The new Harvard genotype datasets that I blogged about recently include a couple of potentially very useful samples from the Levant dated to 1400-1100 BCE. Search for IDs I2062 and I1934 in the anno files
here. They're both from an archeological paper about a Late Bronze Age (LBA) burial site in what is now Israel that was published back in 2017 (see
here).
Surprisingly, individual I2062 is listed in the anno files as belonging to Y-haplogroup R1b1a1a2, which is also known as R1b-M269. The reason that this is a surprise to me is because R1b-M269 is closely associated with the Bronze Age expansions of pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe, and these expansions didn't impact the Levant in any direct or significant way.
The Y-haplogroup assignment may or may not be correct. Sometimes the Y-haplogroups in these sorts of datasheets are indeed wrong. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the BAM file for I2062 isn't available anywhere online, so I can't check whether he does really belong to R1b-M269. But, intriguingly, his autosomes do show a subtle signal of Yamnaya-related ancestry from the Pontic-Caspian steppe that is missing in earlier ancients from the Levant.
To characterize his genome-wide ancestry, I first ran a series of unsupervised and supervised analyses with the
Global25/nMonte3 method (using this
datasheet). For the sake of simplicity, I narrowed things down to the mixture models below based on three reference populations each. Levant_ISR_C is made up of Chalcolithic samples from Israel. The identities of the other reference sets should be obvious to most readers. If confused, feel free to ask for more details in the comments below.
Levant_ISR_MLBA:I2062
Levant_ISR_C,66.8
IRN_Seh_Gabi_C,27
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara,6.2
[1] distance%=1.8905
Levant_ISR_MLBA:I2062
Levant_ISR_C,66.2
Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps,30.2
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara,3.6
[1] distance%=2.0856
Levant_ISR_MLBA:I2062
Levant_ISR_C,67.8
Kura-Araxes_RUS_Velikent,31.8
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara,0.4
[1] distance%=2.1738
To further confirm the reliability of my models, I tested them with the formal statistics-based qpAdm software. As far as I can tell, the output from qpAdm looks very solid across the board.
Levant_ISR_MLBA_I2062
IRN_Seh_Gabi_C 0.193±0.052
Levant_ISR_C 0.710±0.038
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara 0.098±0.026
chisq 9.304
tail prob 0.67676
Full output
Levant_ISR_MLBA_I2062
Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps 0.249±0.076
Levant_ISR_C 0.681±0.051
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara 0.071±0.035
chisq 11.101
tail prob 0.52032
Full output
Levant_ISR_MLBA_I2062
Levant_ISR_C 0.661±0.042
Kura-Araxes_RUS_Velikent 0.339±0.042
chisq 7.979
tail prob 0.844942
Full output
Admittedly, even though I2062 can be modeled with Yamnaya-related admixture, he doesn't need to be. Indeed, his ratio of this type of ancestry varies significantly between the models, from around 10% to nothing. This appears to be dependent on the geography of the non-Levant and non-Yamnaya reference populations; the closer they are to the Pontic-Caspian steppe, the smaller the ratio of Yamnaya-related ancestry in I2062. I'd describe this as an artifact of the
isolation-by-distance phenomenon, and it totally makese sense, but it prevents me from confirming beyond any doubt that I2062 does harbor genome-wide steppe ancestry. Unfortunately, individual I1934 doesn't offer enough data to be analyzed with the same methods.
Samples associated with the Kura-Araxes or Early Transcaucasian culture are particularly strong references for the eastern ancestry in I2062. This probably isn't a coincidence, and it might also explain his Y-haplogroup, because, at its maximum extent, the territory occupied by the Kura-Araxes culture stretched all the way from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to the southern Levant. The map below is from
Wilkinson 2014.
See also...
Downloadable genotypes of present-day and ancient DNA data
Early chariot riders of Transcaucasia came from...
R-V1636: Eneolithic steppe > Kura-Araxes?
Technically Jews don’t show up until the Iron Age. Israel at that time was mainly Canaanites, Amorites and Egyptian garrisons. Neither the Hittites or Mitanni ever went as far there. A sea connection is likely, as it’s in the north and close to Phoenician sphere of influence and not far from the port of Acre/Akko.
ReplyDelete@Leron
ReplyDeleteLook up the definition of proxy.
And also check out this map...
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/30/9190/F1.large.jpg
Hyksos, duh
ReplyDeleteThey had an IE elite just like the Mitanni. It appears there were two IE expansions into West Asia: one from Catacomb over the Caucasus and one from Andronovo through Iran
ReplyDeleteAlternatively Hyksos only spread from R1a expansion but this M269 is more archaic (highest variance by far in West Asia). And btw I didn’t mean Catacomb, I meant the culture after it but preceding Srubna but I forgot the name
ReplyDeleteR1b-M269 is missing from all pre-Bronze Age Near Eastern samples for a reason: it's not native to the Near East but to the steppe.
ReplyDeleteI’d bet on Central Asia rather than the Steppe (perhaps Central Asia can just be seen as an extension of the Steppe), but I still can’t get my head around the high M269 variance if the only West Asian variety is Z2103 (which of course came from the Steppe)
ReplyDeleteThere's no R1b-M269 in Central Asia either before the Bronze Age.
ReplyDeleteAnd no wonder, because that's Botai and BMAC country before Afanasievo moves out of Eastern Europe.
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteDo we have any clue about the language of Chalcolithic Seh Gabi? Is it Proto-Elamian or something?
@HAUMAVARGĀ
ReplyDeleteNo idea, but I suppose Seh Gabi is pretty close to the proto-Elamite homeland in the Kor River basin in central Fars.
If these are the same samples, they do look like they move towards the north/north-east compared to Levant_BA. See Figure 26:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.academia.edu/35245416/A_Late_Bronze_Age_II_clay_coffin_from_Tel_Shaddud_in_the_Central_Jezreel_Valley_Israel_context_and_historical_implications_A_Late_Bronze_Age_II_clay_coffin_from_Tel_Shaddud_in_the_Central_Jezreel_Valley_Israel_context_and_historical_implications
And according to the paper... "The full genetic analysis will
ReplyDeletebe presented elsewhere." Again, that's assuming those are the same samples.
Those are indeed the same samples.
ReplyDelete@Davidski
ReplyDeleteThe dating fits the Bronze Age collapse and the onslaught of the Sea Peoples. One of these were the Lukka. The burial context points to the era of Seti 1 and Ramses 3, who fought off the Sea Peoples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lukka_lands
Does some Anatolian admixture fit?
@epoch
ReplyDeleteNope, nothing from the northwest works as well as Kura-Araxes and other Caucasus samples.
The eastern signal in this individual looks to be from the Caucasus.
The only logical explanation is that Jews are Celtic
ReplyDeleteJoke aside; if correct; this is probably Catacomb -> Kura-Arax/ Post-KA -> Levant
ReplyDelete@Davidski
ReplyDeleteIIRC the Wang paper required 4% EHG admixture in their qpAdm for Maykop.
@epoch
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about the relevance of that minor EHG admix in Maykop, but it's been known for a while that steppe peoples moved into Kura-Araxes territory south of the Caucasus, and their contacts weren't always hostile. It seems that they mixed in some regions, and I think that we'll be seeing more signals of this in the ancient DNA record. Indeed, one late Kura-Araxes male belongs to R1b-V1636.
We still don’t have Kelteminar samples, which is just so clearly the source of most Steppe pottery designs
ReplyDeleteKelteminar samples are going to be mostly Botai/West_Siberia_N-like, but with some Iran_N input.
ReplyDeleteTwo BMAC outliers from Gonur have this type of ancestry. They're probably migrants from just to the north of Gonur.
Nothing to do with Afanasievo and Yamnaya, but probably in some way related to Steppe Maykop.
# Vasco - Hurrian
ReplyDeleteWell we do have one sample from a Hurrian site in Iran, and he belongs to R1b-Z2103.
ReplyDeleteIRN_Hasanlu_IA:F38
Dave: "Kelteminar samples are going to be mostly Botai/West_Siberia_N-like, but with some Iran_N input.
ReplyDeleteKelteminar precedes Botai by several millennia. Early Kelteminar has been AMS-dated to the mid 7th mBC, Botai appears only during the 4th mBC. Its aDNA suggests an expansion from the East (Baikal? Altai?).
Moreover, the Botai site lies some 2000 km north of Samarkand, where Kelteminar may have originated, and 1,500 km NE of the NE Caspian coast. That's a pretty big area yet uncovered by pre-IA aDNA. For comparison - from Krasnoyarsk (AG3) to Botai, it is 1,800 km.
As to the post's topic: How do Minoans or Mykeneaens fare as source in your modelling? They are probably not the best proxy to the supposed Aegaean element in Sea People, but the best one available so far.
Relevant to this is who brought all that West Asian Z2103 from the Steppe? Kura-Araxes? The Hyksos? Certainly it isn’t from the Iranian IEs.
ReplyDeleteSea peoples?
DeleteAnd there’s a hell of a lot of it, basically, at least by Maciamo’s maps. It must be associated with some profound migration, not necessarily in numbers but certainly in post-migration elite status. Parts of Iraq has ridiculous amounts, seemingly approaching 40%. That is huge!
ReplyDeleteIgnore my spelling btw
ReplyDelete@big momma
ReplyDeleteNot sure it's actually 40% in areas of Iraq although it seems to be in modern Armenia on Maciamo's maps. It does look like Z2103 is a marker for Armenians from Maciamo's maps. However the areas of Turkey where the Armenians lived before 'the diaspora' of the 1920's have much lower levels. Didn't most of the Armenians flee south to Iraq and other places in the Middle East? That could be the reason for the high levels in Iraq.
Ned
Some further G25 based PCA plots for the Lebanese Euro / Mixed medieval samples: https://imgur.com/a/KtdSIpH
ReplyDeleteThe population mean plots show that SI-53 is fairly far from the means of South Italian populations.... but, individual plots show not too far from the variation in the Greek population, and fairly close to the average of Greek samples NA17372 and NA17375 or ITS2 and NA17372.
Note, if fitting SI-53 as between Lebanese_Medieval and European populations, Scythian_Moldova or present day Bulgaria is totally workable, and present day/ancient Northern Europeans not necessary.
Matt: Byzantinian ancestry?
ReplyDelete@FrankN, yes, that seems like one possibility out there, though the history seems to reflect that there's minimum Byzantine participation in the Crusades?
ReplyDeleteHittite-related?
ReplyDeleteIt's not like we have proper samples yet.
