th millennium BC. It is highly likely that these groups formed the basis for the local Early Bronze Age Maykop culture of the 4th millennium BC. Intriguingly, the Maykop individuals tested are genetically distinct from the groups in the adjacent steppes to the north.

"The genetic results do not support scenarios of large-scale migrations from the south during the Maykop period, or even from the northwest, as was postulated by some archaeologists. These findings have major implications for our understanding of the local development of North Caucasus cultures in the 4th millennium BC," explains Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Svend Hansen, Director of the DAI's Eurasia-Department.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/g...ultures-314933


The massive population shifts in the 3rd millennium BC, in connection with the expansion of the groups from the steppe who were part of what is known as the Yamnaya culture, have long been associated with the transfer of significant technological innovations from Mesopotamia to Europe. Recent studies at the DAI's Eurasia department on the spread of early wagons or metal weapons have shown, however, that an intensive exchange between Europe, the Caucasus and Mesopotamia began much earlier.

https://www.shh.mpg.de/1196995/pr-caucasus-haak


This is what Iosif Lazaridis said years ago about the 3-way mixture model.

I just wanted to leave a brief comment that the model of Steppe_EMBA as a mixture of EHG+CHG is rejected (Table S7.11), while that of EHG+Iran_ChL is not. Note that in Table S7.11 we are modeling Steppe_EMBA and the references with respect to 13 outgroup populations (the set O9ALNW), not all of which are included in the TreeMix graph.

... As we mention further down, that doesn't mean there is no CHG-related ancestry in Steppe_EMBA as we can model it as a 3-way mixture involving CHG as one of the sources. What it does mean, however, is that CHG+EHG cannot be the only sources, as this model is rejected (Table S7.11).

… Overall, our admixture analysis rejects several possible models (such as EHG+CHG) and thus puts constraints on what may have happened, and also proposes some models that are more resilient to rejection (such as EHG+Iran_ChL+CHG).

eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/06/yamnaya-eastern-hunter-gatherers-iran.html

In this study they show how the Caucasus was genetically influenced by the people from the 'south'/Mesopotamia: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/322347v1.full

[Guti]

This is what I mean with a Caucaso-Iranic racial stock! It is originally from South Caucasus-Zagros area. Those people were proto-Caucasoids/Caucasians and ancestral to the Aryan Guto-Medes.



The researchers found that from 35 to as much as 50 percent of Yamnaya ancestry-what they characterize as a "substantial contribution"-came from the south, specifically the South Caucasus-Zagros area. Critically, the discovery links "the Proto-Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya with the speakers of Anatolian languages"; both share ancestry in the highlands of West Asia (the Middle East, including the Caucasus and Zagros mountains).

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2022...pean-languages

[Guti]

I agree that Kurds do have ANE from C. Asia via groups that predated the militarized Indo-European invasions but I believe most of their R1a (perhaps not all) is from Indo-Iranian Medes, Parthians and Scythians.

Here are Kurd YDNA maps from various papers (and a couple of blogs). Keep in mind that at the time they did not test for Z93 or Z94 but tested for upstream subckades such as M198 or M417 meaning if you tested those individuals further many would end up Z93 or Z94

According to the latest paper on the Southern Arc and Western Asia you are right.

I am stubborn, but not a fool. If I am wrong then I am wrong and happy to acknowledge that.

If you and Harvard are right, then those R1b Iron Age Hasanlu people were not Iranic, but most likely Mannaeans (Hurrian) and that the Gutians (who were connected to the Mannaeans) were actually Hurrian people and not Iranic people who were later assimilated by the incoming Medes from YAZ (SouthCentral Asia).

IF it is true then all Northwestern Iranics (such as Gilakis, Talysh etc.) are a mixture of the Hurrians with Iranic ancestry.


What I don't understand is that Harvard acknowledges that the proto-Armenians are derived from the 'Trialeti Vanadzor' complex and to be more precisely from the 'Lchashen-Metsamor' that was a successor of Trialeti, but they don't support Graeco-Armeno-Aryan hypothesis while there are so many evidences for it.

They do indirectly support a Graeco-Armenian hypothesis because according to Harvard both Greek and Armenian are derived from the Yamnaya and not from Corded Ware. It means that Greek and Armenian do have a common ancestor and that is Yamnaya. The only difference is that they think that Armenian language entered Armenia through the Caucasus, while Greek entered Greece from the western parts of the Black Sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Armenian

They suggest that Trialeti was proto-Armenian. This is what they do write about 'Lchashen-Metsamor'/Trialeti.

[Guti]

The reason why I am starting a little bit to accept the Southcentral Asia origin of proto-Iranics because the diversity of the Iranic is higher there.


But something is still very strange and really doesn't land in my head.
If proto-Iranics came from YAZ, then those Y-DNA hg. R1b Hurrians in Kurdistan (Gutians, Mannaeans etc.) were more Caucasian/Caucasoid (Caucaso-Iranic) and more related to the ancient Northwest Asian PIEan, than proto-Iranic people from YAZ who themselves were a product of Northwestern Asian CHG/Iran_ChL (BMAC) + Central Asian Steppes people.


Hurrians in Kurdistan = CHG people = fully Caucaso-Iranic (Caucasian/Caucasoid) = very close to PIEans
Iranic immigrants in Kurdistan = moslty CHG people (BMAC) + some Steppes (CWC + extra Uralic Andronovo) = not so close to PIEans

[tipirneni]

You are making fancy statements from the place which was most diverse metropolitan area in the Bronze Age

Look at the Elamites statues and you will see too much racial diversity compared to say Sumerian or Akkads. This diversity probably continued into the Persians if you see their grand Persinopolis where they show all the tributaries. So associating one single group of people doesnt apply here.

[tipirneni]

The Maykop also has lot of localized diversity with T, L, H etc... more ancient clades and it is the meeting place of North vs the Iran and the Levant. So any statements for origination there doesnt carry forward