Afghan DNA discussion

[Negah]

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[thisismyaccount]

@thisismyaccount

My friend, before I go point-by-point, I need to lay out something very simple to you. After reading all your replies several times, I’ve identified three major weaknesses in your argument, and unless we fix these, the conversation will be painful for both of us.

I ask you kindly, please read this post, and please address all 3 issues I have identified; otherwise, the conversation will keep going in circles.

1) You keep treating my posts as “my personal views.”

None of what I wrote is “my opinion.”
Everything I posted comes from peer-reviewed genetic papers; they are from Narasimhan, Lazaridis, Skoglund, Reich lab, etc. I even quoted them directly with links to make it easy. So when you tell me “you’re wrong,” you’re actually disagreeing with the current scientific consensus that I am sharing with you, not me. I am not a geneticist, same as you. I am just stating what these professionals say.

If you think these scientists are wrong, then you need to show scientific counter-evidence. Telling me I’m wrong while ignoring the sources I posted is not a scientific argument.

2) You’re relying on tools that are not scientific (G25, HarappaWorld, GEDmatch, etc).

You cannot use G25, GEDmatch, HarappaWorld, 23andMe, Ancestry, MyHeritage “2% Chinese, 3% Samurai, 1% Swedish” type reports or PCA screenshots to talk about ancient ancestry.

Why? Because these are hobby tools. They are entertainment. Not science.
They cannot detect deep admixture, migration direction, or timing. They are not used in any peer-reviewed work.

Professional population genetics uses qpAdm, qpGraph, DATES, and f-statistics.
These are the only tools that detect ancient ancestry properly.

This is the same mistake our Kurdish friend (parents from Turkey, born in Germany) made years ago when he tried to show Kurds had “no South Asian ancestry” by misusing these calculators. Back then you told me he didn’t know what he was doing. You even laughed at how he was twisting hobby tools to fit his agenda.

Now you’re repeating the exact same error.

Please cite peer-reviewed papers where real geneticists use the right tools. Genetics is a science. It is based on fact, not assumption, not inference, not hobby calculators, not spreadsheets.

3) You use history to prove genetics, for instance, you’re using Hindu Shahi / Kabul Shahi history as if genetics uses medieval dynasties as data.

Geneticists do not use dynasties, chronicles, Biruni quotes, or medieval political history to reconstruct deep ancestry.
They use DNA and scientific toolkits. By its very nature, genetics (and archaeology) is conservative because they soley and only rely on evidence and facts. They cannot make historical inferences. Historians can, because they have multiple tools—texts, archaeology, linguistics, Genetics, numismatics, etc. Geneticists cannot.

We can talk history, but you cannot use history to prove genetic conclusions. That is simply not a correct or proper methodology.

And historically, the Hindu Shahi / Kabul Shahi dynasty has nothing to do with Pashtuns.
The Shahi domains were a mixture of:

1. Bactrian elements
2. Indo-Aryan / Prakrit-speaking elements
3. Central Asian elements

none of that = “Pashtuns.”

Modern Kabul has zero linguistic, cultural, or genealogical continuity with the Shahi court.
Kabul’s population was replaced many times: Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Mongols, Timurids, Mughals, Durranis, plus modern-era shifts. If you want, we can discuss it. But Today, Kabul is a Tajik-majority city with Hazara and Pashtun among many minority groups; it is nothing like medieval Kabul.

You cannot use “Hindu Shahi” as a genetic category. That is not how genetics works.

4) Stop misquoting me. I never said Pastun had no AASI. You do, and you have a lot of it. It is a foundational part of your ancestry. That is a fact. What I said one more time and please only discuss this and stop misconstruing it. It is very simple, based on the studies that cite not my view but the studies that are reputable, peer-reviewed, and based on solid scientific foundations, not myth, folklore, nationalistic narratives, colorism, or political persuasion.

Pashtuns do have AASI — and quite a lot of it.
So do Tajiks.
So do Iranians.
So do Central Asians around the old BMAC zone.

This is not controversial.
This is basic population genetics.

The real question is:
Is that AASI recent (medieval Indian) or ancient (pre-IVC highlander AASI)?

The peer-reviewed papers say it very clearly:

Pashtun AASI = ancient highland South Asian ancestry
Not medieval Punjabi/Sindhi input.

This is exactly what Narasimhan et al. show. I quoted the line before:

“The AASI ancestry in Hindu Kush groups reflects deep, pre-Bronze Age layers not attributable to recent South Asian admixture.”