Matt: " that seems like one possibility out there, though the history seems to reflect that there's minimum Byzantine participation in the Crusades?"
ReplyDeleteYeah- but the same applies to Bulgaria and Skyths. But Byzantinians controlled the Levante before the Arab expansion, and a trader/artisan that didn't manage to catch one of the last boats, or a mercenary might be envisaged.
Isn't that the charme of aDNA, to sometimes call into question the beliefs of archeologists/ historians ?
This sample should be a good reference for ancient Jews.....but.
ReplyDeleteAll Disparso Jews pick Lebanon instead of Sarmatians as their Levantie ancestor. It could mean ancient Jews were shifted towards Lebanon.
There's a distinction between (modern) Lebanese and Sarmatians (and ancient Isreal). It is probably because Lebanon north of Isreal. Lebanon has lots of extra Anatolian-like & Mesopotamian-like admix.
But, affinity to Lebanon is probably explained by European Jews having southern European (Anatolian-rich) ancestry & Oriental Jews having Mesoptamian ancestry.
@Frank
ReplyDeleteI never claimed that the Kelteminar population was derived from Botai. I said that it was going to be Botai-like, and it will be.
All foragers from east of the Caspian up to the Altai will be like Botai.
@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteI couldn't care less what Maciamo’s maps show.
There is quite a bit of Z2103 in northern Mesopotamia and surrounds, occasionally approaching double figures, but nowhere near 40% unless in a few isolated populations.
And there's nothing surprising about that, since we now have two Iron Age samples from northwestern Iran with Z2103; both have some steppe ancestry, and one comes from a Hurrian-speaking site.
So it's already clear that Z2103 arrived in the Near East from the steppe during the metal ages, and became an important marker in some of the peoples that made a big impact on the region, like the Hurrians and maybe Israelites.
Dave: "All foragers from east of the Caspian up to the Altai will be like Botai."
ReplyDeleteWell - neither Botai nor Kelteminar were foragers. Kelteminar had ovocaprids and cattle, and is one of the candidates when it comes to domestication of the Bactrian Camel.
Otherwise, Botai incorporates ENA ancestry that is missing from Iran_Hotu, and also from those Siberians that introduced Combed Ceramics to the Volga-Kama Region during the 6th mBC. This ENA ancestry is a comparatively late arrival, IIRC eeven around the Baikal.
ANE (AG3) is another thing, though: It should have been present in reasonable amounts in the Mesolithic Central Asian Steppe, judged by the ca. 8% ANE in Iran_Hotu.
@FrankN, true enough. I suspect that we may find things as more of pre- and post-Roman South Europe and Anatolia is sampled, and maybe some more parsimonious explanations of samples like some of the outliers in Hungary_Szoland, Collegno, Lebanon_Medieval etc.
ReplyDelete(Btw, on my mention of Bulgarians, to clarify I'm not literally thinking about Bulgarians+Lebanese medieval for SI53, just to emphasis that there are a range of positions that could generate that position.)
Re; frequency of Z2103 anywhere, I would be careful as could be very sensitive to sample size and not confident if large / representative samples available for places like Iraq?
My index does a good job capturing west Eurasian variation. I will see how SI53 fits in it.
ReplyDelete@Leron
ReplyDeleteTechnically Jews don’t show up until the Iron Age. Israel at that time was mainly Canaanites, Amorites and Egyptian garrisons.
Hebrew is a Canaanite dialect. At least in writing, it is as similar to the other Iron Age Canaanite “languages” as American English is to British English. Unless an ancient inscription contains specific words or spellings, it’s not even possible to tell which is which.
@Big Momma
Hyksos, duh
They had an IE elite just like the Mitanni.
I know you’ve probably read this in a seemingly credible source, but there is no evidence for it. It’s an assumption entirely based on the fact that they used chariots. It’s not an assumption that is at all supported archaeologically or linguistically. Their material culture was identical to sites in northern modern Israel and southern Lebanon, and their language was Canaanite.
@Davidski
Nope, nothing from the northwest works as well as Kura-Araxes and other Caucasus samples.
In the Early Bronze Age, Kura-Araxes material culture spread down the Levantine Coast. By about 2700 BCE, a local version of Kura-Araxes pottery called Khirbet Kerak Ware was being manufactured in northern Israel. It’s found at sites all over the Jezreel Valley.
Lebanon_Medieval_Mixed:SI-41, is for sure a Muslim from Spain not a mixed individual. He clusters with Granda Muslims who were unknown mix of Iberian, southeast European, Berber.
ReplyDeleteLebanon_Medieval_Mixed:SI-53, is half French and half something Anatolian (not Turkish). Has no Ottoman ancestry. Maybe, a Christian Anatolian.
Here is a relatively recent paper on the archaeological evidence for Kura-Araxes migration into northern Israel:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2014_num_40_2_5642
@davidski
ReplyDeleteThe Hyskos and Kassites both show up with a horse riding warrior culture. It's also been suggested that they both had an indo european elite. The Kassite language is considered an isolate but as far as i can tell the only serious proposals link it with Hurrian but we don't have enough to go on iirc. The Hyskos were a mostly semitic speaking group but also likely contained Hurrian and Indo European elements and as far as I can tell their horse culture had to have come from the steppe.
TLDR - The result fits with some of the known, but murkier population movements from the era.
@Frank
ReplyDeleteThe type of Botai-like ancestry that I'm talking about was in western Siberia by 6,000 BCE and in the Caspian steppe by 3,500 BCE. So I don't know why you're focusing so much on the dating of Botai?
Take a very careful look at the map here.
LINK
Your confidence that this type of ancestry wasn't already present throughout Central Asia in the pre-Kelteminar and Kelteminar periods is misplaced.
Your reasoning doesn't make any sense.
And obviously Kelteminar people were foragers who eventually took up stock breeding. So quit the nitpicking and focus on the facts.
@Tea
ReplyDeleteI'm aware of the consensus that the Mitanni had an Indo-European (Indo-Aryan) elite, but I haven't seen any solid arguments that the Hyksos did as well.
Also, if the horse chariot culture was passed onto the Hyksos by Indo-European elites, and this was somehow related to the steppe ancestry in this individual from the LMBA Levant, shouldn't we expect him to belong to the Sintashta/Indo-Aryan-specific R1a-Z93?
I'd say that Kura-Araxes and/or Hurrians are a better bet for the source of the eastern ancestry in this sample, considering that there's already an Iron Age sample from northwestern Iran, from a Hurrian speaking site no less, belonging to R1b-Z2103.
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteThat is actually what I was thinking myself. I was purposely avoiding mentioning the mitanni as they are well known to have an indo-european elite while the others are really just interesting theories suffering from a lack of evidence to say either way. My whole point was that the spread of horse riding and/or chariot warrior culture is well established and it was wide spread in the area among speakers of different languages. Case in point Kikkuli, the "master horse trainer" was a Hurrian from Mitanni whose horse training text was written in Hittite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kikkuli
Quite a good reference for Kura-Araxes culture expansion in Near East
ReplyDeleteThe Early Transcaucasian phenomenon in structural-systemic
perspective: Cuisine, craft and economy. Toby C. Wilkinson
@EurDNA, Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete@Frank
ReplyDeleteI'm going to ask you a couple of questions, and I'd like you to try and answer them honestly.
1) Doesn't the presence of a native Botai-like forager population in western Siberia as early as 6,000 BCE directly contradict your claim that this type of ancestry moved west much later than this?
2) Doesn't the presence of Botai-like ancestry in the Steppe Maykop population west of Kelteminar directly contradict your claim that this type of ancestry wasn't found west of the Kazakh steppe at this time?
3) Where do you think the Botai-like ancestry in Steppe Maykop originated from, and did it skip over the Kelteminar population as it spread west?
Thanks a bunch in advance.
I know there might be some conflicting views about this, but didn't King David of the Bible take the Wive of a Hittite Warrior ? And didn't he organize for this Warrior to fight in the front rows....? Anyway, it looks like Hittites were used as Mercenaries in Israel....?
ReplyDelete@Ric
ReplyDeleteThat was written in the iron age, when the Hittite empire was just a distant memory. The old testament notoriously misrepresents the Hittites, all the authors knew first hand were these "neo-Hittite" kingdoms, which I'm pretty sure had little to do with the original by that time.
New Globular samples???
ReplyDeleteThey have IDs that start with RISE. They are from Koszyce Poland. Someone (Artek) broke down the Y DNA of all samples to I2a2a1b2a-L801.
https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?276558-Neolithic-GAC-Farmers-on-GEDmatch
This is the subclade of I2a2 that should have been expected for Globular. L801 dates to the Neolithic. This confirms patrilinialism in Globular Amphora. Also, confirms the source of L801 today which is a common form of I2a2.
@ Bob Floy
ReplyDeleteProbably, yet interesting that they are called "Neo-Hittite" States. Why would they call it "Neo-Hittite" if the Hittites did not have some or other influence there previously ?
@Ric
ReplyDeleteThey're called "neo-Hittite" because they formed out of the tattered remnants of the original empire, and on roughly the same territory. But in the centuries following the collapse of the original empire, that area saw a lot of influx from Greeks, Phrygians, the "sea peoples"(whoever they were), etc., added to which I don't think there was lot of genuine "Hittite" ancestry outside of central Anatolia, in any case. Of course, we can't really know without seeing a hell of a lot more samples than we have, but when the Bible mentions "Hittites", that's not representative of the population we're talking about.
@ Bob Floy
ReplyDeleteYes, debatable...wonder who introduced the use of chariots to the Egyptians ? The identity of the Hyksos surely will be an Eye Opener...
@Ric
ReplyDeleteThe nagging question for me is exactly how close the genetic relationship between "Hittites" and "Luwians" was. The "Luwians" were(presumably) the people of Homer's Troy, so, a pretty damn important group, which we know next to nothing about genetically.
The "neo-Hittite" kingdoms of Lycia and Lydia both spoke Luwian derived languages, so the fact that the old testament refers to "Uriah the Hittite" instead of "Uriah of the Lukka", or something like that, really makes me think that the Bible character dosen't even have anything to do with the "neo-Hittite" states, since the ancients weren't calling these people "Hittites".
@ Bob Floy
ReplyDeleteLooks like we have a Tomato, Tomáto thing going down here....after all Luwians spoke Indo-European of the Anatolian branch just like the Hittites....
And it looks like the Hittites mixed considerably on their Eastern front. So no wonder a Northwestern affinity would have diluted considerably.
ReplyDeleteOr Proto-Hittites originally migrated from the Mugan Plain through Kura Araxes territory....?
