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Friday, April 3, 2020

Latest on Sintashta-Petrovka chariots (Lindner 2020)


Open access at Antiquity at this LINK. As far as I can tell, several individuals from the graves analyzed in this paper are in my ancient DNA dataset and the Global25 datasheets. Sample I1064 from the Kamennyi Ambar 5 cemetery comes to mind. Here's the abstract:

In Eastern Europe, the use of light vehicles with spoked wheels and harnessed horse teams is first evidenced in the early second-millennium BC Sintashta-Petrovka Culture in the South-eastern Ural Mountains. Using Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates from the kurgan cemetery of Kamennyj Ambar-5, combined with artefactual and stratigraphic analyses, this article demonstrates that these early European chariots date to no later than the first proto-chariots of the ancient Near East. This result suggests the earlier emergence of chariots on the Eurasian Steppe than previously thought and contributes to wider debates on the geography and chronology of technological innovations.
See also...

The mystery of the Sintashta people

173 comments:

Copper Axe said...

Can you imagine how stunning it must have been for the various societies and civilizations outside of the steppes to see these early charioteers in action?

Imagine that you are a poor near eastern farmer who perhaps is familiar with ox-drawn carts or military parades with carts drawn by onagers. And then one day a group of warriors from distant lands show up, driving these special carts pulled by giant donkey creatures. Tall warriors with golden hair, well you'd probably be worried that your teenage daughter runs away with one!

Jatt_Scythian said...

How tall were they compared to other people around that time?

Cpk said...

@Copperaxtotheneck

"The ancient Mesopotamians treated them as subnormal beings for their unwillingness to conform to customs and laws of civilization. Chronicles written around the end of the third millennium, for instance, described the Gutians as barbarians, having the intelligence of dogs and the appearance of monkeys while speaking a language similar to a confused babble."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutian_dynasty_of_Sumer

Copper Axe said...

The Gutians were not the Sintashta though, they lived in the Zagros mountains and did not utilize horses as far as we know. We can't even positively connect them to Indo-European societies, and if they were they would be descendants of Yamnaya era steppe herders crossing the Caucasus. I'd also wager that the negative connotations are partially due to their destructive behaviour in Sumer and their terrible reign, which caused somewhat of a dark age.

Copper Axe said...

Can't say for sure but if I'm guesstimating the Sintashta/Androvo were around 5'9-5'10 on average (M) while the sedentary people of the Near East were around 5'3-5'4 (M). Given that the nobility and warriors often were a bit taller taller than the average joe, and those would be the ones riding chariots and such, you'd look at a massive difference in height.

You have quite a lot of Kurgans from the Andronovo and Scythians containing graves of giants, 2 meters and taller. I remember reading about a grave from 2000 bc in Azerbaijan containing a female warrior who was like 2.20 or something. Not sure if it is legit but it is displayed in on of their museums iirc.

zardos said...

A female with 2,20 m suffered from a pathological condition most likelihood. That's possible but not representative and shouldnt be used for calculations of average height. Similar to dwarfism.

TLT said...

@Copperaxtotheneck


"You have quite a lot of Kurgans from the Andronovo and Scythians containing graves of giants, 2 meters and taller."

Are you talking about this?

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

Estimates vary between 165 cm and 198 cm for this one sample.

https://archive.org/details/tarimmummiesanci00mall/page/190

^According to this the later Scythian-Sarmatian period average was 169 +/- 3 cm for males.

Jatt_Scythian said...

If they were still around I would imagine they would be one of the tallest peoples around.

TLT said...

Mostly off topic but something has been bugging me for a while. I haven't seen very many mtDNA U2e Yamnaya or Afanasievo samples. There are plenty of U5s among them, a few U4s as well, there is no paucity of those. But where did the later MLBA U2e that is abundantly found in Sintashta come from? It isn't very common in deep Siberian Uralics today, mostly in peripheral ones, makes me think that it was some kind of mesolithic European specific lineage.

The ancient distribution of U2e in general has fascinated me. I used to think that it came from Siberia to Europe but my views have changed somewhat. AFAIK the oldest U2e in/near Siberia is about 8,000 years old, but there is a ~3,000 years older U5 sample (Sidelkino) about ~1200 to 2000 km to the west of Tyumen. No one argues for U5 being Siberian, so it is conceivable that U2e started to migrate eastward around the same time as U5 did. There is a U2 + 152 from Scotland's neolithic, could just be low coverage. U2 + 152 is a precursor to U2e iirc. Could the U2e that we see today actually be one of the surviving branches of the paleolithic Aurignacin and early Gravettian lineages within Europe instead of a re-introduction through ANE? I have a growing feeling that it might be, but I would still like to see any further evidence and arguments for or rebuttals against this idea.

Leron said...

Copperaxetotheneck: Based on accounts of the ancient world, they seemed to have been more impressed by African masculinity rather than the Nordic sort. The ancient Greeks praised the "tall and most handsome" Aethiopian men. And even in scripture Ezekiel alluded to the "largeness" of the men of Egypt, which at his time was ruled by the Nubian dynasty. Among Mesopotamians, it was a long beard that was a marker of male virility. In their statues of heroes and other powerful men they emphasized girth and bulkiness rather than vertical height.

Copper Axe said...

Nope I wasn't talking about Cherchen man.

In the world of the Scythians, they give an average height of 5'8 to 5'11 for upper class Scythians, the ones buried in the tombs who in life were the mounted warriors and such. Whereas the lower class graves were around 5'4, and in my opinion were mostly comprised of slaves as described by Herodotus. Some of those slave populations weren't even nomadic but sedentary farmers, and then you'd also have to wonder how many were ethnically Scythiams (but lower class) rather than a subjugated population.

Jatt_Scythian said...

Who would the lower class have been on the steppe?

Also did someone mention R1a in the Volga steppes during the Yamnaya period in a thread from a few months ago?

TLT said...

@Copperaxetotheneck

In the link that I posted, it states that the full range of the Scythian Sarmatian height from whatever sample thee authors examined goes from 5'1 to 5'11. Could you provide some links which indicate a distinguishable sizeable portion of them being 5'8 to 5'11, unless you meant elite in a generic upper echelon sense instead of an elite class genetically distinct from non-elites. In which case, what you said correspond to what I know as of now.

There was an elite woman from Shahr-e Sukhteh with a height of around 6'0". That was the case of an individual from the upper echelon, a priestess, and not some well distinguished genetic sub-group within the larger Shahr group which is to be expected.

Jatt_Scythian said...

Were Scythians mostly light pigmented and dolicophelaic? Do you know anything about their nasal indexes and head length? How much impact did East Asian admixture have on their phenotype>

mzp1 said...

Well Archi I found the smoking gun I was looking for.

"Using all geographical groups, the three-population model (K = 3) differentiates the European taurine, African taurine and zebu components. The CPC98 aurochs specimen displays contributions from each of these three biogeographical groups. The zebu component detected in three of the four Italian populations (Chianina, Marchigiana and Romagnola) and the two East Asian taurine populations (Hanwoo and Wagyu) has been hypothesized to represent historical admixture from B. indicus [20, 52]. However, the tripartite genetic structure observed in the CPC98 aurochs specimen supports an alternative hypothesis, that alleles now exclusive to African and Asian cattle may once have been present more widely prior to domestication, but were subsequently lost from the European domesticated B. taurus lineage."

And CPC98..

"Previously, we reported the first complete B. primigenius mtDNA sequence using DNA extracts purified from an exceptionally well-preserved and archaeologically verified British aurochs humerus bone specimen (laboratory code CPC98; haplogroup P; [GenBank:NC_013996]) [10]. This specimen was retrieved in 1998 from Carsington Pasture Cave in Derbyshire, England, and radiocarbon dated to 6,738 ± 68 calibrated (cal.) years before present (yBP) (Fig. 1). This pre-dates the beginning of the Neolithic period in Britain (5,900–5,580 cal. yBP) [27] and also the appearance in Britain of domestic cattle characterized by uniquely mapped mtDNA macro-haplogroup T sequences, providing a secure basis for the classification of CPC98 as B. primigenius [28]."

https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0790-2

So I hope that is scientific enough for you, if you follow?

RobertN said...

@Jatt_Scythian Why don't you just reread some of the articles on this blog rather than asking this stuff? You complain about Asian ethnic chauvinism, but your own nordicist racial predilections come through clearly. How about allowing this blog to remain as scientific as possible and refrain from ideological projections please?

Anonymous said...

mzp1 as always writes some incoherent nonsense without knowing what he's writing.

@TLT

U2e is very ancient Paleolithic subclade very widespread in Northern Western Eurasia.

Mesolithic Germany Blätterhöhle, Hagen [BLA 3] 9210 ± 29 BC U2e
Russia Siberia, western, Tyumen Oblast, Tyumen50, Kurgan 6, Mergen 6 (building No. 15) [I1960] 6361-6071 calBCE [6335-6071 calBCE (7330±40 BP, Poz-82198), 6361-6086 calBCE (7355±40 BP, OxA-33489, d15N=+15.3 permil possible marine influence)] F U2e3

Samuel Andrews said...

@TLT, Also, Pre-U2e is found in Gravettian Belgium.

Richard Rocca said...

@David, did you ever get around to re-publishing the G25 sheets?

TLT said...

@Archi
Yeah IDK why I hadn't noticed that the WHG U2e is older than the oldest Sibrian U2e. Makes me wonder if those Sicilian U2'3'4'5'7'8'9s are indeed low coverage U2es.

@Samuel Andrews
Pre as in what kind? Did it reach the U2 + 152 mutation at that point? Also which sample(s) is/are these? There are like 3 to 5 samples from Gravettian era Belgium that I know of.

capra internetensis said...

@TLT

The Sicilian U2'3'4'7'8'9s are definitely not U2, they are their own distinct branch with many shared mutations (Sam has called it U10, which makes sense).

3 of the Sunghir (34 000 years old, European Russia) were also pre-U2e of some kind.

Anonymous said...

@capra internetensis

Why would you do something silly by calling U2 as pre-U2e? U2 is U2.

Name U10 is wrong name for U2'3'4'7'8'9. Name U10 could not ancestral for names U2 ... U9.

Rob said...

Really need to see a pre-30000 bp genome from west Asia

Anonymous said...

@Rob clown "U2-8 isn’t ancestral to U2 etc
It means paragroup or not enough coverage"

LOL. U2'3'4'7'8'9 is haplogroupe ancestral to U2 ... U9. You're a shameful nonsense, you don't even know what haplogroups are marked. Privacy branches to the haplogroup are designated as U2'3'4'7'8'9+SNPs.


Samuel Andrews said...

@TLT

mtDNA U2e is a lot younger than U2. Its official name is separated by just one letter but in reality it is separated by 13 mutations. One mutation occurs on average every 2,500 years (Soares 2009).

U2e A508G A3720G A5390G T5426C C6045T T6152C A10876G T13020C T13734C A15907G G16129c T16189C! T16362C

The U2 from Gravvitean Belgium shares 4 mutations with U2e.

U2 Gravitean: T5426C G16129c T16189C! T16362C (it also has mutations not found in U2e, meaning it is an aunt lineage).

The fact is, even though all U2e today carries all 13 mutations. We can safely assume without ancient DNA there were many pre-U2e lineages which shares some but not all those mutations.

This U2 from Gravitean is one of them. In total it has 6 mutations, so long seperated from U2*. And it shares 3 mutations with U2e, so derived from a common ancestor with U2e. Calling it pre-U2e highlights it is not plain U2 but has a relationship with U2e.

It is an aunt not a direct ancestor. We could completly reconstruct the U2e nomenclature to fit this Gravitean U2e, by calling U2e U2e1 and gravitean U2e U2e2. That would be accurate but a waste of time.

Samuel Andrews said...

Three mtDNA U5(s) have been found in Gravitea as well. But, they too are in fact pre-U5 not full blown U5. They lack two mutations all U5a/b carry.

Gravitean U5 was first seqeunced in 2013(ish). They changed the whole structure of U5 tree to fit them. Originally U5 was defined by 4 mutations, since 2013 it has been defined by 2 mutations in order to fit Gravitean U5.

Samuel Andrews said...

There are five pre-U8b(s) in Gravitean as well. In reality like the U2e, U5 in Gravitean they are sisters to modern U2e, U5 not direct ancestors.

They too were discovered in 2013. They were given their own name: U8c. No one today belongs to U8c, but it has its own place in the official mtDNA tree. Its a sister to U8b (which mtDNA K derives from).

The fact relatives to U8b (inclu. K), U5, and U2e have even found in Gravitean indicates they are direct ancestors or relatives of the ancestors of WHG, EEF.

Rob said...