Narasimhan et al., 2019, Supplement S3

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6822619/

https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/sites/...Supplement.pdf

So Avicenna is wrong when he uses “steppe” to explain being lighter and uses “Indians” to explain being darker. That’s not science. That’s phenotype guessing.

And you are wrong when you say Pashtuns got 30–50% AASI from medieval Punjabis.
The real data simply do not support that.

Pashtuns have AASI, yes.
But the source of most it ( not all of it) is ancient — older than “India” as a concept, older than Indo-Aryans, older than the Shahi dynasties, older than the modern ethnic map.

This is why Pashtuns sit genetically:

closer to Iranians, Kurds, Tajiks
not
Punjab/Sindh.

The reality is that you and I are cousins of Punjabis, but mainly an ancient cousin, not a medieval one.

The Pashtuns drift south on PCA because of their ancient AASI, not because of a massive medieval Indian mixture.

That’s all I’ve been saying from the beginning.

"Everything I posted comes from peer-reviewed genetic papers; they are from Narasimhan, Lazaridis, Skoglund, Reich lab, etc. I even quoted them directly with links to make it easy. So when you tell me “you’re wrong,” you’re actually disagreeing with the current scientific consensus that I am sharing with you, not me. I am not a geneticist, same as you. I am just stating what these professionals say."


Show me an actual screenshot of him saying that. I havent seen him say that at all


"This is exactly what Narasimhan et al. show. I quoted the line before:

“The AASI ancestry in Hindu Kush groups reflects deep, pre-Bronze Age layers not attributable to recent South Asian admixture.”

Narasimhan et al., 2019, Supplement S3
"


Show me a screenshot, because I couldnt find this quote anywhere in S3

[Avicenna]

We cannot do that, my friend, that is, use the Phenotype of a Pashtun to determine the Genotype. That is not science; it is guesswork and magic plus a lot of speculation.

Skin pigmentation is what geneticists call a polygenic trait. What that means is that it depends on many genes (and other factors), not just “AASI vs West-Eurasian.” So having “dark Pashtuns” does not imply a specific ancestral mix (or recent Indian input) as a rule.

https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glos...olygenic-Trait

Check the link below. This is a peer-reviewed study.

Analysis of Skin Pigmentation and Genetic Ancestry in Three Subpopulations from Pakistan: Punjabi, Pashtun, and Baloch

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34068188/

The study confirms that the Pashtuns are lighter because their ancestral mixture brings more European-related ancestry and specific pigmentation genes (SNPs), likely inherited from the Steppe_MLBA input.



Pashtuns have SNPs like SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. This is why Pashtuns are lighter on average.

Here is even more. They are distinct genetic clusters, even inside Pakistan. See below. This reaffirms and aligns with what I’ve been saying: Pashtuns sit on the Iranian Plateau with Persian and Kurds and Tajiks and Steppe arc, Punjabis sit on the Indo-Gangetic / IVC arc. They are related, but not the same structure.



Here is more.



So the average Pashtun in this study is lighter than both Punjabis and Baloch.

But here is the important part: You can't use the simple fact that Pashtuns are lighter to prove that the admixture happened 1,000 years ago instead of 4,000 years ago. Only DATES and qpAdm can do that

I know about that study bro, but pashtuns in Pakistan being lighter than balochis and Punjabis doesn't disprove they still assimilated Suleiman indics? What thisismyaccount is saying is that OG pashtuns completely lacked any south Asian phenotypes or very zagros/Baloch shifted individuals which can be easily found, if you look at Badakshi Tajiks from darwaz who possess very light phenotypes and continious iron age Turkmenistan( Yaz) related ancestry, it makes sense to assume OG pashtuns somewhat looked like them and then absorbed some indics which darkened them relatively speaking, still lighter than Punjabis and balochis no doubt, but we can all admit they are darker than Northern Tajiks ok average.

I don't get why it's such a taboo to equate phenotype with genotype on average, this is why we know for a fact sri Lankans are AASI heavy, or norweigans have loads of EHG/ANF or a random Afghan from Kabul who looks mexican will always have Alot of east Eurasian ancestry but somehow they always get surprised.

[thisismyaccount]

Negah, answer me first, not Avicenna. Show me an actual screenshot of Narasimhan claiming AASI been in hindukush before iran pastoralists, and also that ALL modern hindukush populations, including pashtuns, have none of their AASI from any later period.