ReplyDelete@Ric
ReplyDelete"Looks like we have a Tomato, Tomáto thing going down here"
I don't know. From what I've seen, the Luwians, and definitely their Lycian/Lydian descendants, had a pretty separate cultural identity, regardless of the genetic end. I don't think that by the 6th century BCE or so anyone would have confused them with "Hittites".
@ Bob Floy
ReplyDeleteEg. Would you be able to distinguish between a Swazi and a Zulu without them speaking ? I think it was the same in the Middle East and still is for some to throw different people under the same umbrella especially if their physical features do not differ much.
@Ric
ReplyDeleteI don't think that any archeologist would confuse Hattusa with Troy, much less with any of the Lydian settlements.
@ Bob Floy
ReplyDeleteI'm talking about the Bible reference...
@ Bob Floy
ReplyDeleteDidn't King Solomon hypothetically/estimated live around a +-1000 BCE ? That would put King David at roundabout the same time, which falls into the period of existence of the Neo-Hittite States....so there could have been confusion of what would be strictly Hittite or Luwian back in those days...
@Labayu, the Hyksos also practiced horse burials.
ReplyDelete@Ric
ReplyDelete"I'm talking about the Bible reference..."
I am too, really. A person from the "neo-Hittite" states would have been different enough for the Jews of that period to differentiate, if this character was real. But the "Hittites" were a semi-legendary thing of the deep past for the iron age Israelites who wrote the old testament, I doubt that "Uriah the Hittite" had anything to do with actual Hittites. He probably never existed in the first place.
@Philippe
ReplyDeleteYes, the Hyksos practiced horse burials. However, these burials are in a completely Canaanite equid burial tradition dating back to the Early Bronze Age, which were very common in the Middle Bronze Age. Initially these were donkeys, but latter horses were also used.
Equid burials in Mesopotamia date back to the Ubaid Period, so Late Neolithic, and sometimes include war wagons (like chariots but with four wheels). Based on the excavators’ initial assessment, the oldest equid grave found so far may be tumulus grave SMQ 49 in modern Kuwait.
There's a level of bias around the Hyksos because of their theorised contribution to proto-Hebrew ethnogenesis. I'll leave the following, literally copied from Wikipedia, but nonetheless extremely well-sourced (on the site, not sure how to do hyperlinks here):
ReplyDeleteSince the early 20th century, the possibility of Hurrian, and particularly Indo-European influences among the Hyksos, has been hotly contested by non-European scholars.[11] This rejection gained currency after World War II as a reaction against Nazi antisemitism and racial theories.[11] Scholars rejecting Hurrian and Indo-European influences among the Hyksos typically pointed out that the majority of Hyksos names were Semitic, that there is a lack of archaeological evidence suggesting an large-scale invasion of Egypt from Syria during the arrival of the Hyksos, and chronologies which place the rise of the Hurrians before the emergence of the Hyksos.[11] Proponents of this theory include John Van Seters and J. R. Kupper.[9][48][49][50][51][52] Martin Bernal states that although he admires the political motives of those that deny Hurrian and Indo-European influences among the Hyksos, the evidence indicates that they are wrong.[11]
It provides a much more parsimonious explanation for things like New Kingdom blondism too, unless you want to go full Stormtard and claim the ancient Egyptians from the start had those traits that are particularly visible from after the Hyksos invasion e.g. with Ramses II and Yuya & Tuya (which without further evidence is a Nordicist trope). This isn't a topic I want to get into, nor do I think it is good for discussion, but it is also relevant to Hyksos origins given these traits are ultimately all of genetic origin.
ReplyDeleteWell we need some samples from elite Hyksos burials to work this out.
ReplyDeleteThat goes for "New Kingdom blondsim" too. I'll remain skeptical unless it's shown to be real with ancient DNA. It's probably something to do with the mummifying process IMHO.
Do we already have Philistine samples? May some of the Jewish R1b subclades be part of an assimilated Philistine tribe?
DeleteAt the very least I can say that with Ramses II, it has been confirmed to have been natural (although also dyed later in life), as natural rather than dyed red hair is obvious to spot under a microscope. Again from Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteIn 1975, the mummy of Ramesses II was taken to France for preservation. The mummy was also forensically tested by Professor Pierre-Fernand Ceccaldi, the chief forensic scientist at the Criminal Identification Laboratory of Paris. Professor Ceccaldi determined that: "Hair, astonishingly preserved, showed some complementary data—especially about pigmentation: Ramses II was a ginger haired 'cymnotriche leucoderma'." The description given here refers to a fair-skinned person with wavy ginger hair.[74][75] Subsequent microscopic inspection of the roots of Ramesses II's hair proved that the king's hair originally was red, which suggests that he came from a family of redheads.[76] This has more than just cosmetic significance: in ancient Egypt people with red hair were associated with the deity Set, the slayer of Osiris, and the name of Ramesses II's father, Seti I, means "follower of Seth."[77]
And the more I think about it, the more I agree with your Hurrian-R1b Z2103 connection (and it seems more likely the Hyksos elite would have carried R1a-Z93). The only thing that leaves me wondering is where did Armenian come from, as your Catacomb (or Catacomb-derived) hypothesis made a lot of sense to me.
ReplyDelete@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteThe Wikipedia page on the Hyksos appears to mostly consist of opinions uninformed by at least the last twenty years of research. The Hyksos rulers names aren’t just mostly Semitic, they’re all West Semitic except for one that is Egyptian. Even the proposed Amorite etymologies work just as well as Canaanite, the latter being a better explanation considering the Hyksos material culture is identical to sites in northern Israel and southern Lebanon.
There is no doubt that there was Hurrian cultural influence on Canaan. However, there is no reason to assume at this point that it was anything other than diffusion via the area of modern Syria. The genetic relationship to Transcaucasia is a very interesting discovery, but there is no reason to believe it indicates Hurrian settlement when it comes from a region where the archaeological evidence is consistent with the settlement of people from Transcaucasia in the Early Bronze Age.
About red hair, it’s pretty common in Samaritans, and they’ve been endogamous for about 2,400 years. Also, the dark hair of most people in the region is pretty much very dark auburn, as in you can see a red tint to it in sunlight, it's not usually so dark that it's black like in some populations, which is why I don’t find the Ramesses pigmentation that remarkable.
I'm aware of Samaritan (and for that matter Jewish) red hair predating modern European admixture, but I think it very likely came with the Hyksos. And you haven't provided any evidence to refute the idea that the Hyksos aren't just like all the other IE-derived Maryannu who imposed themselves on native Middle Eastern societies during the BA. It would certainly be anomalous for the Hyksos only to buck the trend. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but from my perspective it is clear from your phrasing that you have a dog in this fight, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteMesopotamians called the Neo-Hittite region in Syria as Hatti, and they continued to do so until Persian times when new terminology became preferred. When the Bible references a Hittite, they are talking about the Luwian/Amorite hybrid population from the states formed after Suppiluliuma’s conquests in north Syria. Nothing about the Hittites from Hattusa/central Anatolia is implied. The Greeks called them Syrians.
ReplyDeleteHyksos have no connection to Hittites/Luwians or Hurrians. They were pre-Canaanite Semites with little influence from Mesopotamian Semites, let alone from people further north.
@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteI don’t think there is any need to refute an assertion that is entirely unsupported by evidence. I think the complete lack of evidence, otherwise known as negative evidence, is sufficient. If there were some evidence that the Hyksos contained an IE element, I would accept it as a possibility.
I wouldn’t say I have a horse in the race, but I’m an American archaeologist who lives and works in Israel. The Hyksos aren’t my specialization, just an interest, but I have friends and colleagues who have been involved in the recent relevant excavations in Israel and Egypt.
@ Leron
ReplyDeleteAnd Suppiluliuma wasn't a Hittite King ?
@Labayu In my mind at least I can tell you have your own biases, but virtually everyone does, so ultimately it just comes down to reasonably discussing evidence. And you're correct that I haven't provided any direct evidence other than citing an author, so fair enough. I still think it would be a big coincidence if they weren't similar to e.g. the Mitanni, but I'll try and find evidence for it.
ReplyDeleteOver 50% of Ashkenazi Levites belong to an R1a subclade that comes from the Middle East in the Bronze Age. Possible sources might be the Mitanni or maybe Hyksos if they did actually have an IE element.
ReplyDelete‘The genetic variation in the R1a clade among the Ashkenazi Levites’ Y chromosome’ (Behar et al., 2017)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14761-7
“Haplogroup R1a1a (R-M17), uncommon in the Middle East or among Sephardi Jews, is present in over 50% of Ashkenazi Levites […] In South Asia, R1a1a has often been observed with high frequency in a number of demographic groups, reaching over 70% in West Bengal Brahmins in India and among the Mohani tribe in Sindh province in Pakistan.[25]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levite#Levite_Y-chromosome_studies
Not sure why I even bothered looking away from Wikipedia, all the answers are on there. The only complication is that it appears the early Hyksos were not yet under Indo-Iranian influence, and that a second wave of Hyksos invasion into Egypt was involved with these charioteers. They seem like ancient armoured regiments, it's ridiculous how quickly they conquered such a large area!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos#Ethnicity
Would anyone know - When does the Ashkenazi Levite R1a date to ? (is it Y2619?)
ReplyDeleteMaybe 300 AD, from the “Iranic branch” ?
And it appears that second wave is the main invasion referenced (the 17th century one), the first wave being more migrational. The earlier, presumably wholly Semitic Hyksos were from the previous century. So the first paragraph here is the "originals", and the second is when they receive the "Andronovo package". Seems legit to me!
ReplyDeleteImmigration by Canaanite populations preceded the Hyksos. Canaanites first appeared in Egypt at the end of the 12th Dynasty c. 1800 BC or c. 1720 BC and established an independent realm in the eastern Nile Delta.[5] The Canaanite rulers of the Delta regrouped and founded the Fourteenth Dynasty, which coexisted with the Egyptian Thirteenth Dynasty and was based in Itjtawy.[citation needed] The power of the 13th and 14th Dynasties progressively waned, perhaps due to famine and plague.[5][6]
In about 1650 BC, the Hyksos invaded the territory of both dynasties and established the Fifteenth Dynasty. The collapse of the Thirteenth Dynasty caused a power vacuum in the south, which may have led to the rise of the Sixteenth Dynasty, based in Thebes, and possibly of a local Abydos Dynasty.[5] The Hyksos eventually conquered both, albeit for only a short time in the case of Thebes. From then on, the 17th Dynasty took control of Thebes and reigned for some time in peaceful coexistence with the Hyksos kings, perhaps as their vassals. Eventually, Seqenenre Tao, Kamose and Ahmose waged war against the Hyksos and expelled Khamudi, their last king, from Egypt c. 1550 BC.[5]
various speculations...