@ Arch
“You're a shameful nonsense, you don't even know what haplogroups are marked. Privacy branches to the haplogroup are designated as U2'3'4'7'8'9+SNPs.)

You make zero sense

Anonymous said...

@Rob You make zero sense

Those who have no mind will not understand anyone's words. You've already proved many times that you can't read or understand at all.

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

@Rubbish

What I wrote is strictly proven, and you always lie without exception, which is also strictly proven.

TLT said...

@Samuel Andrews
Just to be sure, none of the mentioned mutations found in the Gravettian U2 and U2e are found in the south Asian U2, right?
Also do you know about the details of the Sicilian U2'3'4'5'7'8'9? Are they more likely to be U2/e or U8?

Rob said...

As per above, Sicilian U2-U8 is ancestral to nothing
Just like Yana mtdna U is dead end

A tree from a reliable source

https://marlin-prod.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/55ed2575-146b-46f5-820e-045ae4beb4bb/gr2.jpg

Samuel Andrews said...

@TLT, Yes, none of the mutations found in Gravitean U2 are found in Indian U2. Gravitean U2 in in Belgium and Sugir Russia (pointed out by capra) are related only to clade U2e. Kostinki's U2 on the other hand is not related to U2e or any modern U2.

Also, there's a basal U2 lineage found in a few samples from Neolithic Europe. Neolithic Britain, Hungary, LBK. I don't know of any examples in modern samples. Then there's also U2d. Which is probably a Middle Eastern U2 clade. Because it exists there today and first appears in Europe with Neolithic farmers.

Rob is right about the U2'3'4'7'8'9 in EpiPaleo Italy. It is its own distinct U lineage not related to any modern U lineages. It should be called U10, it might be added to the official human mtDNA tree as U10. Two examples exist outside Italy: Magdalonian France & Mesolithic Spain. So, 'U10' was not only in Sicily back then. But no modern examples exist.

Samuel Andrews said...

The basal U2 lineage in Neolithic Europe belongs to the U2+152! subranch. Middle Eastern U2d is also under U2+152! and its a sister to South Asian U2c. Ultimately, the best bet is South Asian U2c/d/b is from Neolithic/Mesolithic Iran.

Anonymous said...

@Samuel Andrews "Rob is right about the U2'3'4'7'8'9"

No. Rob is never right about anything because he wrote about a non-existent U2-U8 (sic!).

Ryan said...

Why are they calling it Eastern Europe when the map is clearly in West Asia? :p

Rob said...

@ Sam

“ should be called U10”

Seems like a reasonable suggestion. I think you and Capra are onto something

Davidski said...

@Ryan

Why are they calling it Eastern Europe when the map is clearly in West Asia?

The Sintashta-Petrovka culture was located on the border between West Siberia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Technically speaking, West Asia is south of the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. Yeah, you can say western Kazakhstan is in western Asia, but my point above still stands.

Anonymous said...

@Ryan

The Sintashta-Potapovka culture aka Sintashta culture is placed partly in Eastern Europe because Potapovka is placed in Eastern Europe.

TLT said...

@Samuel Andrews

"The basal U2 lineage in Neolithic Europe belongs to the U2+152! subranch. Middle Eastern U2d is also under U2+152! and its a sister to South Asian U2c. Ultimately, the best bet is South Asian U2c/d/b is from Neolithic/Mesolithic Iran."

So U2+152 is a sister/cousin lineage to U2c and is ancestral to U2d. Based on what I know U2+152 also ancestral to U2e. That would link U2e and U2d as cousin lineages under U2+152. Correct me if I am getting this wrong. This is where I found out about U2+152 being a precursor to U2e. https://imgur.com/a/ryaMlC2

I have heard about U2e proper itself being 19,000 years old, idk about U2+152.

So if U2e (European) and U2d (middle eastern) are descended from U2+152 then that means that U2+152 would have to be very old to link the middle eastern U2d and the European U2e. And then the link between U2c and U2+152 would be even older than that. Note that U2a and U2b are also cousin lineages of U2+152.

Basically what I am getting from this is that U2a/b/c (south Asian) are a cousin lineage of U2+152 (non-south Asian) which makes sense since the oldest split in U2 is south Asian U2 vs non-south Asian U2. Non-south Asian U2 is U2+152, and U2+152 is ancestral to both the middle eastern U2d and the European U2e (and pre-U2e). If I had to guess then the pre-U2e (European) and U2d/pre-U2d (middle eastern) split 30,000 to 35,000 years ago while the split between the non-south Asian U2 (U2+152) and south Asian U2 (U2a/b/c) is probably 40,000 years old or more.

This makes it hard for U2a/b/c to have come from Iran_N since it isn't found in such characteristic proportions in Iran_N type populations. However any U2d in south Asia could have come from Iran_N.

vAsiSTha said...

So this paper dates the Sintashta burials associated with chariots to
1950–1880 cal BC at 95.4% confidence (1930–1890 cal BC at 68.2% confidence).

The sanauli warrior chariot burials have been dated to (calibrated) 3815ybp with 130 yr 95.4% margin ie.1930-1800bce.

vAsiSTha said...

@copperaxetotheneck
"Tall warriors with golden hair, well you'd probably be worried that your teenage daughter runs away with one!"

Don't know why these 'golden haired tall warriors' gave away their women to men of swat valley. Big mystery lol!

Davidski said...

@Richard Rocca

I've just updated the ancient and modern Global25 datasheets with heaps of new samples. Same links as always...

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/07/getting-most-out-of-global25_12.html

Please let me know if you spot any errors.

Davidski said...

@vAsiSTha

Don't know why these 'golden haired tall warriors' gave away their women to men of swat valley. Big mystery lol!

Yep, you better make the most of this because when more ancient DNA comes from South Asia you'll have to face reality.

Anonymous said...

Dude, you forgot to update the modern pop averages scaled list.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Davidski, Thanks. Do you still have links to WEst Eurasia 9 PCA? It's helpful because it has low coverage samples not included in G25 PCA.

Davidski said...

OK, I've just updated the modern pop averages scaled datasheet.

I'll have the new West Eurasia 9 datasheet later today.

Arza said...

Interesting...

ancient+moderns:

Target: ROU_C_o:GB
Distance: 1.5840% / 0.01584044
37.0 SRB_Iron_Gates_HG
15.6 Iberia_Central_CA
12.6 Baltic_EST_BA
8.8 HUN_Koros_N_HG
7.8 DEU_Welzin_BA_outlier2
6.8 HUN_ALPc_III_MN
4.6 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
2.8 DEU_LBK_N
1.6 HUN_ALPc_Szakalhat_MN
1.2 HUN_Sopot_LN
1.2 UKR_Trypillia

without DEU_Welzin_BA_outlier2:

Target: ROU_C_o:GB
Distance: 1.6044% / 0.01604416
36.6 SRB_Iron_Gates_HG
16.0 Baltic_EST_BA
14.0 HUN_ALPc_III_MN
12.6 Iberia_Central_CA
10.8 HUN_Koros_N_HG
4.6 HUN_ALPc_Szakalhat_MN
2.2 Baltic_LVA_BA
1.8 DEU_LBK_N
1.0 Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG
0.4 UKR_Trypillia


@ Davidski
I'll have the new West Eurasia 9 datasheet later today.

Awesome.

mzp1 said...

@Davidski,

But there is Zebu ancestry in British Pre-Neolithic cattle. That cattle must have crossed over from South Asia to Western Eurasia with people. Cattle herding predates agriculture in early IE literature. These pre-Neolithic cultures best resemble that of the Rigvedic literature which is based on the cattle exclusively, and does not mention sheeps or farming.

Later Neolithic cultures were not based on cattle exclusively so do not match the society of the Rigveda, but such a culture did exist and led to Indian cow DNA reaching Britain before 4,500BC, before and independent of the Neolithic.

I think this is as important for the IE question as any human dna sample, if not more.

Ryan said...

@David - "Yep, you better make the most of this because when more ancient DNA comes from South Asia you'll have to face reality."

I don't think the Out-of-India crowd will care about things like new evidence anymore than they care about current evidence.

Davidski said...

@mzp1

There's no Zebu ancestry in any ancient Northern European cattle you nutjob.

mzp1 said...

@Davidski,

What about the sample CPC98?
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0790-2

"Using all geographical groups, the three-population model (K = 3) differentiates the European taurine, African taurine and zebu components. The CPC98 aurochs specimen displays contributions from each of these three biogeographical groups. The zebu component detected in three of the four Italian populations (Chianina, Marchigiana and Romagnola) and the two East Asian taurine populations (Hanwoo and Wagyu) has been hypothesized to represent historical admixture from B. indicus [20, 52]. However, the tripartite genetic structure observed in the CPC98 aurochs specimen supports an alternative hypothesis, that alleles now exclusive to African and Asian cattle may once have been present more widely prior to domestication, but were subsequently lost from the European domesticated B. taurus lineage."

So Zebu DNA was present in a pre-Neolithic cow from Britain, and exists in Breeds around the World (Italian, East Asian, African), so a secondary expansion of Taurine from the Middle East must have removed earlier traces of Zebu ancestry in West Eurasian cattle.

Davidski said...

@mzp1

However, the tripartite genetic structure observed in the CPC98 aurochs specimen supports an alternative hypothesis, that alleles now exclusive to African and Asian cattle may once have been present more widely prior to domestication, but were subsequently lost from the European domesticated B. taurus lineage.

So like I said, there's no evidence of any Zebu admixture in ancient Northern European cattle.

Learn to read.

mzp1 said...

@Davidski,

Look at the PCA in the paper. The earliest sample, from Britain, is pulled away from modern Taurine and towards the Zebu.

The component is clearly Zebu which is missing from later Middle Eastern-origin cattle.

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

The Swat samples represent an unusual group in south Asia for both yDNA and mtDNA. For instance there is E1b and I2 in the group, but there is very little yDNA H which is otherwise very common in south Asians.

I would be nice to see more results from an inner region like Rakhigarhi, Lothal and even Mohenjo-Daro. So far only one sample is published from the inner region and it is an mtDNA U2b female.

TLT said...

@mzp1

If that is the case then it could be from early neolithic trade. There is some Einkorn wheat in the IVC is well and it would have come from the near east.

Jatt_Scythian said...

Yea the SWAT group seems like a dead end.

@TLT
What do you think is the chronology of dynasty entering South Asia?

mzp1 said...

The Zebu ancestry in Britain is pre Neolithic. It predates the Neolithic by 1,000 years.

More importantly, it tells us the Zebu crossed over South Asia to West Asia early and likely influenced early Taurine domestication in the Near East. It is interesting that cattle domestication appears to start simultaneously in South Asia and the Near East, but the Neolithic clearly moves from the Near East into Baluchistan and then into Punjab. But this tells us that before the Neolithic moved East into South Asia, cattle must have moved West into West Asia and beyond.

Zebu is the only export from South Asia compared to the many Middle Eastern items from the Neolithic. But this ties up well with the chronology of IE economic systems.

Davidski said...

@mzp1

There was no Zebu ancestry in European aurochs you idiot.

Modern cattle are skewing the results due to their unique recent genetic drift. That's what the quote that I highlighted is saying too.

mzp1 said...

" The zebu component detected in three of the four Italian populations (Chianina, Marchigiana and Romagnola) and the two East Asian taurine populations (Hanwoo and Wagyu) has been hypothesized to represent historical admixture from B. indicus [20, 52]. However, the tripartite genetic structure observed in the CPC98 aurochs specimen supports an alternative hypothesis, that alleles now exclusive to African and Asian cattle may once have been present more widely prior to domestication, but were subsequently lost from the European domesticated B. taurus lineage."

The "However" refers to the idea the admixture was 'historical' ie that Zebu components around world are due to historical (vs pre-historic) migrations. They do support the hypothesis that the admixture was present prior to later domestications, so prehistoric. "alleles now exclusive to African and Asian cattle" refers to widely accepted Zebu ancestry in modern cattle . The paper doesn't change that attribution of ancestry in modern cattle as Zebu, there is no mention of drift.

Davidski said...

@mzp1

Nothing you've referenced proves or even suggests that European aurochs had admixture from Zebu.

All it says is that Zebu-related alleles may have been more widely found in cattle prior to domestication simply due to shared ancient ancestry and higher genetic variation in ancient wild cattle.

A said...

@Copperaxetotheneck

'Human Skeletons From Grave Circles at Mycenae' (J.L. Angel 1973), Published in 'O Taphikos Kyklos ton Mykenon' (G. E. Mylonas,  Athens 1973).