Show me. Because you haven't shown me yet. Just shown me link to his article (even though he seemingly refer AASI as subcontinental instead) and how apparently S3 shows his quote, even though I couldn't find it anywhere there.


Name me page, and show me screenshot.

[thisismyaccount]

I know about that study bro, but pashtuns in Pakistan being lighter than balochis and Punjabis doesn't disprove they still assimilated Suleiman indics? What thisismyaccount is saying is that OG pashtuns completely lacked any south Asian phenotypes or very zagros/Baloch shifted individuals which can be easily found, if you look at Badakshi Tajiks from darwaz who possess very light phenotypes and continious iron age Turkmenistan( Yaz) related ancestry, it makes sense to assume OG pashtuns somewhat looked like them and then absorbed some indics which darkened them relatively speaking, still lighter than Punjabis and balochis no doubt, but we can all admit they are darker than Northern Tajiks ok average.

I don't get why it's such a taboo to equate phenotype with genotype on average, this is why we know for a fact sri Lankans are AASI heavy, or norweigans have loads of EHG/ANF or a random Afghan from Kabul who looks mexican will always have Alot of east Eurasian ancestry but somehow they always get surprised.

Badakhshan Tajiks dont have yaz ancestry. They have chust ancestry instead, another iranic culture. They lack yaz haplogroups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chust_culture

[Avicenna]

Badakhshan Tajiks dont have yaz ancestry. They have chust ancestry instead, another iranic culture. They lack yaz haplogroups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chust_culture

Everyday I'm hearing new cultures lol, chust? Wtf is chust? Did they score autosomally like Yaz?

[thisismyaccount]

Everyday I'm hearing new cultures lol, chust? Wtf is chust? Did they score autosomally like Yaz?

Even indo-aryan leaders of mitannis seemingly were alike yaz autosomally. Chust culture was probably just like yaz autosomally too, but probably more IVC shifted. Especially in Badakhshan even, moreso.

But pamiri haplogroups split earlier from pashtuns, than kurds did from pashtuns. So not yaz, and rather seemingly chust culture.

[thisismyaccount]

We cannot do that, my friend, that is, use the Phenotype of a Pashtun to determine the Genotype. That is not science; it is guesswork and magic plus a lot of speculation.

I'm waiting. Show me Narasimhan specifically claiming AASI was in hindukush 10000 years ago before iranian neolithic pastoralists. show me him saying EVERYONE from modern hindukush, and somehow even pashtuns, show that none of their AASI came from outside source "recently" (1000 years ago).

Show me a screenshot, or refer a page of S3 (even though I've checked all pages in S3, checked the non-supplementary paper too and never found him suggest anything you attributed to him. Rather he even implied AASI as subcontinental too). Show me he said that.

[thisismyaccount]

We cannot do that, my friend, that is, use the Phenotype of a Pashtun to determine the Genotype. That is not science; it is guesswork and magic plus a lot of speculation.

Skin pigmentation is what geneticists call a polygenic trait. What that means is that it depends on many genes (and other factors), not just “AASI vs West-Eurasian.” So having “dark Pashtuns” does not imply a specific ancestral mix (or recent Indian input) as a rule.

https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glos...olygenic-Trait

Check the link below. This is a peer-reviewed study.

Analysis of Skin Pigmentation and Genetic Ancestry in Three Subpopulations from Pakistan: Punjabi, Pashtun, and Baloch

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34068188/

The study confirms that the Pashtuns are lighter because their ancestral mixture brings more European-related ancestry and specific pigmentation genes (SNPs), likely inherited from the Steppe_MLBA input.



Pashtuns have SNPs like SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. This is why Pashtuns are lighter on average.

Here is even more. They are distinct genetic clusters, even inside Pakistan. See below. This reaffirms and aligns with what I’ve been saying: Pashtuns sit on the Iranian Plateau with Persian and Kurds and Tajiks and Steppe arc, Punjabis sit on the Indo-Gangetic / IVC arc. They are related, but not the same structure.



Here is more.



So the average Pashtun in this study is lighter than both Punjabis and Baloch.

But here is the important part: You can't use the simple fact that Pashtuns are lighter to prove that the admixture happened 1,000 years ago instead of 4,000 years ago. Only DATES and qpAdm can do that

Come on, man. You had several hours now. You been online multiple times. You posted that quote attributed to Narasimhan 3 times now, and still haven't shown me yet.

Can you now answer my request?

[Negah]

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