ReplyDeleteBig Momma said...
"but I still can’t get my head around the high M269 variance if the only West Asian variety is Z2103"
if variance is a function of population size and there is a region with the highest variance then it seems likely to me either
1) that was the source region
or
2) the original source population was a lot smaller in number and the new population expanded to be much larger in number so their variance overtook the original.
if (2) that might provide a clue as to the nature of the migration?
#
if you have a major military innovation (like chariots) people are going to want to adopt it as soon as possible and three possible ways might be
1) getting conquered by a chariot riding elite
2) importing mercenaries
3) importing artisans?
#
Uriah the Hittite - speculating
there's a lot of historical examples of tribes being imported as mercenaries and given a piece of land to live on - is there a place called hittite-ville in the vicinity?
or
is it possible "hittite" had become a word for a military specialization rather than a word for an ethnicity like roman gladiator names: samnite, thracian etc or even a word for mercenary like condottieri?
Dragos,
ReplyDeleteFrom Behar 2017:
“65% of the 97 randomly assembled Ashkenazi Levites carried haplogroup R1a-M198. Strikingly, the better resolved whole Y chromosome based phylogeny of haplogroup R1a, showed that 100% of these samples could be reassigned to the refined haplogroup R1a-M582. […]
“the shared direct male ancestor of all R1a-M582 men, ~3,143 ybp […]
“The sister clades of R1a-Y2619 within R1a-M582, coalescing ~3,143 (2,620–3,682) ybp, were sampled in Iranian Azeris, a Kerman, a Yazidi and one sample from Iberia. Further, the phylogeny demonstrates a rich diversity of R1a samples distributed throughout the Middle East, Anatolia, Caucasus and the Indian sub-continent, whereas East European branches represent an early split within R1a.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14761-7
How much GAC-like admixture do Ashkenazim have compared to, say, Kurds? I say that, because GAC-admixture in West Asia is Corded Ware-derived only so surely easy to distinguish? It would be interesting to know if Ashkenazic pigmentation is light due to heightened Hyksos admixture (there is also a relatively clear lineage from the Hyksos to Habiru to Hebrews). Alternatively it could be from the Kura-Araxes culture, if I'm imagining them as looking like Chechens (also very high levels of red hair, surprisingly high actually). I'm of the opinion that Ashkenazim mixed a lot less than most people think mainly because of the high red hair point (which is impossible to be acquired from modern Europe given Ashkenazic WHG paucity) and because I'm not overly convinced about tracing as much mtDNA to e.g. Italy as has been the case, especially given the lack of IBD sharing.
ReplyDelete@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteThe narrative about the Hyksos invasion is no longer widely accepted in mainstream scholarship. The source of the story is Josephus citing Manetho, so it was written at least 1,350 years after the events it purports to describe.
I’ll give you a relatively up to date source. This PDF is Anna‐Latifa Mourad’s PhD thesis (2014):
https://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download/mq:43203/SOURCE1
Look at Chapter 2 “Previous Scholarship”. It summarizes all the arguments and hypotheses, as well as their drawbacks and potential issues. It’s heavily grounded with citations to the academic literature.
The only real dispute today is whether the Hyksos came from northern or southern modern Israel/Palestine, with most favoring the northern origin, and whether or not it was a product of an invasion at all. It may have been mercenaries turning on their employers or something to that effect.
I personally favor the hypothesis, that the first Hyksos ruler was an Egyptian governor of Canaanite ancestry who decided to seize power for himself and started conquering neighboring cities. Manetho refers to him as Salitis, but the name has never been corroborated by archaeology. If you remove the Greek case ending, it is the Canaanite word for “governor” - šalîṭ. Which is same word the biblical text uses to describe Joseph when he is said to have been a governor in Egypt. Although this could just be due to the fact both stories are anachronistic.
Mainstream scholarship may turn out to be mistaken, but it's inline with the preponderance of evidence available at this time.
Labeled late Bronze Age but it certainly overlaps with the Iron Age. How does this sample look relative to the BA_Sidon samples? Could this be one of the those included in the Iron Age with "steppe" ancestry? Is there anyway to confirm that this is indeed R1b-M269 and not a mistake? In any event there is plenty of support that R1b-L277 and L584 are as Middle Eastern as you can get, even if their ancestor was from the steppes. Both of these groups are ubiquitous in European Jews for instance, among many other Middle Eastern sects, and it would be no surprise that it entered the Levant from the north in the late Bronze or early Iron Age.
ReplyDelete@Labayu Indo-European (and Hurrian) names amongst Hyksos elite as well as the arrival of chariots basically identical to those of the Indo-Iranians has nothing to do with Josephus' erroneous etymological interpretation of "hyksos".
ReplyDelete@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteWhat names do you think are Hurrian or Indo-European? I’ve never heard of any. All the king names are West Semitic except the one Egyptian one.
There was at least a diffusion of military technology into the Levant from the Mitanni, but the homeland of the Hyksos was separated from the Mitanni by the Kingdom of Amurru, so likely via intermediaries, speculatively even Hurrian mercenaries from the area under Mitanni rule. The Egyptian word for charioteer looks like it's Indo-European with a Hurrian case ending. I'm not sure how early it first appears though, so not sure if it was loaned via the Hyksos. This isn't evidence of anything more than diffusion. The English word "ass" as in donkey is ultimately of Sumerian origin.
@AWood
It’s Late Bronze Age. The burial in the anthropoid coffin was almost certainly during the period of Egyptian rule, and since it contained a scarab of Seti I, it can’t be earlier than his reign c. 1294 to 1279 BCE.
In the PCA, these samples are shifted a bit toward the Armenian and Iranian Chalcolithic compared to the other Bronze Age samples.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2017.1368204
@Labayu
ReplyDeleteThanks for info. It would be interesting to see if there is any relationship to the "steppe" shift seen in the upcoming(?) Iron Age samples from Lebanon. We're talking a few hundred years, so it's not like there is a year that suddenly cuts off and the genomes appear differently.
@Labayu "While the earliest names of Hyksos rulers are Semitic, names of later Hyksos rulers have been identified as having Indo-Aryan, Hurrian or uncertain etymologies.[43][44][45] These names are associated with the second wave of Hyksos invasion in the 17th century BC, which was composed of a mixed group of well organized warriors that were different from the earlier Asiatic Hyksos princes that arrived in Egypt in the 18th century BC.[43]"
ReplyDelete43=John Bright, 'A History of Israel', p. 60
44 & 45=Robert Drews, 'The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East', p. 57 and p. 254
Unfortunately I don't have the books, but there's two authorities. The name etymology would surely be a more or less black and white issue, so I don't see how they could be wrong there.
On the Samaritans, I believe the red hair mutations that popped up was Arg151Cys/rs1805007. This is definitely quite common in modern Europeans too. I haven't seen enough Middle Eastern data to see which ones are most frequent there. I hate to bring this up, but what are the implications on the Tut haplotype if this(these?) samples are M269.
ReplyDelete@ AWood
ReplyDeleteYes, a Vasconic speaking Pharoah...Whahahaha...
@ Dragos
"Vasco-Hurrian" Heheheeh...
AWood
ReplyDeletedynasty started by a mercenary charioteer coup?
I'd just point out that this is the same time period when Jerusalem's rulers had Hittite (ie Indo-European) names according to Egyptian records. This shouldn't come as a big shock if it's Z2103.
ReplyDeleteDespite a Steppe origin, I do think Z2103 was mostly spread around the Middle East through Kura-Araxes (along with lots of Y DNA J of course), and not so much the Hittites. It's the only way to explain why some of the Z2103 branches are so old in the Middle East. There's also the blatant Kaskian link as to why Z2103 is much higher in Pontic Anatolia. It would be interesting to know if Kura-Araxes had tribal hierarchy so as to permit a Mitanni-like elite scenario.
ReplyDeleteThis is key to the "Armenian problem" but I don't know the answer: how did Kurdish arise out of Mitanni lands? Obviously there was an Indo-Iranian elite, but most of the populace are thought to have spoken Hurrian. How did that change? The same could be true for Z2103 in Urartian lands with Armenian emerging at a later date (and the Phrygran point just isn't plausible imo but happy to be proven wrong). One point which I'm not sure is relevant is that most Indo-Europeans didn't like writing stuff down, sometimes even when writing systems were known about (which is pretty dumb, but whatever). Could this be the case here, meaning in the e.g. Mitanni kingdom those who wrote were simply (perhaps much) more likely to speak Hurrian? I.e., there were more Indo-Iranian speakers in the Mitanni kingdom than thought?
@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, I had access to one of those books. Tracing the claims back to their original source, it seems these etymologies were from various German scholars mostly in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Etymologies aren’t always easy because these languages were either written without vowels or in cuneiform that distorts the vowels, and without spaces between words.
The mainstream view today is represented by this quote from John Van Seters, The Hyksos: A New Investigation, page 183:
“The conclusion from the onomastic evidence is that not a single name of this period in Egypt can be identified, with certainty, as Hurrian. On the other hand, an explanation as West Semitic is either certain or quite probable for almost all foreign names.”
A lengthier explanation is available in the Google preview of that book starting on page 181.
As I mentioned before, speculatively I think it’s possible there was a Hurrian element in the Hyksos armies. They also hired Minoans to paint frescos in their palaces in the Levant and Egypt.
@Ryan
I assume you’re referring to Abdi-Ḫeba. The name isn’t Hittite or Indo-European, it’s a Canaanite theophoric name, but the name of the deity can be interpreted as Ḫebat, the Hurrian goddess. Hebrew tends to drop the -t ending from feminine names so this would make sense, except that it’s much earlier than there is any other evidence of this happening. The goddess is also believed to be originally of southern Mesopotamian origin, so it may or may not indicate Hurrian influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubaba
Likewise, deity names are written in cuneiform with symbols for the name based on other languages, usually Sumerian, so that gods and goddesses associated with each other use the same symbols. For example, Ishter in Akkadian is often written the same as Inanna in Sumerian. Then in West Semitic, Asherah can be written the same. Other times its spelled out semi-phonetically, but for this reason it's hard to know if the name is a loan from another language or just happens to be a deity with similar characteristics.
@Labayu It would be good to see specific details as to the actual names, I doubt they (multiple sources) would mess that up so badly so I'm still sticking with that point though. One more thing though, how did they obtain Iranian-style chariot technology if this wasn't a Mitanni-style Maryannu scenario? Surely, you wouldn't claim through trans-cultural diffusion. Chariots are actually pretty complicated stuff (for back then of course).