"The surprising thing about the males in this small sample of Middle Bronze Age Greek Aristocracy is that in spite of their tallness their bones are not relatively slenderer than those of short and stocky peoples but are actually relatively as well as absolutely thicker […] This massiveness and ruggedness shows up further in large hands and feet, generally pronounced markings for muscle attachments and large trunks indicated by a long lumbar segment of the vertebral column… Fourteen princes at 171.5 cm with a stature range from just over 160 to over 180 average over 5cm taller than commoners at 166.3. […]

these Mycenaean aristocrats were not mere fattened figureheads. The wounds on the left side of the head of 51 and of 59, the healed spinal column fractures of 25, probably of 59 together with the signs of extra muscular strength show that these men were indeed involved in fighting and capable of being champions. […]

[their] skull vaults approach Upper Palaeolithic male size, indicating a brain mass unusually large for any population in a Mediterranean rather than cold climate. Such extra brain size does not necessarily mean any greater capacity for intelligence but correlates with the greater size of body and viscera in these aristocrats. […]

“Tomb Z: 59 Myc., represented by a fairly complete skeleton, was in his prime perhaps the most powerful of the champions. he is very tall and broad-shouldered, and thick-boned, with large hands and feet. At the age of at least 49, probably older … The strikingly large, long ovoid, and high skull, with its marked muscle attachments, almost concave sidewalls, and long rectangular horse-like face is Nordic-Iranian in the Corded Nordic sense (like skulls found with cord-marked pottery from South Russia to Scandinavia). Large mouth, deep chin, vertical face profile, and notably high and narrow nose fit this picture. […]

“The rulers buried in the Mycenaean Shaft Graves during the time of transition from Middle Bronze Age to full “urban” Mycenaean period (about 1630 to 1500 BC) were 171-172 cm tall on the average, about 5 cm taller that their subjects and with individuals taller that 180cm. […] They have remarkably thick bones, and relatively and absolutely massive bodies and heads…”

https://www.docdroid.net/WPUFSZZ/1.pdf

A said...

‘The Middle Bronze Age Burial of Kolona at Aegina Island, Greece. Study of the Human Skeletal Remains.’ (Manolis and Neroutsos, 1997)

“… the stature of this individual was estimated to be 172.9 cm. These stature values resemble the stature of Grave Circle B at Mycenae. […] it is clear that the specimen under study is very similar to the dead of the Grave Circle B at Mycenae. They are very similar in shape and size… This is another evidence that the dead man of Aegina possibly belongs to the aristocrats of Mycenae. The dead of Mycenae are also robust and tall (Angel 1973). All the finds advocate (the culture material found and the morphometric results) that the young warrior must be a member of the ruling castes of the MBA cities-centres as the rulers of Mycenae. We do not know exactly the relationships and the affinities between these families but surely these rulers were of a special physical posture.

In conclusion, the dead young man in the tomb of Aegina is a robust one, with morphological and metrical characters very similar to the MBA population of Grave Circle B at Mycenae. There were healed injuries and vigorous enthesopathies (muscle insertions) especially on the right arm, because of the weapon use (sword). It is difficult to say anything about the cause of his death. Someone can suppose that he was killed in a battle… The dead man of Aegina was a tall one and this of course is another evidence for the high status of the living conditions in these times.”

https://www.academia.edu/8683555/The_Middle_Bronze_Age_Burial_of_Colona_at_Aegina_Island_Greece_Study_of_the_Human_Skeletal_Remains

vAsiSTha said...

"you better make the most of this because when more ancient DNA comes from South Asia you'll have to face reality."

@davidski and @ryan, none of the above changes the fact that swat has progenies of steppe women. New data won't change the old data will it? hahaha


Samuel Andrews said...

@vAsiSTha, I don't go a long with Copperaxetotheneck's racial fantasies.

But, I have to say the Swat Valley iron age DNA does not tell us about the story of admix between Andronovo and South Asians.

Swat Valley IA were identical to modern Punjabi who live in the same region as Swat Valley did. In other words Swat Valley IA DNA point is basically the same as modern Pakistani, and is therefore no more helpful than modern South Asian DNA in understanding Andronovo-South Asian admix.

If there's lots of R1a Z93, then yeah there was gender bias admix. This wouldn't be surprisingly as it was a general rule that Early Indo Europeans were patrilineal and therefore selectively mainly admixed with 'foreign' women.

South Asians range from 10-20% Andronovo. If R1a Z93 is significantly more frequent than that then......

Samuel Andrews said...

The fact Swat Valley had no R1a Z93, the fact R1a Z93 doesn't reach over 50% in most modern South Asians, in my opinion means there wasn't the same style of IE invasion in South Asia as in Europe. Swat Valley does make things more complicated, more realistic.

vAsiSTha said...

@samuel
There was no direct andronovo admixture.

Swat_ia is a mixture of Indus periphery + bmac + eastern steppe/iamc pop like dali_mlba or zevakinskiy_lba.

vAsiSTha said...

"But, I have to say the Swat Valley iron age DNA does not tell us about the story of admix between Andronovo and South Asians."

Hard disagree. Swat_ia is identical to modern north indian pops. Here I Agree.

But it clears a lot of air, as we know that most of modern ancestry is from the bronze age. Significantly helps us reduce pool of possible ancestry candidates.

Swat data tells us the profile of Swat people pre admixture, through the low steppe swat samples and the Clines that are made. Matt even made a ghost of swat native a few posts back.

Swat data definitively tells us that inpe + any steppe source is a fail. And a 3rd source of bmqcac/sisba1 is important.

It also tells us that there is no model which works for swat_ia using Sintashta_mlba as source.

Davidski said...

@vAsiSTha

It's been obvious what happened in India a long time ago.

"Heavily sex-biased" population dispersals into the Indian Subcontinent (Silva et al. 2017)

vAsiSTha said...

Too bad it didn't happen during the bronze age davidski.

You had the hypothesis. Swat IA was tested. Your hypothesis failed. move on.

Copper Axe said...

@vAsiSTha

Do you ever get tired of defending your OIT narratives? Seems like you've been at it forever lmfao

Anyways I got a legit question for you, where can I read the report regarding the C14 dating of the Sinauli chariot? Because when I google it I only find a TOI article and I am very unsure of their credibility.
@Samuel Andrews

Racial fantasies? It was a tongue in cheek comment. Furthermore it is quite apparent the Sintashta were really blond people, pastoralists were tall, so they would have interacted with people who would have looked very different to them and the Sintashta would have been very exotic to the people in the Near East, BMAC, China etc. Not sure what the fantasy here is supposed to be.

vAsiSTha said...

The lead archaeologist Manjul dates it to 1900bce when speaking to reporters.
The news reports give 2 dates. 3500 and 3815. First one I assume is uncalibrated, 2nd one calibrated. The news reports also give error margin as 130yrs.
1950-3815 +-65 = 1930-1800 calibrated BCE. The papers should be out soon I guess.

I will keep pushing truth when people like davidski and you keep pushing your narratives of male mediated steppe migration into NW india shamelessly even when Swat valley ancient dna thoroughly rejected your hypothesis.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Copperaxetotheneck, I think I misunderstood the meaning of your comment a bit. It is just that discussion of Sintashta/Andronovo can turn into descriptions of them being unrealistically different, great compared to the people in Asia who they met.

Grizzlor said...

Truly a sight to see! Imagine these swarthy thralls fleeing in panic as the thunderous rumbling of the chariots echoes from the steppes. Fair and tall aryan demigods pouring over the village defences, burning down huts slaying the weak men who have nothing but stones to protect themselves as sharpened bronze is doing its job to clean up the genepool. Prototeutonic supermen, doing the work of the Allfather, spreading their seed and taking women both by desire and force. Makes immensely to proud to be Nordic, closest living descendant to these Corded Ware Gods! All the great civilizations from Ancient Greece to Rome, from the First Dynasty of China to the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Incan Empire are descended from these purebred Thulean warrior-gods. Alas their blood-line has been tainted but I feel the next cleansing is coming, very soon!

Copper Axe said...

@Samuel Andrews

No worries Sam :)

@A

Thanks for providing those links, very interesting!

What are the specifics regarding the IE migrations into Greece? This is one of those areas where I have a gap of knowledge.

Did it happen through the Steppe EMBA waves, or the later steppe MLBA wave? There are some strong linguistic and poetic connections between Greek and Indo-Iranian, and then you have the seima-turbino weaponry, the boar tusk helmetd and chariots which all indicate a connection with the MLBA steppe societies, related to the Srubnaya perhaps?

But then it begs the question if those influences were there due to the IE migrations into Greece, or that they were added unto the already IE culture which inhabited Greece.

What does the archaeogenetic data indicate regarding the source of steppe ancestry in Greeks?

Henrique Paes said...

"
Grizzlor said...

Truly a sight to see! Imagine these swarthy thralls fleeing in panic as the thunderous rumbling of the chariots echoes from the steppes. Fair and tall aryan demigods pouring over the village defences, burning down huts slaying the weak men who have nothing but stones to protect themselves as sharpened bronze is doing its job to clean up the genepool. Prototeutonic supermen, doing the work of the Allfather, spreading their seed and taking women both by desire and force. Makes immensely to proud to be Nordic, closest living descendant to these Corded Ware Gods! All the great civilizations from Ancient Greece to Rome, from the First Dynasty of China to the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Incan Empire are descended from these purebred Thulean warrior-gods. Alas their blood-line has been tainted but I feel the next cleansing is coming, very soon"

Got lost in failed Nazi 'science'? Wake up to the real world and stop these stupid fantasies about 'racial purity'. The people of the steppe were also the result of a mixture - ANE, EHG, CHG - and ANE is also a fundamental part of the mixture of Native Americans. Nobody is a special human being or 'pure' because he is 'Nordic', this kind of ridiculous delusion has no place in science.


Francesco Brighenti said...

@vAsiSTha

“The lead archaeologist Manjul dates it to 1900bce when speaking to reporters. The news reports give 2 dates. 3500 and 3815. First one I assume is uncalibrated, 2nd one calibrated. The news reports also give error margin as 130yrs. 1950-3815 +-65 = 1930-1800 calibrated BCE. The papers should be out soon I guess.”

Here is the link to the _Times of India_ news report on Sanauli excavations you are referring to:

http://tinyurl.com/wa32ya4

Aside from the issue of the radiocarbon dating of the burial site, to evaluate which we better wait for the published paper(s), this article mostly contains what I deem to be intolerable misrepresentations of the archaeological data. Here they are:

STATEMENT #1:“India’s largest known necropolis in U[ttar] P[radesh]’s Sanauli – where 126 burials have been discovered until now – is 3,800 years old.”

MISLEADING – The reporter is here conflating the newly discovered burial site at Sanauli, excavated by S.K. Manjul in 2018, and which yielded some warrior burials with coffins and three alleged “horse-drawn chariots,” with the large Harappan necropolis of Sanauli (located at a distance of only 120 meters from the newly excavated site), which was excavated in 2005-2006 and yielded 116 burials but no coffins or “chariots”. Indian archaeologists, including Dr. Manjul, all agree in claiming that the newly excavated site is _not_ a Harappan one.

STATEMENT #2: “The burials bear similarity to Vedic rituals, said officials. ‘What is startling is the impressions of cloth found on bodies that suggests purification of bodies similar to what we practice in Hindu religion’, said Manjul.”

HIGHLY SPECULATIVE – Why should impressions of cloth found on some buried bodies be taken as evidence for Vedic burial rituals? Did Vedic people alone bury their dead with clothes? Did all other prehistoric Indian cultures bury their dead fully naked instead? To find similarities between Bronze Age burials of northern India and Vedic funerary rituals seems to be the favorite pastime of a section of Indian archaeologists led by V. Shinde. The latter has, among other things, recently spread through the Indian media the unfounded notion according to which the manner of burial at the Mature Harappan Rakhigarhi cemetery he himself excavated would have been quite similar to that typical of early Vedic culture as known from Vedic texts. Unfortunately for this “sect” of archaeologists, _not one_ burial excavated in northern India so far can be safely assigned to the early Vedic culture; thus, they have no archaeological comparanda to support their wilds claims.

STATEMENT #3: “The joint director added that three chariots found at the site ‘have a fixed axle linked by a long pole to the small yoke’ and were run by a pair of animals. ‘The size and shape of the chariots indicate they were pulled by horses. The axle, chassis and wheels show similarities to contemporary chariots’, he said.”

GROSSLY SPECULATIVE AND MISLEADING – Of course, unlike the case of the Sintastha-Petrovka culture, no horse bones have been found at the Sanauli burial site. Everybody knows that! Moreover, the wheeled vehicles excavated at Sanauli have full, solid (i.e., not spoked) wheels; they were provided with a seat (seemingly semi-circular in shape), and were most probably yoked to a pair of oxen as is the case with the famous post-Harappan Daimabad bronze model cart (see picture at http://tinyurl.com/tnyhn8p ). Consequently, the disk-wheeled carts unearthed by Dr. Manjul at the Sanauli burial site can in no way be labeled as “chariots” as he and most of Indian archaeologists, in this followed by the entire Indian popular press, have been doing since the announcement of Manjul’s finds back in 2018.

