R1a haplogroup may have originated in Iran

[LightHouse89]

Well, that is one theory. Personally I think r1a = middle east and r1b = iberia. It almost has to be because iberia did not speak IE languages when the romans came. But it could have come through from north africa as well, or by sea.

i think it happened possibly before the Ice age. The Iberian referendum happened after and due to this isolation is why modern carriers are somewhat different than r1a carriers....but to me r1a may be much older and the originator of r1b? its just a wild guess and could be wrong but the two are realted and most likely originated in the far east in Eurasia and upper Middle East/ Iran/ and also north of Syria/Armenia.

[Prisoner Of Ice]

i think it happened possibly before the Ice age. The Iberian referendum happened after and due to this isolation is why modern carriers are somewhat different than r1a carriers....but to me r1a may be much older and the originator of r1b? its just a wild guess and could be wrong but the two are realted and most likely originated in the far east in Eurasia and upper Middle East/ Iran/ and also north of Syria/Armenia.

Well we more or less know R* covered most of eurasia. That is original theory and to me only one that makes sense with its huge spread.

[LightHouse89]

Well we more or less know R* covered most of eurasia. That is original theory and to me only one that makes sense with its huge spread.

I would love for scientists, historians and archeaologists to find more remains from those time periods in that area...if you think about it much of all of this is speculation but it is fascianting we can trace our history to that region.....would be interesting to see if they can find artifacts and old graves etc...there or any signs of civilization.

[Unome]

That implies ashkenazi jews are all greeks, which I don't think is the case.

Anyway, archaeology and history says middle eastern people today are not what they were, it's a mistake to make that assumption going back that far because it's seldom true.

There are a few anthropological basic facts about Y-DNA & mtDNA haplogroup spreads. Armies and warfare are more applicable to Y-DNA. Culture and religion is more applicable to mtDNA. There limited ways that people reproduce. And in the Old World mixing-race and miscegenation generally are frowned upon, disallowed, or even punished by death. Rape is another factor as well as arranged marriages, illegitimate children, and economic class disparity.

But another fact gets overlooked: historical revisionism. Victors of warfare and cultural dominance tend to erase history books and rewrite history in their own favors. This misleads a lot of contemporary analysis about aDNA spreads. This is most obvious with Europeans who always put their ethnicity in front of everything and say "We, the French, the British, the Germans, the Finns, the Greeks, the Italians, etc. are better than everybody else". This ethnocentricism perverts science & anthropology with bias.

Very few actually can look backward 1000 or 2000 years to see the truth of the time. Many populations were relocated, genocided, exterminated, etc. and then replaced by dominant societies.

So I essentially agree that Iran/Persia/Greece looked much different 2000 years ago compared to today.

Some populations (like Nordic Iceland) have remained genetically isolated for centuries and millenniums though. So some populations are pure, others impure.

[Prisoner Of Ice]

Some populations (like Nordic Iceland) have remained genetically isolated for centuries and millenniums though. So some populations are pure, others impure.

Funny you mention that one, turns out all the y-dna is viking, and the mtdna is almost all irish.

Middle east is a crossroads and there's been some very big changes there both historically and in prehistory so it has to have changed a lot more than europe.

[Argang]

Funny you mention that one, turns out all the y-dna is viking, and the mtdna is almost all irish.

Also a very, very good example of how isolation and extreme genetic drift can affect genetic structure in populations, perhaps the most extreme in Europe.

Almost all ancestry of Icelandic populations (everything in this graph except Norway and Scotland) is from populations like Norway, Scotland, or Ireland which is very similar to Scotland. All differences seen here are caused by drift in various sub-regions of Iceland.



This study also contains an estimate for the proportions of Scandinavian and British Isles in Iceland:
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/...l.pgen.1000505

Based on the available data, the optimal linear combination yielded an estimate of 64% Norse and 36% Scottish ancestry, with a standard error of less than 2%. The FST between the optimal linear combination and the observed allele frequencies in Iceland was 0.0014, which may be in part due to inadequate sampling from the true ancestral populations, but is likely to be mainly due to recent genetic drift in the Icelandic gene pool.

The same computation was performed for each of the 11 Icelandic regions, yielding ancestry estimates that were not statistically different. For each region, the estimate of Norse ancestry was between 62% and 65%, with a standard error of less than 2% (except region 1, for which we obtained 61% with a standard error of less than 3%). This provides strong evidence that the proportions of Norse and Gaelic ancestry do not vary among Icelandic regions, supporting the notion that differences between Icelandic regions are due to recent genetic drift rather than varying contributions from ancestral populations.

[Persian Otomi]

I also believe it originated in Iran, I remember reading that some think it came from India but I never believed that one

[Argang]

Maju agrees with Iranian origin for R1a

While this conclusion was something more or less reachable with previous data (see HERE for example), a new study adds some fine detail for us to reconstruct the paleohistory of this major Eurasian lineage.
...
Overall reconstruction of the spread of R1a

With all the previous analysis I made this map, which also shows in discrete gray color the general pattern of expansion of haplogroup R:

We have an expansion of R into South Asia and Western Eurasia (incl. Central Asia) and even into parts of Africa (R1b-V88) from apparent South Asian (R, R1 and R2) and West Asian (R1a, R1b) origins. Related lineages Q and P* could also be integrated into this pattern of expansion but I did not want to overload the map with too many details.

There is some uncertainty regarding the North European branches of R1a but otherwise the pattern seems quite clear.

On these North European branches, I must say that they remind me of other odd lineages with similar geography: R1b-U106, I1-M253 and I2a2-M223. With the likely exception of R1b-U106 neither appears to have experienced any significant re-expansion since their arrival to that corner of the World, however they do seem to survive pretty well in it.

http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot...from-iran.html

Davidski doesn't agree with this and suggests a more northern origin (Volga-Ural region or thereabouts) for R1a, check out the comments section for some interesting discussion on the matter.

[Artek]

Maju agrees with Iranian origin for R1a

Maju doesn't have any idea how are various sub-haplotypes actually distributed, he ignores many old European haplotypes from Myres et al. and other sources - he just works on the data from Underhill's thesis.
He is probably right about the origin of R1a* itself but he is not when we take downstream clades into consideration.

It also doesn't add up in terms of autosomal genetics, when even Z93+ folks must have previously been a heavy WHG and North-Eastern European-like component carrier instead of loaded with Gedrosian component people from South of the Caspian. And this direct path of Z284 when it's real origin is from Z282 carrier... I'm not defending Davidski but his theory has more sense to me.

[Argang]

Maju doesn't have any idea how are various sub-haplotypes actually distributed, he ignores many old European haplotypes from Myres et al. and other sources - he just works on the data from Underhill's thesis.
He is probably right about the origin of R1a* itself but he is not when we take downstream clades into consideration.

It also doesn't add up in terms of autosomal genetics, when even Z93+ folks must have previously been a heavy WHG and North-Eastern European-like component carrier instead of loaded with Gedrosian component people from South of the Caspian. And this direct path of Z284 when it's real origin is from Z282 carrier... I'm not defending Davidski but his theory has more sense to me.

What we need is autosomal DNA from ancient Central Asian and South Siberian R1a-Z93+ samples, and some ancient Iranian autosomal DNA for comparison.

There is Ust-Ishim on its way, but that is probably a bit too old to say anything about MNOPS people.

Based on our current knowledge, wouldn't a Volga-Ural split for Z93 imply that the whole bunch immediately moved close to Altai and then experienced an in-situ expansion before spreading further? Z93 is not present in the Volga region now except as an invasive element (Tatars).