ReplyDeleteIt also matches with this (https://web.archive.org/web/20140813162932/http://www.lorealdiscovery.com/_us/_en/topic/hair/hair2.aspx?TopicCode=T_Hair_Me_Obs&ChildCode=T_Hair_Me_Obs_text2&), I really don't see where else that could have been from besides a giant coincidence. Then the fact that they had Iranian-style chariots, this transformation happened in the rest of West Asia (why would the Hyksos be an exception?), the strong possibility of some IE names amongst the elite, R1a being present in Egypt in non-negligible numbers at all (where else would it have come from, the various Persian Empires?) - the list goes on.
ReplyDeleteTo me, and again I haven't written a dissertation about this or anything (but I don't need to), it seems extremely likely during the Bronze Age there was an Iranian-related invasion of charioteer elites across all of the Fertile Crescent civilisations.
Here's a nice map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Chariot_spread.png
ReplyDeleteAlso, this blog post seems to have been deleted but it's preserved here (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fG4yHrn0jwEJ:xterraspace.blogspot.com/2018/08/central-asian-admixture-in-hallstatt.html+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk), so even in Europe trans-cultural diffusion of chariot technology isn't necessarily substantiated.
In the 1240 K SNP files seems I2062 is positive for a couple of M269 SNPs and upstream of that (P297, R1b, R1, and R level); negative for L151; no call for Z2103 equivalents and a bunch of others; negative for Z2110. So looks legit. Plausibly Z2103 but could also be PF7562 or something.
ReplyDelete@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteNobody really messed up. They’re not even wrong for certain. They just didn’t have as much information to go on at the time or were looking specifically for something to support their hypothesis. It’s easier to get access to older references, so non-specialist historians just repeat them.
I’ll give an example, there is a name, possibly fragmentary, which is transliterated from hieroglyphics is ḫbdd... Schneider interpreted this as Ḫeba[t]-dāta, which is Hurrian for “Ḫebat has given”. Works okay, except notice he had to drop a “d”, turn it into a “t” and assume another “t” was broken off. You don’t have to drop or change anything to interpret it as ḫābi‐dādu, which is “sheltering is the beloved” in Amorite/Canaanite, with “the beloved” being a common epithet for deities. So why did he go with Hurrian? I don’t know, but I assume that part of the reason is because the Hurrian hypothesis was popular at the time, mostly because of the chariots. Now that we know all the kings’ names were West Semitic other than the one Egyptian one, and that all the more certain etymologies Semitic, it makes more sense to interpret this one as West Semitic.
There are numerous ways for military technology to diffuse. There is reverse engineering what you’ve captured, there is the fact that the king who doesn’t have an extremely valuable technology is likely to pay a craftsman a lot more to build it than the king who already has a lot of craftsmen with the knowledge, and there is the fact that craftsman and specialist soldiers usually prefer to go on living after they’ve been captured. We have plenty of textual evidence of kings in this period dragging off skilled craftsman to their capitals. Also subordinates of one empire sometimes switch sides by rebelling and becoming a vassal of another, bringing their forces and their knowledge into another coalition.
As I remember, Hyksos/Egyptian chariots were different from Mitanni chariots, as in arguably more advanced, so maybe the idea was enough. Although I don’t know if this was true from the beginning.
To be clear though, I’m talking about the current state of the evidence, and the reasons to be skeptical of what you’ve heard. Of course genetic evidence has the potential to sort it all out better.
@Labayu They were (basically) the same, it was the Hittites who improved most on the design. But they all stem from the same Iranian design.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot#Hittites
@ Ric
ReplyDeleteThat’s how the evidence is sitting; it’s quite remarkable. But I’m glad you’ve found humour in it
@ Phillipe
Academic papers on Y DNA have tended to overestimate dates.
I find it unlikely that Levite R1a happens to coalesce to Mittani. It is more likely that their cluster goes to a proselytising event post 0 AD.
@capra internetensis
ReplyDeleteIn the 1240 K SNP files seems I2062 is positive for a couple of M269 SNPs and upstream of that (P297, R1b, R1, and R level); negative for L151; no call for Z2103 equivalents and a bunch of others; negative for Z2110. So looks legit. Plausibly Z2103 but could also be PF7562 or something.
Thanks, I should have checked that.
@Dragos
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think that is more likely?
Phillipe
ReplyDeleteI don’t really know much about Ashkenazi or sublineages of Z93
But I do have an inkling for thenart of these things; and just looked around YFull and the Web
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/FamilyTreeDNA/the-origin-of-ashkenazi-levites
Levites are heavily represented by families like Horowitz; etc; and the TMRCA of Levite R1a was fairly recent
@Big Momma
ReplyDelete“It also matches with this (https://web.archive.org/web/20140813162932/http://www.lorealdiscovery.com/_us/_en/topic/hair/hair2.aspx?TopicCode=T_Hair_Me_Obs&ChildCode=T_Hair_Me_Obs_text2&)”
That link doesn’t work.
@Dragos
ReplyDeleteThe dates in that 2017 Behar paper look more or less correct. From memory, they're based on full genome sequences and the latest methods (not the Zhivotovsky effective mutation rate crap, if that's what you're referring to).
The high frequency of R1a-Z93 in Ashkenazi Jews is indeed due to a founder effect dating back to the Medieval period, but the mutations under Z93 shared by Ashkenazim and populations of Indo-Iranian origin, like Iranians and Indians, definitely date back to the Bronze and Iron Ages.
@Dragos
ReplyDeleteYour slideshare link is from the same author as the 2017 study I quoted, which has Levite R1a dating back to the Bronze Age, possibly to the Mitanni or Hyksos period.
@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteTrans-Cultural diffusion isn't at all out of the question for chariot technology because it was just a better cart. Wheeled vehicles themselves pop up near simultaneously in several places so fast that diffusion has to have happened and it was a much larger innovation. The spoked wheels from Sintasha are the big technological development of the chariot but it would be easy to copy or work out through trial and error because again there were people building carts all across the region.
It's also not out of the realm of possibilities that there was a ruling elite in the initial contact zone but that peripheral groups brought into the cultural fold wouldn't have had the same ydna lines or language. Subsequent founder effects homogenize the ydna lines even further.
I'm not sure what you are suggesting about Kurdish ethnogenesis but it doesn't go back to the Mitanni. You might be thinking of the Medes but that is an idea latched onto by nationalists and the evidence doesn't support it.
@Labayu
Your explanation about the translation errors makes sense. Having not looked into it myself I thought that the idea that Hyskos had a Hurrian element was still current.
According to Jewish law, a descendant of a convert couldn't ever become a Levite, but of course it could happen over generations if someone got away with lying about it or there was a so-called non-paternity event.
ReplyDeleteAnother potential source of Indo-Iranian ancestry in Jews is from the two way deportations carried out by the Assyrians and Babylonians in the Iron Age. Defeated enemies from one side of their empires were often partially settled on the other side. There were people from the northern and eastern periphery of the Mesopotamia settled in the area that would latter become Hasmonean.
This may be relevant to the discussion:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C5%A0uwardata&oldid=789981245
Šuwardata, also Šuardatu, (Shuwardata) is understood by most scholars to be the king of the Canaanite city of Gath (Tell es-Safi), although some have suggested that he was the 'mayor' of Qiltu, (Keilah?, or Qi'iltu) during the 1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence.
(...)
To the king, my lord, my god, my Sun: Message of Šuwardata, your servant.
(...)
Suwardata and Achish
David Rohl, in his book Pharaohs and Kings, suggests the name Suwardata has the same meaning ("Gift of the Sun God") as the Hurrian name Akishimige, of which Achish may be the abbreviation. In addition, 'Suwardata' is strikingly similar to Suryadata which also means gift of the Sun God in Sanskrit (from 'Surya' - the Sun God and 'datta/data' - meaning 'given' or 'gift'; the entire name translates to (roughly), Gift of the Sun God or Given by the Sun God).
Šuwar-data
Šuar-datu
datu
दात adj. dAta given
Šuwar
सुवर् ind. suvar light
सुवर् ind. suvar heaven
सुवर् ind. suvar the sun
Šuar
स्वर् adverb svar heaven
स्वर् adverb svar light
स्वर् adverb svar the sun
स्वर् adverb svar lustre
@Frank
ReplyDeleteAre you still around? Can you answer my questions? Thanks
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/04/r1b-m269-in-bronze-age-levant.html?showComment=1555995884609#c5279059259633610445
Suwardata is an ironic name because he addresses the Egyptian king as "my sun, my god".
ReplyDeleteNadav Na'aman has a hypothesis that the collapse of Hyksos dynasty left Canaan vulnerable to infiltration from the north by people fleeing from Hittite expansion into Syria.
Quoting him:
The best-known examples of individuals bearing "northern" names in the Land of Canaan are the rulers mentioned in the Amarna letters. The northern origin of many of these names has been recognized since the beginning of research on the Amarna tablets and it provided the foundation for the well-known hypothesis of the Hyksos invasion and the establishment of their Asiatic empire. It is now clear that the entry of these northern immigrants into Syria and Canaan had nothing to do with the Hyksos (Landsberger 1954, 51-61 ; Alt 1959, 72- 85; Redford 1970, 1-17). Many of the names that appear in the Amarna tablets have for many years been regarded as derived from an Indo-Aryan language (O'Callaghan 1948,59-63; Albright 1975,108-9; Hess 1989). By linguistic and cultural analysis it has however been demonstrated that there are relatively few Indo-Aryan names in ancient Near Eastern documents and that various names regarded in the past as Indo-Aryan are either Hurrian or of unknown northern origin (Kammenhuber 1968; 1977 ; Diakonoff 1972; Mayrhofer 1974). There are a few distinct Indo-Aryan linguistic elements among the names of rulers of Canaan in the Amarna Age (Mayrhofer 1966, 29-30; 1974, 29), but Indo-Aryan groups played no part in the history of Syria and Canaan. Splinter-groups speaking an Indo-Aryan language may have played a certain role in the prehistory of the kingdom of Mitanni, but these were quickly absorbed into the Hurrian-speaking society of northern Mesopotamia (Wilhelm 1982, 23-27).
Looking at his paper again "The Hurrians and the End of the Middle Bronze Age in Palestine", I see a few of the Hurrian named rulers are in the Jezreel Valley, where these samples were taken from. It's worth noting that these were elite burials. The anthropoid coffin burial especially so.