Thus, no spoked wheels, no standing rider(s), no pulling horses = no “chariots” at Sanauli...

Jatt_Scythian said...

Pretty sure Grizzlor was being sarcastic.

Copper Axe said...

Let's say that these burials were in fact chariots, rather than some proto-chariot with solid wheels, they could easily be present there due to trade or a small group of mercenary charioteers from the steppes, and it would only be a few centuries before the proposed dates for the Aryan migrations into the region.

Mercenary work in foreign lands seems a feature well attested in Indo-European cultures and this could be a representative of that.

Or a local warrior chief came in contact with steppe pastoralists and decided to get himself a chariot too as he figured it made him look badass, similarly to what happened everywhere else in the old world.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

Just think for a minute Professor Brighenti. Who buries carts used to transport grain and people?

Mayuresh M. Kelkar

A said...

@grizzlor

Anyone who believes the Mongols existed is a nazi. Archaeological research since the 1970s has shown conclusively that the practice of piling up mountains of skulls was adopted through imitation via networks of mutual trade and exchange.

Anonymous said...

@mzp

Learn to read. Everyone tells you this, you can't read and understand at all.
more widely prior to domestication
This is about the distribution of the wild bull, and that the northern wild bull had relatives in the southeast, not just in the south.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Bos_primigenius_map.jpg

Francesco Brighenti said...


@Copperaxetotheneck

"Let's say that these burials were in fact chariots, rather than some proto-chariot with solid wheels..."

Altough English is not my mother tongue, I assume the English term 'chariot' as used technically by historians and archaeologists has a limited range of application which would exclude from its definition the vehicle excavated at Sanauli.

This is an authoritative definition of the English term ‘chariot’ given by M.A. Littauer and J.H. Crouwel, two leading specialists in ancient vehicles:

http://tinyurl.com/y59wykz4

“Chariot – A light, fast, two-wheeled, usually horse-drawn, vehicle with spoked wheels; used for warfare, hunting, racing and ceremonial purposes. Its crew usually stood.”

These archaeologists write "we found a chariot!" everywhere because they are opponents of the so-called Aryan Migration Theory -- please keep this in mind.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

I repeat my question Professor B:

Just think for a minute Professor Brighenti. Who buries carts used to transport grain and people?

Mayuresh M. Kelkar

Davidski said...

Who buries carts used to transport grain and people?

Apparently it was widespread during the Bronze Age.

Steppe Maykop, Yamnaya and Catacomb people did it a lot with their oxen pulled wagons. They didn't have chariots.

Francesco Brighenti said...

@Mayuresh M. Kelkar (Look who's here!)

"Just think for a minute Professor Brighenti [I’m not a professor – FB]. Who buries carts used to transport grain and people?"

I didn't claim the so-called "Sanauli chariots" were just carts used to transport grain and people. They might have been ceremonial ox-drawn (or perhaps onager-drawn) carts, for instance. They might have been prestige items buried together with their warrior owners.

I have a counter-question for you: Which Bronze Age warriors used to go to battle driving a two-wheeled vehicle with solid wheels and a seat?

Anonymous said...

@Samuel Andrews

The Swat valley LBA/IA is not Aryans, it is Dasyu, Dasa, Shudras, maybe also Vratya. They were not buried by Vedic traditions.
Archaeologists have never claimed it were Aryans.

Anonymous said...


The theory of the Aryan invasion of India has been fully proven, OIT has been completely refuted, beyond any scientific doubt, no matter how much fVasishta lies.

1. The steppe impurity was found in the Swat Valley when it was necessary, until then it was not there. Which remarkably confirms the northern "steppe" origin of the Aryans.

2. There is not much of it in the Swat Valley, because these people were not Aryans, they were not buried according to the Vedic customs of crematation, only by which the Vedic Aryans were buried. So the slaves of the Aryans were buried. Which is a wonderful confirmation of everything the Vedas and the character of the Aryans write.

3. R1a-Z94 with more european components appears in the burials exactly when the Aryans renounce the Vedic burial customs of cremation, and pass to the Buddhist burial customs, and they have nothing in common with the Vedic burial customs.

All the cultures that Vasishta refers to are the Andronovo cultures.

Game over.


Copper Axe said...

Wait the sanauli "chariot" had seats? I always thought they were just chariot like constructions which had solid instead of spoked wheels but if they had seats than they do not resemble chariots to begin with.

Were all the wagons of the steppe pastoralists drawn by oxen? I was always of the impression that they used horses as well, was the use of horse just limited to horseback riding then?

Anonymous said...

@Francesco Brighenti

fAsiSTha is certainly deceiving, it was definitely no horses or chariots. There's some wagon, which is definitely not a chariot, with an unknown date, anyway later Sintashta. There were already wagons (no horses, with bulls, donkeys, onagers) in the Middle East at the time, nobody argues with them.
All this fAsiSTha knows very well, he has been explained it all ten times already, but he likes to repeat his delusions from subject to subject, wants to brainwash the newcomers that will accidentally read his messages.


vAsiSTha said...

Yes davidski, a warrior burial along with sword, shield, arrows, bow, dagger and they buried a 'grocery/goods cart' just for good measure lol.

The sanauli chariot is another weapon buried alongside the royal warrior. The chariot even has 4 bronze pipes for inserting Flagstaff/canopy, again indicating that it belonged to someone of high stature.

As far as horse burials are concerned, there is absolutely 0 mention of such funerary horse sacrifices in the Vedas or associated brahmana texts. The ashwamedha horse sacrifice yajna is for the king asserting the lordship over kingdom, and it takes 1 year to complete. The horse is set free and is sacrificed on return. It is a very rare sacrifice.

The sanauli period is the Mahabharata period, as 1900bce was the time when ghaggar Saraswati had already dried into the Thar desert as mentioned in the Mahabharata. The paper for that is available on Nature. The Sanauli warrior is a warrior from the Mahabharata period.

The OCP copper hoard culture 2800-1500bce is a serious contender for the Vedic and late Vedic culture, a great number of weapons have been found associated with this culture, including copper harpoons which look like a vajra.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41694418?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents


vAsiSTha said...

According to archi
If R1a is not found it means they were present but were cremated, if R1a is found it confirms that steppe male invasion occured. He cannot lose lol. Extremely scientific stuff.

Copper Axe said...

"Just think for a minute Professor Brighenti. Who buries carts used to transport grain and people?'

Hey Mayuresh,

As David pointed out these practises werre common in the steppe and north caucasian societies. Although they were not always full wagon burials, sometimes just wheels or parts of the wagon were buried.

https://erenow.net/ancient/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language.files/image117.jpg

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321300884_Contextualising_Innovation_Cattle_Owners_and_Wagon_Drivers_in_the_North_Caucasus_and_Beyond (see figure 8.7)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271587800_Catacomb_culture_wagons_of_the_Eurasian_steppes

Anonymous said...

@fAsiSTha

Don't be ridiculous, wagons have always been used to transport people, basically only people. There's never been a food cart anywhere. They were invented precisely for the purpose of transporting people, because cargo was always transported on pack animals, even the Indians of America did, for this carts are not needed! In the Middle East, combat wagons were already about 2500BC.

About Mahabharata it is completely unscientific nonsense, the dried up part of Saraswati in the desert is Uzboy, it's a scientific fact.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

"They might have been ceremonial ox-drawn (or perhaps onager-drawn) carts, for instance. They might have been prestige items buried together with their warrior owners."

There are no animal bones on the site. So we cannot say which animal pulled the chariot.


"I have a counter-question for you: Which Bronze Age warriors used to go to battle driving a two-wheeled vehicle with solid wheels and a seat?"


The type of wheel is not a prerequisite for something to be called a "chariot." It is clear that the burials were of warriors. Those who argue that the Vedic Harrapans were overwhelmed with superior technologies coming from outside also carry the burden of proving that it is indeed the case with solid positive evidence. Semantic nitpicking is not enough to prove a massive language shift in what would have been a demographic powerhouse at that time just like it is today.

Sorry, I don't know how to get rid of that "unknown" name tag and I thank the moderator for letting these posts go through.

Mayuresh M. Kelkar




vAsiSTha said...

Mayuresh, you can set up a blogspot profile with your Google email.

vAsiSTha said...

Archi gem for the ages
"There's never been a food cart anywhere"

Francesco Brighenti said...

@ Copperaxetotheneck

“Wait, the Sanauli ‘chariot’ had seats? I always thought they were just chariot like constructions which had solid instead of spoked wheels but if they had seats than they do not resemble chariots to begin with.”

Here is a photo with descriptions of the various parts of the vehicle:

https://static.toiimg.com/photo/msid-74255126/74255126.jpg

I have re-checked my 2018 notes on the “Sanauli chariot”. A “seat” was mentioned in an article that appeared on the weekly Indian magazine _Frontline_ in Sep. 2018:

https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/heritage/article24923229.ece
“The chassis of the chariot was made of wood and was covered with thick copper sheets. The frame of the *seat* was made of copper pipes, including a pipe for the attachment of an umbrella (chhatravali), and the *seat* itself seemed to be semi-circular” (emphasis mine).

I have now come to the conclusion that the reporter used the word “seat” to indicate the (semi-circular-shaped) “floor” of the vehicle, not a part of the vehicle specifically designed for the driver to sit on.

So, I stand corrected on this specific point: contrary to what I wrote, there is apparently no sitting place in the vehicles found at Sanauli. Yet my point about the absence of spoked wheels – the main identifying feature of a ‘chariot’ in the historical-archaeological usage – still stands.

TLT said...

@mzp1

"More importantly, it tells us the Zebu crossed over South Asia to West Asia early and likely influenced early Taurine domestication in the Near East. It is interesting that cattle domestication appears to start simultaneously in South Asia and the Near East, but the Neolithic clearly moves from the Near East into Baluchistan and then into Punjab. But this tells us that before the Neolithic moved East into South Asia, cattle must have moved West into West Asia and beyond."

The neolithic of Britain is much more recent than the neolithic cultures of western Asia, trade happening between early neolithic south Asia and western Asia would predate the neolithic of Britain so the trade scenario fits well.

"Zebu is the only export from South Asia compared to the many Middle Eastern items from the Neolithic. But this ties up well with the chronology of IE economic systems."

The Zebu and Einkorn trade are far older than the IE expansions. This is like a second go at the Anatolian hypothesis.

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

I don't think that Swat represents an Aryan society. Choosing burial over cremation is one indication. Probably one of the many mleccha/non-bharata tribes that eventually lost to the R1a Trtsu-Bharata.

TLT said...

@A

Those statures aren't particularly high. The Rakhigarhi male average was around 175 cm and the Farmana average was more like 171 cm. What about the early neolithic or even epipaleolithic Anatolians?

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

Brighenti,

"Yet my point about the absence of spoked wheels – the main identifying feature of a ‘chariot’ in the historical-archaeological usage – still stands"

It does not. See the section on spoked wheels in the article below.

https://www.academia.edu/40104001/Demilitarizing_the_Rigveda_A_Scrutiny_of_Vedic_Horses_Chariots_and_Warfare

"Thomson goes further and questions the notion that the Vedic people [...] moved around on chariots with spoked wheels [...] There is no evidence of this in the poems"

There is nothing in the Rig Veda the earliest IE text available that says that the Vedic people had spoked wheeled transport whether for war or not.

Mayuresh M. Kelkar

Francesco Brighenti said...


@Archi

“There is not much of it in the Swat Valley, because these people were not Aryans, they were not buried according to the Vedic custom of cremation, only by which the Vedic Aryans were buried [ = “the corpses of the Vedic Aryans were disposed of” – FB].”

This doesn’t seem to be true. The existence of the practice of inhumation in early Vedic India is generally acknowledged by Vedic scholars. In the R.gveda we read of “corpses burnt by fire” (agnidagdha) and “unburnt” (anagnidagdha), this being a continuation of the older Indo-Iranian distinction between cremation and burial (and/or the exposure to the elements). In the Atharvaveda four classes of departed are mentioned, namely, those who were buried (nikhAta), those who were “cast aside” (paropta) – that is to say, abandoned to the elements –, those who were burnt with fire (dagdha), and those who were “deposited above” (uddhita), i.e. on something elevated such as a tree or cliff cave.

Early Vedic Aryans buried some of their (eminent) dead under kurgan-like grave-mounds; the roof of the subterranean burial chamber was probably supported by a single wooden pillar; the walls of the chamber served to separate the dead from the living forever after. From RV X.18:

“Arch up, Earth; do not press down... Like a mother her son with her hem, cover him, Earth... Let the earth stay arching up; for let a thousand (house-)posts be set up in (the earth pit)... I prop up the earth all around you... Let the forefathers uphold this (house-)post for you.”

