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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Armenian Highland population prehistory


A new preprint at bioRxiv claims that some sort of large-scale population movement resulted in the spread of Sardinian-like ancestry into both the Armenian Highland and East Africa during or just after the Middle-Late Bronze Age. See Hovhannisyan et al. here.

In all seriousness, my suggestion is that the authors should familiarize themselves with the scientific concept of the sanity check and then try again.

For what it's worth, here's a brief outline of the population history of the Armenian Highland based on what I've learned about the topic from ancient DNA in recent years:

- overall, the Neolithic populations of the Armenian Highland were surely very similar to the Caucasus_lowlands_LN samples from what is now Azerbaijan from the recent Skourtanioti et al. paper (see here)

- Chalcolithic era migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe and/or the North Caucasus introduced steppe ancestry to the Armenian Highland, bringing at least some of its populations closer genetically to those of Eastern Europe (a somewhat outdated but still useful blog post about this subject is found here)

- population expansions during the Early Bronze Age associated with the Kura-Araxes cultural phenomenon, which may have originated in what is now Armenia, resulted in a resurgence of indigenous Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG) ancestry across the Caucasus, as well as its spread to many other parts of West Asia (see here)

- another significant pulse of Eastern European admixture affected the Armenian Highland during the Middle-Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (see here)

- it's not yet completely clear what happened in the Armenian Highland during the Iron Age in terms of significant genetic shifts, due to the lack of ancient human samples from the region dating to this period, but it's still possible that the speakers of proto-Armenian arrived there from the Balkans at this time

- the present-day Armenian gene pool is the result of the processes described above, as well as later events, such as those associated with the Urartian and Ottoman Empires.

Indeed, it's probably not a coincidence that present-day Armenians cluster more or less between the prehistoric populations from the Armenian Highland and surrounds in the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) below.


To see a more detailed and interactive version of the plot, copy paste the data from the text file here into the relevant field at the Vahaduo Globabl25 PCA Views here.

Citation...

Hovhannisyan et al., AN ADMIXTURE SIGNAL IN ARMENIANS AROUND THE END OF THE BRONZE AGE REVEALS WIDESPREAD POPULATION MOVEMENT ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST, bioRxiv, Posted June 24, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.24.168781

See also...

Armenian confirmation bias

Perhaps a hint of things to come

Understanding the Eneolithic steppe

247 comments:

1 – 200 of 247   Newer›   Newest»
CrM said...

Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.1266% / 0.01126624
49.0 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
13.6 ARM_LBA
10.4 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps
9.2 AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LC
8.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kalavan
5.6 AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LN
2.4 RUS_Catacomb
1.8 TUR_Ottoman
0.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Talin
0.0 TUR_Arslantepe_LC
0.0 GRC_Mycenaean
0.0 ARM_Lchashen_MBA
0.0 ARM_MBA
0.0 *Sardinian
0.0 *ITA_Sardinia_Nuragic

Without Azeri samples:

Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.2728% / 0.01272847
57.8 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
17.6 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kalavan
16.2 ARM_LBA
4.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps
2.0 TUR_Ottoman
1.4 ARM_MBA
1.0 RUS_Catacomb
0.0 TUR_Arslantepe_LC
0.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Talin
0.0 GRC_Mycenaean
0.0 ARM_Lchashen_MBA
0.0 *Sardinian
0.0 *ITA_Sardinia_Nuragic

Don't see anything Sardinian, rather local Anatolian BA.

Aram said...

I didn't have time to read the paper. But based on abstract it must be a something weird.

Well there wasn't any migration from Balkanes.
Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.2783% / 0.01278271
54.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
25.4 ARM_LBA
20.4 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
0.0 BGR_IA
0.0 BGR_MLBA

We don't have Arslantepe LBA but based on archaeology I would say that LBA wouldn't be very different from EBA.

As for modern Armenian gene pool it is related to this events.
Urartu
Relocation policy of Artashecids
And maybe some minor admixture from Cilicians in Byzantine period.
Ottoman empire has very little to do
Craniometric data from modern Armenia show that brachycephality became the norm only in early Middle Age.

Conclusion. The Armenian language is fron Armenia LBA type. Which expanded in EIA toward Western Armenia known as grooved ware. Those migrants are known as Mushk and Urumu.

Aram said...

When we will have some aDNA frim Van and Erzrum region there wouldn't be need for such high amount of Arslantepe which will shrink.