@Tea
ReplyDeleteCheck out that PDF I linked earlier if you're feeling like digging deeper into the recent scholarship on the Hyksos. It's pretty comprehensive.
@ Philippe
ReplyDelete“”which has Levite R1a dating back to the Bronze Age, possibly to the Mitanni or Hyksos period.”
Maintaining the R1a connection; we would expect Mitanni (an Indo-Aryan elite) to be L657; which is a completely different sub-branch of Z93
“Levite R1a” is medieval. It has nothing to do with Mitanni; but probably emerges from Iranian coverts whose combined TMRCA goes back to the LBA
In fact , this is what Behar et al. state :
ReplyDelete'' The most enigmatic question – the timing and location whereby the founder of the Ashkenazi Levite R1a-Y2619 pedigree obtained Levite status – remains unresolved. This question might be beyond the scope of genetic studies using contemporary genetic variation, given the absence to date of any tested men whose lines branched off between the time of the shared direct male ancestor of all R1a-M582 men, ~3,143 ybp, and the shared direct male ancestor of the R1a-Y2619 Ashkenazi Levite men ~1,743 ybp. Future historical or archeological insights might provide the means to further investigate this issue. ''
@All
ReplyDeleteDo I recall correctly that a claim was made recently in a paper that there was practically no genetic continuity in the Levant from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age?
If so, that seems way off now, considering the ancestry of this Levant_ISR_MLBA:I2062 individual.
"practically no genetic continuity in the Levant from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age"
ReplyDeleteThat wouldn't make much sense anyway, given how much Natufian related ancestry there still is in the Levant today, no?
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteI believe you're thinking about Harney et al (2018) which claimed that Levant_Chl directly contributed to Levant_BA_North (Sidon) but not Levant_BA_South (Ain Ghazal)?
"These results imply that a population that harbored ancestry more closely related to Levant_ChL than to Levant_N contributed to the Levant_BA_North population, even if it did not contribute detectably to the Levant_BA_South population."
@ Davidski
ReplyDeleteThat would be interesting. If so then the something caused the Natufian lineages to migrate out of this area at that time and only reoccupiing later ?
@Davidski
ReplyDeleteWhy am I getting such different distances in nMonte? (I'm using the newest scaled sheets and nMonte3 with the default settings.) For example:
[1] "distance%=3.2295"
Levant_ISR_MLBA:I2062
Levant_ISR_C,67.4
Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps,28
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara,4.6
Anyways, so much I want to add to this discussion and models I want to run... sucks that this is such a packed week for me. ;-(
@PF
ReplyDeleteI used the datasheet of the individual results that I linked to, and let nMonte3 aggregate and average the results.
It's been fairly clear for a while that most of the Jewish R1b predates the Iron Age and thus Jewish ethnogenesis -- one obvious clue being that some branches are found across multiple Jewish populations, not just Ashkenazi/Sephardic (aka, not from more recent admixture in Europe).
ReplyDeleteI believe all of the Jewish M269 falls under this sub-branch, PF7562. Check out the other countries there on Y-Full... https://yfull.com//tree/R-PF7562/
@All
ReplyDeleteI edited the post: fixed some typos and added a nice map. Enjoy.
By the way, where's Frank? We need to talk.
If it is PF7562+ then it's presence in Levant is not a surprise. Quite contrary it is what one should expect from this haplotype who in theory must be in Near East since Eneolithic. Especially in North Levant - South Turkey.
ReplyDeleteWhat is more interesting is the fact that he don't need Steppe ancestry if I understand correctly. If he don't have steppe ancestry then this could increase the chance that R1b-M269 has Near Eastern origin rather than Steppic. Because PF7562 is parallel to L23. So it has equal weight to L23. L23 can be from Steppe while PF7562 from Near East.
@Aram
ReplyDeleteL23 can be from Steppe while PF7562 from Near East.
Impossible. There's not a single instance of R1b from before the Bronze Age outside of Europe and the steppe.
Thinking twice. His age is too young to make conclusions. It would be good if we have PF7562 in Eneolithic. What autosomes he had in Eneolthic.
ReplyDeleteIf he is Z2103 then here not much too guess. It must be L584 who was almost certainly present in NW Iran since MBA. This period coincide with Urmia ware who's expansion are easily trackable. They moved to west toward North Mesopotamia, also partly in Van region, and almost certainly toward Levant. It is quite possible that they were present among Hyksos elites.
On the off chance of M269 originating in Iran or Central Asia, L23 in Central Asia or more likely the Steppe and Z2103 & probably L51 on the Steppe, that would be semi-expected. I don't know how legit this is but I've read that the Central Asian (i.e. Kelteminar) intrusion onto the Steppe described - amongst others - by FrankN, has its origins in Iran with the Zarzian culture. To me Central Asia makes more sense as Iran and the Caucasus seem like J territory on first glance (Iran will be the origin of various haplogroups though), but better to keep an open mind. Plus there's again the point of M269 variance being explicitly so much higher in the Middle East which makes little sense if the only branch of prominence is Z2103 (obviously from the Steppe).
ReplyDeleteThe "Sogdiana hypothesis" of Johanna Nichols places the homeland in the 4th or 5th millennium BC to the east of the Caspian Sea, in the area of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana.[25][26] According to Bernard Sergent the lithic assemblage of the first Kurgan culture in Ukraine (Sredni Stog II), which originated from the Volga and South Urals, recalls that of the Mesolithic-Neolithic sites to the east of the Caspian sea, Dam Dam Chesme II and the cave of Djebel.[27] He places the roots of the Gimbutas' Kurgan cradle of Indo-Europeans in a more southern cradle, and adds that the Djebel material is related to a Paleolithic material of Northwestern Iran, the Zarzian culture, dated 10000–8500 BC, and in the more ancient Kebarian of the Near East.
Would love for someone archaeologically knowledgable to comment on the above
@Aram- "If he don't have steppe ancestry then this could increase the chance that R1b-M269 has Near Eastern origin rather than Steppic"
ReplyDeleteI guess you're kidding. If a case of R1b-M269 were really to appear in the Bronze Age of Israel (which I doubt) many questions would be raised regarding its origin. But despite what many people say, I do not think it has anything to do with the origin of the Jews who are a clearly Semitic people.
@Big Momma
ReplyDeleteOn the off chance of M269 originating in Iran or Central Asia, L23 in Central Asia or more likely the Steppe and Z2103 & probably L51 on the Steppe, that would be semi-expected. I don't know how legit this is but I've read that the Central Asian (i.e. Kelteminar) intrusion onto the Steppe described - amongst others - by FrankN, has its origins in Iran with the Zarzian culture.
FrankN and his buddies are talking out of their behinds. They don't understand the data and don't want to.
The only Central Asians that moved into the Caspian steppe at this time are those that had a lot of Botai-like Siberian ancestry and helped to give rise to Steppe Maykop. These may well have been the Kelteminar people, but they didn't bring R1b-M269 to Europe.
Take a close look at the data and understand it. You won't see any R1b-M269 in Central Asia before the migration of Afanasievo people from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.
Gaska
ReplyDelete"I guess you're kidding. If a case of R1b-M269 were really to appear in the Bronze Age of Israel (which I doubt) many questions would be raised regarding its origin."
Why You doubt about the presence of R1b in Levant? As I said it's presence there is _normal_. And I will add more R1b-M269 was in Near East since Eneolithic most probably even prior the formation of Kura-Araxes culture. Especially the PF7562 branch.
I said on Anthrogenica awhile ago that the Steppe shift in Armenia_Chl can be from M269 and not only solely from V1636.
But I could be wrong. Who knows? Heh. There is no much aDNA from Near East to be definitive on this matters.
@All
Maciamo's map reflects modern situation and not the situation before WW!. That is why all Armenian R1b-s are placed into the territory of modern Armenia rather than historic. Also his maps should be taken with some scepticism.
If PF is right about Jewish R1b being almost entirely PF7562(most common today in Armenia and Turkey, according to Y-full), then I double suspect that this is Hittite related.
ReplyDelete@Aram said. "Why You doubt about the presence of R1b in Levant?"
ReplyDeleteBecause at the moment there is no R1b-M269 in Levant. The case that Davidski mentioned if it turns out to be finally R1b is clearly an outlier buried in an Egyptian sarcophagus. What does it have to do with Jews? Absolutely nothing. What has to do with the origin of R1b-M269 ? Absolutely nothing. That's my opinion
@Aram said. "And I will add more R1b-M269 was in Near East since Eneolithic most probably even prior the formation of Kura-Araxes culture. Especially the PF7562 branch.I said on Anthrogenica awhile ago that the Steppe shift in Armenia_Chl can be from M269 and not only solely from V1636.
Are you sure of what you are saying ?, whom do you intend to convince? According to your theory R1b-M269 was in Near East before 4,000 BC?
Wow, of course it isn't mostly PF7562, but there's really quite a lot! Ignoring branches of M269 picked up in Europe from conversions (e.g. U106 etc.) and branches that are extremely rare, PF7562 makes up close to half! I really did not expect that...
ReplyDeleteSource: jewishdna.net
I think that's related to J2b, though
ReplyDeleteAlso as Hajji Firuz was J2b and like Shulaveri-Shomu was involved in very early winemaking amongst other similarities. Sorry for multiple posts.
ReplyDelete@Big Momma
ReplyDeletePlease don't ever link here to that idiotic blog again.
Didn't know sorry, but what's wrong with it? FrankN seems really knowledgeable and almost everything is sourced, I don't know what's wrong with that particular post at least. As to that blog as a whole, I don't know enough about it being unreliable/inaccurate or not.
ReplyDeleteThey're just a bunch of trolls trying to argue that up is down and down is up.
ReplyDeleteSee that's why they fail to mention the really obvious things like the Afanasievo and Sintashta migrations that took R-M269 and R-M417 deep into Asia, and instead speculate about things that will never be proven with ancient DNA, because they didn't happen, like the Central Asian origins of Sredny Stog and Yamnaya.
I only tolerate Frank here on occasions because I like to make fun of him a bit, like in my comments in this thread.
Gaska said...
ReplyDelete"If a case of R1b-M269 were really to appear in the Bronze Age of Israel (which I doubt) many questions would be raised regarding its origin. But despite what many people say, I do not think it has anything to do with the origin of the Jews who are a clearly Semitic people."
a quick way of incorporating some chariots into an army that didn't have them would be incorporating some pre-existing charioteers (or chariot makers).
(although if it's correct some cultures modified the design that might imply the former more than the latter)
if so it might not be anything to do with origin per se but maybe some ydna, loan words etc?