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

https://www.academia.edu/40104001/Demilitarizing_the_Rigveda_A_Scrutiny_of_Vedic_Horses_Chariots_and_Warfare

"Even more surprisingly, the spoke (ara) occurs only once in conjunction with a chariot(10.78.4), again in a metaphorical context, and those spokes of chariots have no wheel!"

Nuff said.

Anonymous said...

@Francesco Brighenti This doesn’t seem to be true.

No, it is true. The Vedic Aryans were only cremated. It's strictly proven. Atharvaveda is the latest one written already with the Vratya.

"RV X.18"

I have already written many times that this text refers to the later texts of Rigveda, this is Mandala 10 created in the time of Upanishads, this is 8-7 century BC, you are wrong to refer it somehow to the early, it is impossible, all scientists know that Mandala 10 is the latest, in essence it is already Upanishads only included in Rigveda. And it does not follow from this text that this is not a cremation rite, because cremated people have always been given to earth.

vAsiSTha said...

@archi its so much fun watching you shoot yourself in the foot. Keep changing opinions as new data comes in and keeps destroying your previous ones.

Your steppe hypothesis loving archaeologists considered Swat BURIALS to be andronovan, and proof of 'aryan invasion'. now when new data comes in, you people conveniently turn the whole thing around. its quite pathetic really.

@TLT as well, please note

From Kuzmina, Origin of Indo Iranians

"An early cemetery of Kherai in Swat (Stacul 1966: 261-274), dating from the
end of period IV, is of special interest for drawing ethno-historical conclusions. Mountain passes connect the mountain valley of Gorband with Tadzhikistan and Afghanistan, as well as with the Indus valley. Twelve graves have been excavated. The surface suffered from erosion, so it doesn’t seem to be possible to judge whether mounds had been erected or not. The grave pits have a rectangular form 0.4-0.5 x 0.7-1.7m, a depth of 0.4-0.5m. Inside the graves there is a stone cist of four slabs of schist which is covered with one or three slabs. The buried lie in the flexed position on the right side, the head to the south-west. Beside the head one or two vessels were placed; sometimes there is also a pot by the legs. This burial rite is unparalleled in India and Iran, but is in all the details (including the west or south-west orientation) analogous to that of Andronovo.

"In the Swat burials all the details correspond to those of the Andronovan burials: around a grave a round or rectangular enclosure was erected; inside a rectangular grave pit comprising a stone box or cist or, very rarely, a frame of logs were built; both cremation and inhumation were practiced; bodies were placed in a flexed position on the side with the head to the west or south-west (this is the trait which distinguished the Andronovan rite from that of the Timber-grave culture where corpses were oriented to the east or north); double burials of a man and a woman (sati) were present (whether cremated or inhumed); sometimes a stone partition dividing two burials was built; one or two vessels were put beside the skull; animals, sometimes horses and very rarely camels, were sacrificed; ashes were customarily scattered over the bottom of the grave."

vAsiSTha said...

So archi. Im guessing the andronovans buried in the swat graves were definitely not 'Aryans' as they werent cremated? do you agree?

or will you make up some new BS?

Anonymous said...

@fAsiSTha
"its so much fun watching you shoot yourself in the foot. Keep changing opinions as new data comes in and keeps destroying your previous ones."

I never changed my mind, don't lie!

"Your steppe hypothesis loving archaeologists considered Swat BURIALS to be andronovan, and proof of 'aryan invasion'. now when new data comes in, you people conveniently turn the whole thing around. its quite pathetic really."

It's a direct lie! There were only similarities, but no one considered the Swat Valley to be part of the Andronov culture. Common features meant that there was cultural influence, that genetics shows in the form of a steppe component. Try to deny that there was no steppe component in Swat!
The Vedic Aryans, aka Indo-Aryans, are not all Andronovans.
You lost, hahaha.

vAsiSTha said...

"In the Swat valley at the cemetery of Katelai (period VI) a grave of two horses with a copper pin with a horse figure has been discovered. In the settlement of Bir-Kot-Ghundai a fragment of a vessel (period IV) with an image of a horse and in Loebanr an urn-lid with a horse figure have been found (Silvi Antonini and Stacul 1972: 288, 291 pl. liic; liiia;
lxxiib; cliv; Fig. 93). Horse bones have been found in the rock shelter of Ghaligai and in the settlements of period IV: Loebanr III, Aligrama and Bir-Kot- Ghundai (Olivieri 1998: 67). According to paleozoologist A. Azzaroli (1975: 355) the two stallions from Katelai belong to the Oriental breed. Horse burial in the cemetery was an Indo-European and especially Indo-Iranian rite. Its origins and analogues were evidenced in the steppes."

So Archi, were swat BURIALS 'aryans' or not?

Also note, the 2 Katelai horses were arabian in breed (17 pairs of ribs instead of 18, as specified in RV) and not from steppe.

Anonymous said...

@@fAsiSTha "were swat BURIALS 'aryans' or not?"

Have you been told many times that buried there weren't Vedic Aryans, and where did the Vedic Aryans live? Yes, there, but only they buried according to the rite of cremation, and any buried horses are remnants of such rituals. Plus, there were also Vratya (mestizos), who were considered to be Aryans in principle, but who didn't observe Vedic traditions, and they will eventually become the main population of India, but not yet then.

vAsiSTha said...

So those who cant be DNA tested were 'Aryans' but those who were buried and can be tested were not, regardless of the similirities with steppe burials. Got it. exemplary science..

Matt said...

@vAsiSTha, slightly off topic, but thought you might be interested since we're talking about sex-biased admixture again upthread.

2010 paper using HGDP samples, runs an ADMIXTURE like algorithm (frappe) separately on 16k SNPs of autosome chromosome 16 and of X chromosome: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847713/ . See Figure 1.

Surprisingly, or not, the X chromosome returns almost mirror images of the runs on the same number of SNPs on the autosome. That would be surprising in the context of a very different history on the autosome. The differences are very slight.

If you take the Hazara for instance, or Uyghur, the amount of East Asian yellow component on the X is about the same as on the autosome. That would be surprising if we were thinking of a model of male biased East Eurasian related ancestry into these groups (where for every 0.5 male admixture on autosome, you should only see 0.33 admixture on the X, or for every 0.5 female admixture on autosome, you should see 0.66 admixture on the X).

Similarly in the Basque samples, you don't really see an excess of the blue Near Eastern related component (you may do in Sardinians, to a slight extent). The Kalash have quite as much South Asian green component on the X run as on the autosomal data (not much less on autosome than X).

It would be pretty good if something like this could be recapitulated with something like the recent high coverage HGDP (https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/03/25/the-human-genome-diversity-project-at-high-coverage/). If you have way more than 16k SNPs on the X, then you can resolve a lot of noise.

The problem with using modern sequences here is that ancient events can be overturned, while the advantage is that you can get high enough coverage to get rid of noise (which is the problem so far of all attempts to do this with ancients).

(In their words: "Given the X chromosome's disproportionate sensitivity to female demography, it is possible that X-linked genomic variation has a different underlying population structure than autosomal variation. ... to assess whether the differences we observed between our X chromosome frappe results and the Li et al. autosomal results were due to the number of markers used in each analysis, we ran frappe on just the 19,632 markers found on chromosome 16. As with the X chromosome, the analysis was conducted using haploid chromosomes as opposed to diploid individuals. The results of the frappe run for K = 7 are shown in Figure 1b. Overall, the results for chromosome 16 appear very similar to those for the X chromosome. There are some minor differences between the two figures, particularly in the way some admixed populations are partitioned among the seven groups (note, for instance, the larger European component in the Yakuts and the larger Middle Eastern component in the Adygei for the autosomes). However, these differences may be artifacts of the failure of both datasets (the X chromosome and chromosome 16) to cleanly separate into the three Eurasian continental groups rather than robust differences in the population structure of autosomal and X-linked SNP genotypic variation.")

...

Surprised upthread is talking about strong stature differences between Sintashta and other groups again. Rosenstock 2019 - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-019-00850-3 - suggests that the population of their region K(Pontic Steppes) seem pretty indistinguishable in height from region A (Northern Fertile Crescent) and B (Central Anatolian) and C (Aegean) at the time, all estimate about 166-168 cm (about 5'5" to 5'6").

Blond hair related alleles had quite probably not swept to high frequency in that population at that time either.

Ric Hern said...

@ mzp 1

Shared Ancestry. There is a paper that shows when Zebu cattle started to expand. That was between 2000 and 1500 BCE. And the majority of Zebu Genes was Male Mediated....

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

>The polished black-gray pottery of Gandhara grave culture during the Ghalegay IV period, considered to run from 1700-1400 BCE, has been associated with that of other BMAC sites like Dashly in Afghanistan, Tepe Hissar and Tureng Teppe. According to Asko Parpola, the presence of black-red pottery also suggests links with Cemetery H culture in Punjab. The burial of bodies, the metal pins used got fastening clothes and the terracotta statuettes of females, says Parpola, are similar to those found to the BMAC. The graves during the Ghalegay V period, considered to run from 1400-1000 BCE, are connected with those in Vakhsh and Beshkent Valley. Parpola adds that these graves represent a mix of the practices found in northern Bactrian portion of BMAC during the period of 1700-1400 BCE and the Fedorovo Andronovo culture.[1]

More BMAC with some Andronovo influence. With that clear, do you have an explanation for the low number of south Asian lineages like H and a presence of lineages like E1b instead?
I also forgot to mention that plenty of the non-south Asian specific mtDNA in Swat like U7, J, T, I, U1, HV, W3 and possibly K have been found in the BMAC zone and in Shahr-e Sukhteh. Seems consistent with a mere influence from Andronovo considering that the frequency of new lineages like A, U2e, U4 and N1a is low.

vAsiSTha said...

@matt
even in narsimhan paper they get no significant difference in steppe_mlba qpAdm ancestry between autosomes and X chromosome for SPGT as well as modern pops (GIH,ITU,STU,PJL). are there papers in which X ancestry is significantly different from autosomal ancestry?

And for Y chromosome, they do not use qpAdm, they just use overall frequency of the particular haplogroup in the samples. So lack of R1a in SPGT makes it female mediated steppe ancestry acc to them, which sounds fair.

But for modern indians, PJL(lahore punjabi) is heavily AASI shifted compared to other north indian pops. UK Telugus (ITU) obviously got their steppe ancestry from north indian males and not steppe folks directly. Same for sri lankan tamils in UK (STU). Only GIH (gujaratis in texas) are interesting among the 4.

So even a 10 yr old could have predicted that R1a frequency in the 4 pops will be more than the autosomal steppe_mlba component, and that they received it from North indian males rather than steppe directly.

Francesco Brighenti said...



@ Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar

“See the section on spoked wheels in the article below:
http://tinyurl.com/rqelwzk
"Thomson goes further and questions the notion that the Vedic people [...] moved around on chariots with spoked wheels [...] There is no evidence of this in the poems"
There is nothing in the Rig Veda, the earliest IE text available, that says that the Vedic people had spoked wheeled transport whether for war or not.”

Haste makes waste! You summon M. Danino’s aid to claim that the Vedic people did not know of spoked wheels.

(For those of you who don’t know: Danino is one of the three or four Western champions of the OIT quoted incessantly by the OITers since the early 2000s, and whose positions are appreciated by Hindu nationalists only, so much so that he was appointed a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research by Modi’s para-fascist government.)

In the passage you quote, Danino cites K. Thomson’s hostile review of Jamison & Brereton’s new translation of the R.gveda (OUP, 2014) on the _Times Literary Supplement_ (not in an academic publication! See at http://tinyurl.com/snhthln) to the effect that the two translators would have “dared” to constantly translate the R.gvedic term aratí- as ‘spoked wheel’ instead of as ‘messenger’ (as it was the fashion in the 19th century). Unfortunately for you, for Danino, and for Thomson too, the new translation – aratí- ‘spoked wheel’ as a metaphor for the ring of spokes, i.e. totality of spokes of a wheel, used by Vedic bards to describe the radiant flame-tongues of the fire-god Agni – was convincingly argued for by Vedicist P. Thieme in 1949, and has since then been accepted by most of Vedic philologists; it was also included in M. Mayrhofer’s Indo-Aryan etymological dictionary as the default translation of that Vedic term. Jamison & Brereton hold that aratí- “often serves as the symbol for the ritual fire” – see at http://tinyurl.com/w5rfpac (p. 81).