ReplyDelete@Grey
In the Bronze Age the Jews (Canaanites ...) were an insignificant people in international relations. The Hittites, Egyptians etc .. were much more powerful societies and obviously it is much easier for those kingdoms to have influence (genetic, military, technological, social etc ..) in the Jewish people than viceversa. The discussion about the origin of the Jews should be clarified by the expert archaeologists who work in the sites of Israel. It is also necessary ancient dna to link which are their oldest uniparental markers. For me the Jews do not constitute a race or a homogeneous people but a mixture of many Asian and some European markers related to the diaspora. Nothing else.
Gaska
ReplyDeletewell i still think it would be interesting to find out if at the time "Uriah the hittite" actually meant "Uriah the charioteer."
Gaska
ReplyDeleteLet's face it. Chances are high that we have a M269 in Levant. Chances are high that this is PF7562+ and not Z2103. Also we learn that the most frequent type of R1b among Jews is PF7562. But this doesn't necessarily means that this sample comes from Proto-Jewish context. Chances are very very high that we will see the same PF7562 in ancient Hittite / Anatolian context. This outcome is predicted by many commentators.
Again what surprises You here in this situation? Didn't You wanted to prove that "R1b is not IE"?
And why You think M269 shouldn't have old presence in Near East. Oldest records of IE, Semitic, and Hurrian texts are in Near East. Why R1b shouldn't be present among those people?
BTW
ReplyDeleteIE, Semitic and Hurrian do show linguistic evidence of active cross contacts. For example the word horse in IE, Hurrian, then Semitic and even Sumerian.
It was found in Egyptian sarcophagus? Cool. Egypt had a active relations with Mitanni and Hittites. But You can always say that it is from Hurrians or Annunakis. Who can prove the contrary? So shouldn't be it a good day for "R1b is not IE"? :)
I think we'll see a lot of R1b-M269 in Hurrian remains. Both of the Iron Age R1b-M269 samples from Iran are from the northwest of the country where Hurrians were dominant during that time.
ReplyDeleteSee map here...
An early Iranian, obviously
Davidski
ReplyDeleteWould this mean that Hurrians came from Yamna?
I don't really know where Hurrians came from, but it's generally accepted that they formed out of post-Kura-Araxes groups, no?
ReplyDeleteIf so, then some of these Kura-Araxes groups may have been mixtures of Caucasus and steppe populations, especially in and around what is now Azerbaijan, and this is how R1b-M269 may have entered the Hurrian paternal gene pool.
@ Big Momma
ReplyDeleteThere’s a predynastic Egyptian mummy with red hair, dated to c.3400 BC. Maybe it was brought by R1b-V88? Berbers are also known to have red hair.
Mummy: https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=117645&partId=1
ReplyDelete@Aram said.. Again what surprises You here in this situation?
ReplyDeleteYou said that R1b-M269 was in the Near East even before the Kura Araxes culture- And I say that this does not have any sense and that you should think about things before saying them.
@Aram said- "Didn't You wanted to prove that "R1b is not IE"?"
I am very clear that P312 and its most direct ancestors did not speak IE, I do not need R1b in the bronze age of Israel to prove this claim.
@Aram said "And why You think M269 shouldn't have old presence in Near East"
1-because it has never been found in that region
2- because it is a typical European marker
3- because I do not know any migration from the West to the East, unless you tell me some.
Everyone should start to free themselves from their mental prisons and understand that everything is much more complicated than it seems. We are going to assume that this sample was actually R1b-M269. This haplogroup was able to reach the Near East already advanced the Bronze Age and by many different ways
1-Egypt- because the burial contains an Egyptian sarcophagus. That man could be a freed slave? (I suppose no one will think that R1b-M269 originated in Egypt, right?)
2-It could have come to Israel with the Phoenicians (who are nothing but Canaanites) because of the commercial exchanges with Italy or Iberia. However, I believe that this solution is not valid either because the sample is too old to be related to the Phoenician trade (I remember that they founded Cartago in the 9th century BC and Gades-Cádiz in the 7th century BC)
3-He could come from the north, that is Anatolia, and be related to the Hittites. But we have evidence that this people despite speaking an IE language was R1b?. The relationship between uniparental markers and languages is increasingly risky.
4- It can be a descendant of the Kurá Araxes culture (aprox 4,000-2,000 BC).I believe that this culture only reached the current border of Syria, but it is true that it was an ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous culture and that some of their derived cultures came to Canaan after the fall of the Akkadian Empire.
5-Hurrians? They did not speak an Indo-European language, although it is possible as Davidski says that geneticists find R1b-M269 in this people (Kingdom of Mittani-Indo-Iranian speakers-ruling class over the Hurrians)
Can you think of any more hypothesis? All are speculations.
About the sarcophagus. It isn’t actually Egyptian. It’s a typical and relatively common Canaanite style of sarcophagus which developed in the late bronze age obviously inspired by Egyptian practices. Something like 74 of them have been found. This particular sarcophagus was made nearby at Beth She’an, about 26 kilometers south of the Sea of Galilee. At this time Egypt ruled Canaan, primarily through semi-autonomous client kings.
ReplyDeleteThank you Labayu, then we have a Canaanite sarcophagus inspired by the Egyptians.
ReplyDeleteWe are going to assume that this person because of the type of burial was important in his community, and that Canaan was a kind of Egyptian protectorate. We can think of a Canaanite administration supervised by the Egyptians or in an Egyptian administration over the territory. So the person buried was Egyptian or Canaanite?
If it was an Egyptian administrator and it really was R1b-M269 we have that haplogroup in Egypt around the 13th century BC (if I remember correctly, there are objects related to Seti I in the tomb)
There is some debate as to whether or not these sarcophagi ever contained Egyptian officials or not, with most leaning to the view that they did not based on the fact that the associated burial practices are mostly Canaanite. If I remember correctly, there is also textual evidence for Egyptian administrators making preparations to be returned to Egypt for burial. At this particular location, this burial was most likely of a member of the local elite appointed governor by the Egyptian king rather than a Canaanite client king himself. There is textual evidence for the practice of client kings sending their sons to Egypt to be educated and serve as hostages to keep the clients inline. Since not every son becomes a king himself, it’s assumed that some of these Egyptian educated sons of Canaanite kings became governors of estates directly under Egyptian rule, the Egyptian term is more like “commissioner”.
ReplyDeleteAlso worth mentioning again, based on material culture, this site is in the center of the area of the Southern Levant most heavily settled by Kura-Araxes migrants c. 2700 BCE. If you look at the map David added to the post, this site is in the center of that cluster to the right of the name Bet Yerah.
Later migrations from what is now Syria are also probable on some scale, and suggested by textual evidence (northern names of a few local rulers), but there is no clear evidence in the archaeological record in contrast to the Kura-Araxes migration/expansion.
This is probably a stupid question, but why is there virtually no uptake of the idea that the sample could be from one of the Sea Peoples? I don't know anything about the Canaanite sarcophagi, but Penn Museum lists Philistines as one of the potential creators/users of this artifact type (https://www.penn.museum/sites/canaan/Sarcophagi.html).
ReplyDeleteThe Philistines, while they were not simply Greeks or anything else simple, would be expected to have Greek-ish DNA in the mix, and, as I recall, the Myceneans, on account of their partial continuity with Minoans, have a (so far unexplained) additional Caucasus affinity. So, is it possible that the Kura-Araxes/Hurrian connection is a red herring? Very happy to hear why this is wrong.
@Recovering Indo-Europeanist
ReplyDeleteThis burial is from before the earliest possible date for the arrival of the Sea Peoples, and in an area far away from anything remotely related to Philistia. Whoever wrote that text for the museum was probably reading some scholar’s speculations from a hundred years ago before much was known. In general, the Sea Peoples narrative as you’ve probably heard it is not widely accepted any longer. For example, prior to their arrival along the southern Levantine coast, there was a Syro-Hittite Kingdom of Philsitia in northwestern modern Syria.
It shouldn’t be too long before some Philistine genetic data is published, but I don’t know what to expect. The only language we know they spoke was a Canaanite dialect, but some non-Semitic names and a few loan words suggest their elite originally spoke Luwian or a Luwian related language. Based on some similarities to Carian names, they may have originally been from Western Anatolia. Their non-local material culture has a lot of parallels to Cyprus.
@A Recovering Indo-Europeanist
ReplyDeleteThis is probably a stupid question, but why is there virtually no uptake of the idea that the sample could be from one of the Sea Peoples?
I tested this with samples from Anatolia and the Aegean, and it doesn't work. There's an excess of Anatolian ancestry caused by using a reference population set with Levant_ISR_C (Chalcolithic Israel) and any population from west of the Caucasus.
But I can't drop Levant_ISR_C to compensate for this, because it's a natural choice and it helps to produce the best models.
I'm not sure why there is such a concerted effort to make R1b not Jewish. Even if they weren't the original "Semitic" speakers, there is a good chance there was M269 roaming around the area at the time of the formation of this group. Taking a look at the R1b Jewish project, there are also sizeable clusters of L584+ and L277+ among European Jews. These subclades are exceedingly rare in Europe, as well as the V88 that probably dates to Cardial Lebanon, or possibly crossing south to Libya from Sicily. I rarely see anyone suggest I1 is not Germanic, yet I think many of us reading the blog would agree that southern Sweden and Germany are unlikely the homeland of Indo-European speech, it doesn't make I1 any less Germanic.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be an (over-)fascination for ''Sea Peoples''. This term was invented by modern historians and there was no concerted groups by that name. In all likelihood, they were diverse groups of local Mediterranean origin which pragmatically raided during the Late Bronze Age crises.
ReplyDelete@EurDNA
ReplyDeleteI think that the "sea people"'s coincidence with the bronze age collapse has blown their legend out of proportion.
Maybe sea peoples were Phoecians. Phoecian Mediterranean empire emerged a few centuries after records of sea peoples.
ReplyDelete@Sam
ReplyDeleteBut we know that the Phoenicians were descended from previous Levantine populations, and the "sea peoples" are universally thought to be intrusive for a reason.
Ok. Um...
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Phoenicians referred to themselves as Canaanites. Their language was pretty much the same as Biblical Hebrew. Phoenician is just the Greek name for them.
ReplyDelete@EurDNA
ReplyDelete"This term was invented by modern historians and there was no concerted groups by that name."
The term comes from Egyptian descriptions calling prisoners taken in Ramses III's campaign against them "People of the Sea". More then one Egyptian record describe a confederation called the "the Nine Bows", with names of these peoples. The whole Egyptian record of them is pretty consistent IIRC, and spans several pharao's campaigns.
I wouldn't call it an invention by modern historians.
@epoch
ReplyDeleteIt's somewhat a matter of perspective, but I think what EurDNA said is essentially correct. The term “sea peoples” is invented. Only the Ekwesh, Teresh, and Weshesh are clearly referred to as being “of the sea”. The Denyen, Lukka, Peleset, and Tjeker are never referred to as being “of the sea”. The reading of the Sherden as being “of the sea” is disputed on grammatical grounds, it may only refer to the Ekwesh in that particular inscription.
Davidski
ReplyDeleteI don't really know where Hurrians came from, but it's generally accepted that they formed out of post-Kura-Araxes groups, no?
Urartians are definitively post-KA, but Hurrian texts are quite old to call them post-KA.
The oldest known Hurrian tablet is found in Urkesh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urkesh
As far I know it was dated to ~2200 BC which almost certainly is not post-KA period in that region. Albeit I am not sure that Urkesh formed on a KA basis.
That is why I don't expect crowded presence of R1b-Z2103 in core Hurrian regions. Especially in early periods. PF7562 is a different story.
As for NW Iran we don't have Hurrian tablets from that region, but we know that Hurrians were living in that region. Other ethnic groups also were living in that region like Gutians, Lullubeans etc. Mannaeans appear only in IA.
Even the Carthaginians called themselves "Canaanites". Phoenicians were native, not intrusive to Semite territory. But like Labayu, I'm skeptical that the modern "sea peoples" concept represents a real phenomenon, although I'd like to know what the Philistines were doing there.
ReplyDeleteJust an addition.
ReplyDeleteWhen we speak about Z2103 in Near East we must keep in mind that the stories of L584 and L277 might be very different from each other. It is the L584 that in most likelihood entered Near East via Daguestan - Azerbaijan after the Kura - Araxian period. And Hasanlu_Ia belongs to this branch.
While the L277 moved to Near East in a different way and probably more than 500 years later. Almost certainly not via Azerbaijan. And maybe not even Western Caucasus, Abkhazia. It is a puzzling branch that imho appeared in Armenia with that I2c and E-V13 from a different Steppic culture. Maybe from a more CWC like place.
EurDNA said...
ReplyDelete"There seems to be an (over-)fascination for ''Sea Peoples''. This term was invented by modern historians and there was no concerted groups by that name."
They're a mystery - mysteries are interesting.
#
Labayu said..
"The term “sea peoples” is invented. Only the Ekwesh, Teresh, and Weshesh are clearly referred to as being “of the sea”. The Denyen, Lukka, Peleset, and Tjeker are never referred to as being “of the sea”."
i don't think "sea peoples" vs "people of the sea" counts as invented.
although it is interesting if only some of the "nine bows" were ever described that way.
if so seems to me that might make the "sea peoples" (or "nine bows") thing into an even bigger deal as it might imply there was a much broader explosion both on land and sea from the general direction of "too close to PIE" heading in the direction of "as far away from PIE as possible."
There should be Philistine samples from the cemetery at Ashkelon soon, but nothing is published yet.
ReplyDeleteWould the Jebusites be modeled as an offshoot of the Mitanni kingdom or a pure Kura-Araxes immigrant population?
ReplyDeleteThe biblical texts referring the Jebusites (Yəbusîm) are recounting semi-mythical legends. There is no way to know if they contain any authentic memories of the people who lived in Jerusalem before the Davidic dynasty. According to Genesis 10, they were Canaanites. There is a cuneiform text that refers to a West Semitic people in Syria with the same name. The oldest biblical texts along with the Amarna letters suggest the people living there were West Semitic with some potential Hurrian influences.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the Philistines? Did they turn up being Minoans, Peloponnesus Pelasgians, Mycenaean Greeks or Luwian/Western Anatolian/Trojans?
DeleteTracking five millennia of horse management with extensive ancient genome time-series
ReplyDeleteHorse domestication revolutionized warfare and accelerated travel, trade and the geographic expansion of languages. Here we present the largest DNA time-series for a non-human organism to date, including genome-scale data from 149 ancient animals and 129 ancient genomes (≥1-fold coverage), 87 of which are new. This extensive dataset allows us to assess the modern legacy of past equestrian civilisations. We find that two extinct horse lineages existed during early domestication, one at the far western (Iberia) and the other at the far eastern range (Siberia) of Eurasia. None of these contributed significantly to modern diversity. We show that the influence of Persian-related horse lineages increased following the Islamic conquests in Europe and Asia. Multiple alleles associated with elite-racing, including at the MSTN “speed gene”, only rose in popularity within the last millennium. Finally, the development of modern breeding impacted genetic diversity more dramatically than the previous millennia of human management.
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB31613
@Andrzejewski
ReplyDeletehttps://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/04/r1b-m269-in-bronze-age-levant.html?showComment=1556357364908#c1621500327241650911
I2062 may be R1b. M269 itself returned no result for that guy though. There are 2 SNPs not registered at ISOGG that may indicate that he is at least an R1b. I wasted the whole afternoon writing a C program to test it. If I refine my program I may be able to gather more SNPs and have a better picture of the phyllogenetic tree of that guy but I am too tired right now.
ReplyDeleteEverything in the DNA results has its historical explanation too. The Old Balkans - the Pelasgians, which are mentioned in the Old Testament as Pelistim, Philistines, established in the Levant at the end of the Bronze Age/ beginning of the Iron Age and founded five cities there. The names of these five settlements are Gath, Gaza, Ashkelon, Akron, Asdod.
ReplyDeleteI read a news that was found in israel an ancient burial belonging to bronze age, and it's haplogroup was R1b, I'll show you below the context and link of the news. I have read also theories that possibly it could be the haplogroup of ancient israelites, and that Western European people would be the ancients lost tribes of Israel, and that haplogroups J1 and J2 would belong to those aramaic and arabs tribes who were forcedly converted to Judaism by Hyrcanus and Aristóbulo in Hasmonean times, plus those nabateans converted, and Yemenites converted from the Himyarite kingdom of Yemen.
ReplyDeleteAttach context on the article read about Haplogroup R1b in Israel.
Interesting!!!
(to read the full article translate the website)
The R1b haplogroup found in Jews and Western Europeans has been found in Israel, belonging to an ancient burial, carried out in a period close to the biblical exodus.
https://kadmatdna.co.il/%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%A0%D7%A2%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%93-%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%9C-%D7%A9%D7%93%D7%95%D7%93-r1b-%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99/
Curious report:
Archaeologists are not entirely clear who the coffin belonged to, but IAA excavation director Dr. Ron Be’eri suggests that the remains may belong to a wealthy Canaanite rather than Egyptian. Egyptians traditionally buried their dead in Egyptian soil, and the grave goods were distinctly Canaanite. The graves of two men and two women, who may have been members of his family, were found buried nearby in a similar style. The deceased may have been an official of Canaanite origin who was engaged in the service of the Egyptian government, or a wealthy local who imitated Egyptian customs. However, Be’eri added that Canaanites “were not accustomed to burying themselves in coffins of this sort. The Canaanite style of burial is different.”
The IAA considered sampling the DNA from inside the coffin to see if the deceased was originally a Canaanite, or an Egyptian buried in Canaan.
Update:
Period: it could have been between the period of rule of the pharaoh Sethi I and Ramses II
By determining that the haplogroup R1b is neither a Canaanite nor Egyptian haplogroup, is not clear if this person may have been an official of Canaanite or Egyptian origin who was in the service of the Egyptian government with foreigner DNA in charge of managing a Canaanite region, Or maybe neither of them.
External comments:
Canaan was conquered by the Egyptians, and rich Canaanites adopted Egyptian customs.
According to Bible, after the Israelites left Egypt they brought with them also Egyptian customs, Egyptian mentality and Egyptians objects of value.
According to archaeologist Amir Ganor, director of the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery at the Israel Antiquities Authority, "Among the many artifacts that were discovered, most of which are characteristic of the Judahite culture in the south of the country, we found dozens of stone seals, some of which are shaped in the form of a winged beetle (scarabs) and bear carved symbols and images typical of the Egyptian culture which prevailed in the country in the Late Bronze Age. Some of the seals were fashioned on semi-precious stones that come from Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula."
https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/IsraelExperience/History/Pages/Years-after-Exodus-from-Egypt-culture-influences-Israelites-1-Apr-2015.aspx
The Tel Shaddud clay coffin doesn't strike me as a burial of a high class Egyptian stationed in Canaan. Where is the attempt at mummification, even a very basic one? Canaanites were fond of burying people with Egyptian scarabs. That's well known from the Jericho cemetery. That Tutankhamun was R1b was confirmed by publication in 2020 by Cairo. It's comforting to know his dynasty were not the only males in that part of the world in roughly the same era to carry it. There are about 19 years from the death of Tut to the start of the reign of Seti I.
ReplyDeleteIndo-Europeans did massively infiltrate Palestine during the bronze and iron ages.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the Mitanni were ruled by an Indo-Aryan warrior elite, who worshipped the god Mitra. Eg Mithras. The Temple of Baal Brit was the temple of Mithras, Lord of the Covenant, where everyone in the area went to ratify agreements of any sort. His symbol was the rainbow. One thing Mitra did was strike a rock with a staff and bring forth water, like Moses in the desert. The Israelite tribal confederation is thought to have been born of an agreement between two tribes that was ratified at the Temple of Baal Brit, which is why despite their anti-pagan pogrom, the later followers of Yahweh never could dispense with key elements of that story. Later history, like lining up in two groups on facing hills outside of I think it was Shechem, to shout the blessings and curses, make no sense if that story didn't happen.
Then, the Sea Peoples were Indo-European. The Philistines actually had Greek DNA, including R-M269.
The extent to which Indo-European culture had infiltrated the area is demonstrated by David playing the lyre or harp for King Saul. What culture is that lyre or harp supposed to have even come from.
Then there was war culture. I think actually it was a battle Ramses II fought, after the time of the Middle Kingdom. He swept through Palestine and insisted he had defeated the people of Isr, their seed is no more. Outside of a place in the central Palestinian hill country, a battle scene depicts some fascinating things that show the Shasu (Bedouins) and Habiru (people who had fled from Egypt, which Palestine was, into the hill country and taken up a nomadic lifestyle) lined up - and the people of I think maybe Shechem, with their war chariots - with spokes. Those were Indo-Aryan war chariots.
By David's time as I think he or Solomon demonstrated, with iron age technology, war chariots were a liability in battle.