But then there is also a specific R.gvedic term for ‘spoke of a wheel’: ará- (from PIE *h2er-o- ‘to join together, assemble’), from which aratí- derives. Even your “hero”, M. Danino, writes that “the Vedic people clearly knew the spoked wheel” in the article you have cited. Therefore, how can you seriously claim that the R.gveda does not know of spoke-wheeled vehicles? (After twenty years of exhausting discussions?)

Ric Hern said...

@ mpz 1

There are more recent Cattle DNA studies available that will throw more light on the issue for you.

vAsiSTha said...

@TLT
There is no denying that Swat valley SPGT was vedic. suvastu river is arya land as per Vedas.

The graves have inhumations + cremations since the earliest layer to the final layer.
There are multiple graves with both inhumation as well as cremated remains. therefore the theory that buried were 'shudra' and cremated 'aryan' is BS

"Inhumation and cremation burials within a single grave are recorded from 13 graves in five cemeteries, containing the remains of 26 individuals (Table 6.12). Double inhumation with a single cremation was recorded from two graves, while single inhumation with triple cremation burial was recorded in one grave. Thus, it may be suggested that single inhumation with single cremation burials was the most common practice within the graves with multiple burial practices" https://leicester.figshare.com/articles/The_Protohistoric_Cemeteries_of_Northwestern_Pakistan_The_Deconstruction_and_Reinterpretation_of_Archaeological_and_Burial_Traditions/10106750/files/18218639.pdf

Most of the child graves are burials, as opposed to cremation, in line with RV.
"The majority (58 of 64 or 91%) of the child-burials come from the graves with inhumations, while remains of only 6 cremated children have been recorded within the excavation reports."


my model for SPGT is
1. swat_native(54%) + SiSBA1(25.1%) + Dali_MLBA(21%) pvalue 0.21
result https://pastebin.com/tpyQPTUM
or
2. swat_native(56.1%) + Dzharkutan_BA(25.2%) + Dali_Mlba(18.7%)
p value 0.079
result https://pastebin.com/quJLZikE

Haplogroup E comes from bmac or sisba1

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

"and whose positions are appreciated by Hindu nationalists only, so much so that he (Danino) was appointed a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research by Modi’s para-fascist government.)"

Ad hominem attacks are the last resort when everything else has failed. After nearly a century of archaeological research every archaeologist agrees that there is complete continuity in the Harrapan archaeological record.

Danino never doubts that ara means spoke.

"There is indeed an accepted word for spoke ara it appears eleven times in the entire
Ṛgveda ,and every time in a clearly allegorical context"


"But then there is also a specific R.gvedic term for ‘spoke of a wheel’: ará- (from PIE *h2er-o- ‘to join together, assemble’), from which aratí- derives."


https://www.academia.edu/9452122/_The_Origins_of_the_Indic_Languages_the_Indo-European_model_in_Angela_Marcantonio_and_Girish_Nath_Jha_eds._Perspectives_on_the_origin_of_Indian_civilization_New_Delhi_259-287

Jackson has already cautioned against attributing specific meanings to reconstructed words. Here he just rips apart Anthony's whole chariot theory. Unless you are going to call Jackon an Indo European linguist at University of Cambridge a "Hindu Nationalist" too, you have to come up with evidence that chariots were responsible for the breakup and spread of the PIE.

"In my (Jackson's) view, Anthony’s confidence in these linguistic reconstructions is misplaced. In essence he makes the mistake of confusing the results of linguistic reconstruction with actual words in a spoken language. "

". Therefore, how can you seriously claim that the R.gveda does not know of spoke-wheeled vehicles?"

Here again I will quote Danino himself:

"Indeed,not once in the entire Ṛgveda do we have a mention of a chariot with spoked wheels ,these three elements together in a realistic context (whether on earth or in heaven)"

Back to square one then. Keep demanding evidence from others without providing it yourself.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

"Jackson has already cautioned against attributing specific meanings to reconstructed words. Here he just rips apart Anthony's whole chariot theory. Unless you are going to call Jackson an Indo European linguist at University of Cambridge a "Hindu Nationalist" too, you have to come up with evidence that chariots were responsible for the breakup and spread of the PIE"

My bad. Its Clackson not Jackson. Thank you.

Samuel Andrews said...

@vAsiSTha, If the Andronovo admix in modern Indians arrived in the Iron age. Explain why.....

Indians lack BMAC admix. Why Indians lack East Asian and ANE admix. Why Brahmins in every part of India have more Andronovo than average Indians.

The Swat Valley is just one burial site. It proves nothing.

Samuel Andrews said...

Explain, why Indic language is related to Iranian languages. The Iranian languages spoken by Central Asians who had 40-50% Andronovo ancestry. Explain why Indic languages are Indo European languages. The only link between Europe & India is Andronovo.

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha
Good to see that you acknowledge the link between the non-Vedic goat depicting Shahr folk with Swat grave people. The Swat grave people are a mix of Vedic and non-Vedic traditions. Moreover the mix and it's stages aren't entirely unclear.

"To begin, the material from the graves clearly falls into one of two distinct categories:
either from graves that have yielded only bronze or metallic objects or from graves that have
produced both bronze and iron. Evidently, we have here the remains of a people or peoples who were passing from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age. On the basis of pottery types and other considerations, I have subdivided the Bronze Age into two subperiods-graves that show only complete burials with a particular group of pottery forms and graves that show an additional ritual practice of cremation or urn burial together with advanced pottery forms.
Following the above classification, we have three distinct groups and, from our analysis, the groups belong to three distinct periods, one following the other without any break. "

"Period I Represented by the complete burial: bronze hairpins, two varieties and distinctive pottery types-carinated, narrow-waisted, tall drinking vases
and offering stands with straight-sided bowls."

"Period II Represented by the complete burial plus cremation and urn burials. Bronze, silver, and gold are found. Two more varieties of bronze hairpins are known. Pottery forms show remarkable evolution. The most important forms are the urns of different sizes, cooking vessels on stands, and narrownecked, bottle-shaped vases. "

"Period III Represented by the complete burial, cremation and urn burials, plus fractional burials after exposure. The important new finds are iron tools and weapons. Among other discoveries, beads of precious stones and
terracotta figurines are important innovations."

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5105052.pdf

tl;dr: There are different phases, the militaristic and cremation inclusive graves come later on after the first stage. The culture isn't entirely Aryan, it is a syncretism of an original non-Aryan culture and a later Aryan one.

Ric Hern said...

@ mpz 1 & TLT

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31296769/

JR97 said...

It is clear that steppe admixture in South Asia has north vs south cline, with it's frequency peaking in Indo-European speakers, especially Brahmins. There isn't much to debate about this in my view. Most of it arriving with Andronovo and some later with Kushan-type population.

Swat valley samples fit the bill for proto-kalash-type population. Kalash carry high non-steppe Y-DNA at 74% (H,L,J,G), rest are 26% steppe R Y-DNA. They also carry higher steppe mtDNA, than Y-DNA. Those samples make a lot of sense.

JR97 said...

@SamualAndrews
"Why Indians lack ANE admix."

This is not true, ANE was mediated by several sources. Narashimhan also talked about this on his twitter. Apart from ANE being mediated by Iran_neolithic-related and steppe-related sources, there also is likely older mediation for certain. Things will be more clear when we get aDNA from mesolithic South Asia.

Samuel Andrews said...

My bad. I used the wrong nomenclature. By ANE admix I meant late Central Asian pops such as Botai who madeup part of the ancestry of Iron age Central Asians.

If Andronovo admix arrived in India in the Iron age, like AsiThSa argues, the Andronovo admix would have come along with Botai/Central Asian and East Asian admix.

Davidski said...

Steppe ancestry, including R1a-Z93, is already present in diluted form in the Swat Valley during the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age transition, so it's impossible for it to have arrived in South Asia during the Iron Age. Refer to the map here...

Y-haplogroup R1a and mental health

vAsiSTha said...

eh? i never argued steppe ancestry arrived in iron age. stop attributing false stuff to me.

it arrived beginning 1650bce from IAMC, from a source like Dali_MLBA which has additional botai+east asian on top of sintashta ancestry.

There is an outlier from bmac dated 1600bce iirc which has same ancestry as that of SPGT. That should be one of the earliest ancestry of the SPGT sort.

what i said was that 'there is no evidence of male mediated steppe migration in the bronze age, as there is no such evidence in swat iron age. Bulk of the steppe ancestry in Swat IA is from the maternal side'. Learn to understand the nuance.

vAsiSTha said...

@tlt said
"@vAsiSTha
Good to see that you acknowledge the link between the non-Vedic goat depicting Shahr folk with Swat grave people."

I only acknowledge the possibility. I neither agree nor disagree with your claim of SiS being non'Aryan', havent studied the topic. BMAC is more likely to be a source as E1b has been attested in BMAC, and it also makes sense as it is on the IAMC route. We do not yet know ancestry of east iran in the mid 2nd mil bce.

BMAC was Vedic in nature, without the presence of any steppe ancestry in the main population.

From Narsimhan supplement, by archaeologist Frachetti
"Archaeological investigations at Bustan Burial Mound have revealed a complex funerary
ritual related to the usage of fire. On top of the graves there were piled rocks, showing the influence of Steppe traditions. There were inhumation as well as cremation burials. There was a dedicated chamber for cremation of bodies at Bustan, including multi-usage hearths and altars. The altars were functionally classified into ones used for libations, ones used for meals, and ones used for sacrifices. The funerary rite documented at Bustan, specifically in relation to the role of fire, is not known at this time from any other site Iran, South Asia, orthe Central Eurasian Steppes."

From http://www.archeo.ru/izdaniya-1/archaeological-news/annotations-of-issues/arheologicheskie-vesti.-spb-1995.-vyp.-4.-annotacii
"Three bonfires were made for each cremation act. Their traces were found at the level of buried soil south, west, and east of the incinerators (figs. 1; 2: B). These finds are closely paralleled by the Vedic texts, where cremation, described as an offering to the sacred fire carrying the body to heaven, is said to be made in three open fires (Rigveda X, 16, 18; Atharvaveda XVIII, 2, 7; Asvalayana-grihyasutra IV, 1, 2)."

vAsiSTha said...

@singh said

"It is clear that steppe admixture in South Asia has north vs south cline, with it's frequency peaking in Indo-European speakers, especially Brahmins."

Steppe ancestry is highest in kalash, jatt, ror, gujjar, khatri. none of the brahmins on G25 have more ancestry than these north pops. jatt, khatri are closest to SPGT individuals with vahaduo distance being less than 3% and 2% in some cases. Brahmins are much more aasi shifted than these north indians.

@samuel said
"@vAsiSTha, If the Andronovo admix in modern Indians arrived in the Iron age. Explain why....."
Steppe admix arrived in the bronze age, not iron age, but it was female mediated.

"Indians lack BMAC admix. Why Indians lack East Asian and ANE admix."

SPGT does not lack BMAC admix. Nothing can be said of modern indians with certainty without knowing what the native pre admix population was in their locality. You would understand this if you have experience with ancestry modeling. With that said, NW indian pops like jatt and khatri are exactly like SPGT pops. so they do have bmac ancestry.
SPGT also require additional WSHG and east asian ancestry. again, you would understand this if you had spent more than a couple of months modeling SPGT like I have done. nothing can be said with certainity of rest of india without ancient dna from their region.

"Why Brahmins in every part of India have more Andronovo than average Indians."
Because they spread all over India from the north to preach, north india which had higher steppe ancestry. duh! Why do jatt, khatri, ror, gujjar etc have higher steppe ancestry than brahmins but are not priests?

"Explain, why Indic language is related to Iranian languages."
Um, the iran_N like component?

"The Iranian languages spoken by Central Asians who had 40-50% Andronovo ancestry."
The iran component in the scythians?

"Explain why Indic languages are Indo European languages. The only link between Europe & India is Andronovo."
Um again, the iran component in yamnaya?





Rob said...

Very interesting flows along the IAMC. Its best to think of it pre-2200 BC and post-2200 BC
For BMAC, think of it in terms of pre-1700 and post-1700 BC

Francesco Brighenti said...



@Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar

As a last attempt to make you ponder and study, I first of all suggest you to read M. Sparreboom’s superb work _Chariots in the Veda_. To begin with, see especially his Glossary, #5: Wheels and Axle at http://tinyurl.com/uqen9yn .

A number of hymns from the old “Family Books” (Rigveda 2-8) not only refer directly to spoked wheels (Skt. ará- ‘spoke of a wheel’; aratí- ‘the totality of spokes of a wheel’), but also mention other wheel parts that only existed on chariots with spoked wheels.

Many hymns refer repeatedly to the felloe of wheels, i.e., to the inner wheel-rim around the spokes (which was not needed to build the unspoked wheels of pre-Bronze Age carts and wagons). Felloes of Rigvedic spoked-wheel chariots were shaped using high-tech methods that included the bending of precision-cut lightweight woods around the spokes. As stated in one of the hymns, the felloe was bent into shape by a carpenter using good wood.

The outside rim (a.k.a. ‘tire’ in English) of the wheel of spoked-wheel chariots is also clearly mentioned in the Rigveda – and again in the old “Family Books”. This outer tire was sharp (in a hymn it is said to crush rock) because it was made out of metal.

A conveyor or movable stand for the lightweight chariot, drawn by two horses or oxen, is also mentioned in a Rigvedic hymn. It was a heavy vehicle used to transport the light (c. 30 kg) and vulnerable military or racing chariots around. Such movable chariot-carriers only emerged in the age of lightweight chariots, used in sport and battle on even ground, but unfit for long-distance travel.

In a later Rigvedic hymn (Book 10), the wheel-nave is said to need lubricating – of course, to put the high-speed chariot to use. The verse in question implies this part of the wheel, too, was made of metal.

So listen to Sparreboom, who is entitled to that because he has *thoroughly studied* the subject, and not to your puppets of the Hindutva ideological universe like M. Danino and company!

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

"BMAC was Vedic in nature, without the presence of any steppe ancestry in the main population."
The source that you quote clearly says that there is an influence of steppe on the BMAC tradition. In other words, the Vedic influence came from the steppe.

The Bustan samples are all relatively recent with the group generally being more recent than 2,000 BC with one exception which was Bustan eneolithic, then again there was also a more recent outlier on the steppe cline in Bustan.
"A second observation is that all other ancient and modern individuals from South Asia appear to be admixed with Central_Steppe_MLBA-related populations as compared with the Indus Periphery Cline individuals. In particular, ancient individuals from northern Pakistan and an outlier individual from Bustan with a date of ~3500 BP appear on another cline that we call
the Steppe Cline. "
From the same Narasimhan supplementary material.

This means that the regular Bustan group samples are from the Sapalli period which is post-BMAC/late BMAC. So if the formation of Vedic culture happened here, it would be post BMAC or around time when the BMAC was ending. Right around the time when Aryans were expanding southward.

vAsiSTha said...

From now on I shall be labeling people Nazi fascist on this blog as and when I see fit, just like Francesco does

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

"Steppe admix arrived in the bronze age, not iron age, but it was female mediated."

If it is female mediated in regular Indians from the non-outlier groups like Kalash, then why is there such a paucity of steppe lineages in India? As I said, the vast majority of the non-south Asian specific lineages like I, J, T, U7, U1 and perhaps even K and U3 are all attested in non-steppe/pre-steppe populations. Steppe specific lineages like U2e, U4 and U5 are all rare in India with the exception of certain small, isolated groups like Kalash who number in a few thousands. This has been known for nearly 2 decades.
Rors are the south Asians with the highest steppe ancestry and they are around 2% U5. U5 was the most common maternal lineage in steppe samples according to the Narasimhan supplement.

vAsiSTha said...

@TLT
Let me change my previous wordings about BMAC. Bustan, which had a population with typical BMAC ancestry, had vedic rites in its funeral complex. Dzharkutan had a fire temple as well, and ecavators Askarov, Shirinov & Sarianidi consider the sites as proto zoroastrian. Sarianidi also believed Gonur to be proto zoroastrian. You should read his works.

There no andronovan ancestry in even the Bustan outliers.
I11520 has SPGT ancestry, so is likely a migrant from swat.

I11521 can be modeled as Swat_Native + Bustan_BA + Aigyrzhal

Uzbekistan_BA_Bustan_o1
InPe_Native: 7.5 +- 4.6
Uzbekistan_BA_Bustan: 50.7 +- 5.6
Kyrgyzstan_BA_Aygirdjal: 41.7 +- 5.7
tailprob: 0.0728
result file https://pastebin.com/BqkyMzi4

Viktor Sarianidi has long been adamant that the steppe presence in Margiana and Bactria during the BMAC has been much overstated, noting that “pottery of the Andronovo type does not exceed 100 fragments in all of southern Turkmenistan.” - From Kristansen et al (arch supplement to Damgaard et al 2018)

vAsiSTha said...

@TLT
Rors have an additional saka ancestry, leave them aside for now. These are the steppe mtDna found in SPGT
N1a 2
T1a 3
T2a 1
U2a 1
U2e 2
U4d 1

"In the Middle to Late Bronze Age, 13.2% of Steppe individuals we sequenced carry the T1a
haplogroup which is found at 3.5% in the Late Bronze-Iron Age samples from Swat Valley,
but is found only at extremely low frequency in BA Turan, suggesting that this haplogroup
could provide a maternally transmitted uniparental marker link between the Steppe and South
Asia" - Narsimhan supplement

if you want to read about west eurasian mtDna in India, read this paper https://www.academia.edu/12110338/West_Eurasian_mtDNA_lineages_in_India_an_insight_into_the_spread_of_the_Dravidian_language_and_the_origins_of_the_caste_system?auto=download

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

T1a is already found in Shahr. A different subclade of T2 was found in Tepe Abdul Hosein farmers. U2a is AASI/older south Asian. N1, U2e and U4 are indeed signs of steppe lineages however. That is 5 out of something like 40+ individuals. Today, these lineages are very rare in Indians. T is found in Anatolians, Iranians and Steppe alike, so it would be easier to follow U5 and U4 for the steppe lineages in south Asia.

In that paper, what is referred to as west Eurasian includes the lineages that would have been brought by the older Iranian migration.


"The distributions of the west Eurasian haplogroups in theIndian populations are shown in supplementary table S3.About 16 % of west Eurasian mtDNAs in India belong tohaplogroup H and its subclades of H1, H2, H3, H5, H6,H7, H9, H13, H14, H15, and H103, of which haplogroupsH2, H9, and H13 together with unclassified H* account for12.6 % of H haplogroup variation in India. The H haplo-group is comparatively more frequent in the north (5.2 %)and the south (7.6 %) than in the west (1.7 %) and east(1.5 %) Indian populations."

A chunk of this could be steppe derived.

"The haplogroups HV, JT, U(xU2a, U2b, and U2c), and W lineages have frequenciesabout 12.6, 12.7, 38.6, and 8.7 %, respectively, in the westEurasian control region database of Indian population"

Subcludes of HV, J, T and U (xU2i) have been found in Shahr. The list is like this: W3, T1, U1, I1, J1. Older BMAC eneolithic to copper age samples include certain subclades of W1, H, HV, T2 (multiple types) subclades and U7 of course.


Lastly, I highly doubt that IE languages are strongly linked with the Iran component. The Iran-like in PIE was very different, it was CHG and groups with the most CHG today speak very different languages compared to IE. There might have been some influence from CHG to pre-PIE, but that would be an influence, not the prime source.

But these are CHGs that we are talking about, not Iran HGs. So far it is unclear what languages the Iran types might have spoken. Elamite could be one of them and it is an isolate. Sumerian might be another, but that was spoken in a highly mixed region so it could have easily come from Anatolia or Levant instead.

Francesco Brighenti said...

@vAsiSTha

Your government and its Hindu nationalist ideology, backed by numerous social organizations like the RSS, are labeled as "para-fascist" or "crypto-fascist" by numberless journalists and observers all around the world. Don't feel offended for that. Just try to contribute to overthrow it and restore a decent democratic system.

vAsiSTha said...

You are wrong. Steppe eneolithic cannot be modeled with only ehg+ CHG.
It requires EHG+CHG + geoksyur_en like ancestry to model steppe eneolithic.

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

"There no andronovan ancestry in even the Bustan outliers."
Doesn't need to have to for it to have some cultural influence. One of the sources that you quoted clearly states an influence from the steppe.

"Viktor Sarianidi has long been adamant that the steppe presence in Margiana and Bactria during the BMAC has been much overstated, noting that “pottery of the Andronovo type does not exceed 100 fragments in all of southern Turkmenistan.” - From Kristansen et al (arch supplement to Damgaard et al 2018)"

Sure, and I haven't said that it is anything more than an influence, probably because of that stone piling. However, the really strange thing is that the BMAC type ancestry excluding the Indus periphery isn't very common in south Asia, less so than the steppe ancestry. So if you were to posit that as an origin point instead then it means that the Vedic culture was brought be an even smaller portion of ancestry than what was previously thought.

"sample": "Brahmin_Uttar_Pradesh:Average",
"fit": 1.5596,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 55.83,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 24.17,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 14.17,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 5.83

"sample": "Brahmin_Tamil_Nadu:Average",
"fit": 1.2266,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 49.17,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 20.83,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 17.5,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 12.5

"sample": "Potohar_Rajput:Average",
"fit": 1.7417,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 65,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 22.5,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 6.67,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 5.83

"sample": "Potohar_Brahmin:Average",
"fit": 2.0578,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 56.67,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 23.33,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 10,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 10

"sample": "Khatri:Average",
"fit": 1.6403,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 45.83,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 23.33,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 20.83,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 10

"sample": "Punjabi_Jatt:Average",
"fit": 1.5046,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 48.33,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 30,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 11.67,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 10

"sample": "Kalash:Average",
"fit": 2.4674,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 39.17,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 31.67,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 22.5,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 6.67

"sample": "Ror:Average",
"fit": 1.6137,
"RUS_Sintashta_MLBA": 40,
"CustomGroup_IVCp": 35,
"UZB_Bustan_BA": 14.17,
"CustomGroup_Simulated_AASI": 10.83

Results aren't very different with Parkhai or Anau instead ,make sense since they are supposed to form a clade with Bustan.

TLT said...

@vAsiSTha

Iran_N in of itself isn't anything more than a minor component for PIE which might not even be there at all.

"sample": "Yamnaya_RUS_Samara:Average",
"fit": 6.1589,
"RUS_Samara_HG": 60,
"GEO_CHG": 25.83,
"Anatolia_Pinarbasi_HG": 7.5,
"IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N": 6.67

Even smaller than the Anatolian component and that is in spite of using Pinarbasi, it is more extreme when using Barcin.

"sample": "Yamnaya_RUS_Samara:Average",
"fit": 6.0988,
"RUS_Samara_HG": 60.83,
"GEO_CHG": 25.83,
"Anatolia_Barcin_N": 7.5,
"IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N": 5.83


Might be because Geoksiur itself has CHG in it and so it takes up some of CHG's place.

"sample": "TKM_Geoksyur_En:Average",
"fit": 2.3509,
"IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N": 70.83,
"GEO_CHG": 13.33,
"RUS_Tyumen_HG": 9.17,
"Anatolia_Barcin_N": 6.67

"sample": "Yamnaya_RUS_Samara:Average",
"fit": 6.0379,
"RUS_Samara_HG": 59.17,
"GEO_CHG": 19.17,
"TKM_Geoksyur_En": 16.67,
"Anatolia_Barcin_N": 5

The fit is only slightly better and it takes up a lot more space than Iran_N does. Probably being placed there because it eating up the CHG spot a little due to minor CHG ancestry.

vAsiSTha said...

A pop like SiSBA1 also works

Yamnaya_Samara

EEHG: 46.7 +- 1.6
Georgia_Kotias.SG: 22.2 +- 2.7
Ukraine_Globular_Amphora: 12.5 +- 1.4
Shahr_I_Sokhta_BA1: 18.6 +- 2.7
tailprob: 0.087

result file https://pastebin.com/ssgUCG71

TLT said...

It *works*, but it is not significantly better than the other simple option.

"sample": "Yamnaya_RUS_Samara:Average",
"fit": 6.0332,
"RUS_Samara_HG": 57.5,
"GEO_CHG": 22.5,
"IRN_Shahr_I_Sokhta_BA1": 11.67,
"POL_Globular_Amphora": 8.33

Using more mixed populations doesn't change the fact that the more basic early holocene Iran_N played little to no role in the formation of IE. Only having Iran_N + Anatolian gives the mixed population some space in the model and that is because of the Anatolian mix. Part of why BA1 *fits* is because of the Anatolian ancestry in it, also part of the reason why BA2 doesn't though part of it is also because of AASI in BA2.

"sample": "Yamnaya_RUS_Samara:Average",
"fit": 6.1005,
"RUS_Samara_HG": 57.5,
"GEO_CHG": 30,
"POL_Globular_Amphora": 9.17,
"IRN_Shahr_I_Sokhta_BA2": 3.33

Rob said...

@ vasisthata

“It requires EHG+CHG + geoksyur_en like ancestry to model steppe eneolithic”

Even if it does; it’s pretty minor %; and not culturally formative

Moreover, it’s difficult to account for IE phylogeny with Iran N. Indo-Iranian is a sister (or daughter) branch of balto-Slavic; not parental to all IE , as your model would imply

gamerz_J said...

@vAsiSTha

I am confused, are you saying Indo-European languages in Europe and India are due to shared Iranian_N-like ancestry?

Not that I am an expert or anything but based on what I have read on genetics (and some in archaeology) so far, I am not sure this is true.

gamerz_J said...

PS. I did not really get the Zebu debate above, cattle admixture does not imply major population movements.

There was a paper about African cattle lineages present in Neolithic Levant IIRC, but hardly any gene flow from Sub-Saharan populations.

Same with chickens. They most likely come from South-East Asia, does not mean Southeast Asian admixture accompanied the spread of chicken lineages.

vAsiSTha said...

@rob
"Even if it does; it’s pretty minor %; and not culturally formative"

same can be said of the minor 20% steppe admixture in swat IA & north indians. India was much more populated in 1500bce than the yamnaya region was in 3000bce.

somehow i have to accept that without any invasion and without any trace of chariots, a small % of people from the steppes changed the language of all the people of north and NW india without them leaving any trace of the original language spoken, in even a single small pocket., not in any river name or mountain name. A feat which the vedics were not able to accomplish in 3000 years in the south of india.

"Moreover, it’s difficult to account for IE phylogeny with Iran N. Indo-Iranian is a sister (or daughter) branch of balto-Slavic; not parental to all IE , as your model would imply"
IIr as daughter of Balto slavic - lol

According to Matasović (2008), "solving the problem of Iranian loanwords in Slavic, their distribution and relative chronology, is one of the most important tasks of modern Slavic studies".[3] Slavs in the era of the Proto-Slavic language came into contact with various Iranian tribes, namely Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans, which were present in vast regions of eastern and southeastern Europe in the first centuries CE. The names of two large rivers in the centre of Slavic expansion, Dnieper and Dniester, are of Iranian origin, and Iranian toponyms are found as far west as modern day Romania.[4]

and im not claiming that IIr is parental to any european language, im claiming that PIE is the parent, and that PIE region is south and east of caucasus, between west iran and Pakistan around 5k-4k bce.

Davidski said...

It should be obvious to anyone who isn't insane in some way that the arrival of R1a-Z93 in South Asia during the Bronze Age was associated with the appearance of Indo-European languages there.

Jatt_Scythian said...

I thought chickens came from South Asia as well? The wild fowl species are native from the Indus Valley eastwards

But of course this did not come with gene flow. Same thing with rice farming. Humans have always traded with each other. While I doubt European cattle have zebu genes eve if they did that would be more indicative of trade than anything else.

gamerz_J said...

@Jatt_Scythian

To Europe maybe but they were likely domesticated in Southeast Asia or even southwest China and then spread further west. Some say they were domesticated in India instead. There are conflicting theories about it but from what I have read, at least one domestication center was in south China/southeast Asia.


mzp1 said...

Cattle are important for IE history as the Rigveda describes a Pastoral economy based on cattle without sheep or farming and other Neolithic domesticates. You would need to explain why those people only talked of Cattle Pastoralism is they were a post-Neolithic society. It doesn't make sense.

Chickens are not comparable as we are interested in a pre-Neolithic culture based on Cattle Pastoralism.

I have been reading some articles and it looks like Cattle management and trade may have been widespread in Eurasia prior to the Neolitich. There is interesting structure in Taurine mtDNA in modern and ancient cattle populations to suggest managed herds (early domestication) in the Mesolithic.

There is good aDNA out there but it is mostly mtDNA. If they could get autosmnal readings from existing bone fragments things could get more interesting.

mzp1 said...

@gamer

"There was a paper about African cattle lineages present in Neolithic Levant IIRC, but hardly any gene flow from Sub-Saharan populations."

African cattle moved there from the Near East, also explaining the R1B found in Africa. African cattle mtDNA lineages are Middle Eastern, but we don't know anything about possible 'native' African Taurine that could have provided autosomnal admixture.

Samuel Andrews said...

@mzp1, It used to be a safe bet R1b V88 in Africa is from the NEar East. But, in the ancient DNA era no R1b has been found in ancient near East but lots of R1b has been found in ancient Europe. Including R1b V88, which is present in many samples from Mesolithic & Neolithic Europe. It was especially common in Neolithic Southwest Europe, especially ancient Sardinia. So, chances are African R1b V88 is from Europe.

Northwest Africans have Neolithic Near Eastern ancestry, but they also have Neolithic Southern European ancestry. Best, bet is R1b V88 arrived in Africa from Spain.

Don't mean to be a jerk who dis agrees with you. As, you have plenty of good reason to say African R1b is from the Near East, considering pastorlism in Sub Saharan AFrica ultimatly came from the Near East and the modern tribes with R1b V88 are pastoral. But, apparently there was also a sizable movement from Spain into Morocco which trickled down into a few Sahara desert nomads who carry a European y Chromsome.

mzp1 said...

Yeah, I didn't look at the R1B connection with African pastoralism very closely just something I read in Eupedia which made sense.

Need a closer look at cattle population structures ancient and modern to see how they maybe related to human migrations.

gamerz_J said...

@mzp1

Yes that too is a likely scenario. Do you have a link handy about a ME origin of African cattle? I thought it was of N or NE African origin.

mzp1 said...

These are the links I have currently saved. I think the first few might be more relevant to your question.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17412685
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31296769
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005753

I think these are more relevant for the structure of Taurine populations across Eurasia.
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0790-2
https://academic.oup.com/af/article/4/3/7/4638695
https://www.pnas.org/content/103/21/8113
https://www.academia.edu/39885327/George_Pitt-Rivers_Seminar_2018_-_All_Together_Now_Human_and_animal_co-mingled_interment_in_prehistory_Britain_via_Carsington_Pasture_Cave

gamerz_J said...

@mzp1

Thanks for sharing, I'll look them up.

Grey said...

"The surprising thing about the males in this small sample of Middle Bronze Age Greek Aristocracy is that in spite of their tallness their bones are not relatively slenderer than those of short and stocky peoples but are actually relatively as well as absolutely thicker"

It could just be that in a sword-based meritocracy naturally big dudes ended up winning but i do like the idea of Hercules etc being part-yeti

"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown."

matthayichen said...

@mzp1:

"Cattle are important for IE history as the Rigveda describes a Pastoral economy based on cattle without sheep or farming and other Neolithic domesticates. You would need to explain why those people only talked of Cattle Pastoralism is they were a post-Neolithic society. It doesn't make sense."

I just googled Rigveda and Sheep and here's a sample of what came up. I really don't know why people here take you seriously.

(Book 9 Hymn 103)
"1. To Soma who is purified as ordering Priest the song is raised:
Bring meed, as ’twere, to one who makes thee glad with hymns.
2 Blended with milk and curds he flows on through the long wool of the sheep.
The Gold-hued, purified, makes him three seats for rest.
3 On through the long wool of the sheep to the meath-dropping vat he flows:
The Ṛṣis’ sevenfold quire hath sung aloud to him."

It is generally agreed by archaeologists/historians that the Rigvedic culture was agro-pastoral, with the greatest prestige attached to cows for sustenance and horses for mobility. Meanwhile agriculture was only of secondary importance to their mobile lifestyle of temporary settlements.

matthayichen said...

@davidski

"It should be obvious to anyone who isn't insane in some way that the arrival of R1a-Z93 in South Asia during the Bronze Age was associated with the appearance of Indo-European languages there."

The Aryan homeland must be in Northern India, and Sanskrit native to India for the last 50,000 years or more. Nothing else is acceptable to the average nationalistic Indian. Cue excuses and conspiracy theories for problems with the evidence. Call it a madness if you will.

matthayichen said...

@vasistha

Your argument seems to be that the Iranian neolithic spoke PIE. But the Iranian neolithic spread nowhere else beyond Iran and South Central Asia. In fact they didn't even spread to the Indus Valley (as the Rakhigarhi paper made clear). Or is it that you think a common hunter gatherer ancestry dating back 12,000+ years is enough to inherit IE languages?

The genetic profile of Swat Valley doesn't fit the modern Brahmin-like upper class of India, and the best explanation for that is we are not sampling the main steppe invader population at all. Instead what we have are remnants of the old order who still buried their dead and managed to exchange wives with the steppe populations, or indeed, simply captured a few women from the enemy.

vAsiSTha said...

@matthayichen

My argument is not that PIE was spoken in neolithic.
"But the Iranian neolithic spread nowhere else beyond Iran and South Central Asia. In fact they didn't even spread to the Indus Valley (as the Rakhigarhi paper made clear)."

Iran_N LIKE ancestry is literally everywhere. from greece, to sicily, anatolia, armenia, yamnaya and daughter civilizations, iran, india, central asia, eastern steppe, eastern china. qpAdm cant differentiate between iran_N and its deeply related sisters like the indian component.

"The genetic profile of Swat Valley doesn't fit the modern Brahmin-like upper class of India, and the best explanation for that is we are not sampling the main steppe invader population at all. Instead what we have are remnants of the old order who still buried their dead and managed to exchange wives with the steppe populations, or indeed, simply captured a few women from the enemy."

Write a fiction novel on this. you must be best buddies with @archi. or maybe the same guy. Swat cemeteries have double digit burials with both cremations and inhumations in the same burial. do some basic research.


matthayichen said...

@vasistha

Let me get this straight. Iran-like ancestry of mesolithic hunter-gatherer origin is found in a lot of places, so if actual Iran people eventually developed PIE in the bronze age, then their cousins around the world somehow also started speaking PIE? Is that like the Jackie Chan movie where one twin brother learns to play the piano and then the other twin can play it too? Should we all be looking into quantum entanglement?

matthayichen said...

@vasistha "Write a fiction novel on this"

That unfortunately is the forte of the Indigenous Aryan crowd. Perhaps you can help me write something to beat the "Immortals of Meluha". I notice that you haven't explained how to unbiasedly sample a nomadic people who we know to have stopped building kurgans in favor of cremation when they arrived in India. Or indeed why the sampled Swat population doesn't reflect the uniparental genetic profile of the R1a z93 dominated Indian upper caste or Sintashta peoples on either side.

matthayichen said...

@vasistha "Iran_N LIKE ancestry is literally everywhere. from greece, to sicily, anatolia, armenia, yamnaya"

Yeah right, mesolithic Greece, Sicily and Anatolia were overrun by Iran_N-like peoples. I think you are way ahead of me at the fiction novel business.

mzp1 said...

@matthayichen

You dont know what you are talking about. Cattle is mentioned exclusively in almost every hymn and yet you pull out an example from Book 9. We are not really interested in items recently introduced to the Vedic peoples which may occur in (late) books 1, 10, or 9 (which has Soma hymns from other books).

I didn't do any research before posting my comment that you replied to, because I have already spent over a hundred hours reading through those hymns (as an area of interest) so I already sheep and farming are not part of the Vedic culture. Having done your search just now I can see a couple of mentions, as expected from books 9 and 10, supporting my point.

Jatt_Scythian said...

Going back to height, this article says MEsolithic North Indians were 5'8- 5'10 tall? Were these ASI? And wtf happened to height in North India after that?

Skeletal Variation among Mesolithic People of the
Ganga Plains: New Evidence ofHabitual Activity
and Adaptation to Climate by JOHN R. LUKACS AND J. N. PAL

matthayichen said...

@mzp1 "You dont know what you are talking about."

I assume I am joined in this benightedness by all of mainstream linguistics whose consensus is that PIE, ancestral to Sanskrit and existing a millennia or two earlier, was spoken by an agro-pastoral society.

In the off chance you are honest about your opinion and are simply confounded by the importance given to cattle, you might want to read up on how and why agro-pastoralism emerged as the dominant and the most practical lifestyle in some climates of the world, including the Eurasian steppes.

And the horses. Do you actually believe people had horse chariots in the mesolithic or wherever you want to place the Rigveda?

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

mattthayichen:

"In the off chance you are honest about your opinion and are simply confounded by the importance given to cattle, you might want to read up on how and why agro-pastoralism emerged as the dominant and the most practical lifestyle in some climates of the world, including the Eurasian steppes."

Skip to the slide at 22:58 from archaeologist Michael Frechetti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP16l1PFoLA&t=2037s

Assuming the PIE speakers as agro pastolarist (whether sheep or cattle) does not help the steppe homeland. Agriculture was unknown on the steppe before 2000 BCE. On the flip side acknowledging the importance of cattle to the Rig Vedic people does not hinder the steppe homeland theory either based on the same slide.

NewGuy said...

Just like the tall swarthy yamnaya did with Blonde Aryan funnelbeaker and globular amorpha people.
Yes,the original Aryans yamnaya were swarthy while the funnelbeaker and globular amorpha people of Europe which the yamnaya invaded were blonde and blue eyes.

This is how sintasha got light in the first place, because of their feminine light haired mothers