As for Mushk here is an excellent summary of this questions.


https://docplayer.net/108120425-The-mushki-problem-reconsidered.html

The name Mida was already attested in LBA in Western parts in LBA before 1200bc. So this destroy any link of Mushk with Phrygians.

So once more Balkanian theory is dead.

Btw those new samples increased quite a lot the steppe ancestry in Armenians. They can now easily score some 10% of Catacomb or like that. With samples from southerns part of historic Armenia this number will increase even more. We have RMPR68 from Rome which is probably from that region
So my bet that at the end of the quest Armenians will have as much steppe as neighbor Iranians.

CrM said...

"Craniometric data from modern Armenia show that brachycephality became the norm only in early Middle Age."

This applies to all of Caucasus, even some Caucasian ethnic groups became large brachycephalic only after the Middle Ages.

Some reconstructions:
https://imgur.com/a/M3qmZ5g

Anonymous said...


I haven't looked yet, but I will remind everyone that the Proto-Armenians (Muskas) and Sardans were part of the Sea Peoples movement. The Sea Peoples attacked Egypt and the Hittite Empire and influence reached Babylon.

Aram said...

I wanted to say the name Mida in Western Armenia LBA before 1200bc.

Btw Alalakh had dense Hurrian presence numerous names and texts.
Alalakh MLBA has zero percent of steppe no any steppic marker.

https://books.google.am/books?id=1klHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=alalakh+hurrian&source=bl&ots=_BWbg8Ks2u&sig=ACfU3U1c3EFMqbFKViOPC48gzvk6hguXxw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4mNygxvTpAhWklIsKHe6xAMgQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=alalakh%20hurrian&f=false


There were also two possible elite hurrians. Once more zero steppe just shift to North Mesopotamia. Toward Khabur ware as expected.

So that dubious theory of Hurrians from steppe is also dead.

Here a summary in Russian.
http://forum.molgen.org/index.php/topic,12774.msg491985.html#msg491985

Btw and the most surprising thing. The J2 very close to Nakh cluster was found in Alalakh. ALA011.


Anonymous said...

Aram said...
"So once more Balkanian theory is dead."

Nothing is dead, you wrote some fiction, you gave some pointless article, you wrote some incomprehensible statement which is not in the article, and after that you make categorical statement.

Aram said...

Archi

I guess You still believe that Etruscans are from Iron Age Anatolia because Herodotus said.

As for this paper it is not important what they are saying.Did they tested any migration from Steppe? I guess no. Like in Agranat Tamir paper right?

Targamos the Based, son of Kavkasos son of CHG son of said...

Archi, no one likes you, you almost never contribute anything to the discussion, just passive aggressive bitchy pedantism. At this point the discussions would be better if you were banned.

Aram said...

And this are two possible elite Hurrians from Agranat Tamir paper.

Target: Levant_Megiddo_MLBA:S10770
Distance: 2.9588% / 0.02958834
79.6 Levant_Megiddo_MLBA
17.6 IRN_Seh_Gabi_C
2.0 TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA
0.8 MNG_Hovsgol_BA

Target: Levant_Megiddo_MLBA:S10769
Distance: 3.2999% / 0.03299916
86.4 Levant_Megiddo_MLBA
13.2 IRN_Seh_Gabi_C
0.4 MNG_Hovsgol_BA


Aram said...

Davidski

Your summary of genetic history of Armenia is nice. All this events had names.

Neolithic - Shulaveri similar to modern Armenians.
Late Eneolithic - Chaff faced ware Areni, Leyla tepe
EBA - Kura Araxes increase in CHG
MBA - Trialeti Vanadzor migration from Steppe Catacomb.
LBA-EIA - Lchashen Metsamor culture. Genesis is unclear but seems to be a continuation of MBA with some new impulses (from KMK?) resulting in dramatic change.
800-600 Bc Urartu. Completly new culture from Van. In some places a new syncretic culture called Lchashen 6 emerges.
After 600BC - Armenian period. Nothing new.
After 500 BC - Achemenid period Satrapy. Apparition of Persian artefacts. Hypostyle.

Vladimir said...


Aram said...
Neolithic - Shulaveri similar to modern Armenians.
Late Eneolithic - Chaff faced ware Areni, Leyla tepe
EBA - Kura Araxes increase in CHG
MBA - Trialeti Vanadzor migration from Steppe Catacomb.
LBA-EIA - Lchashen Metsamor culture. Genesis is unclear but seems to be a continuation of MBA with some new impulses (from KMK?) resulting in dramatic change.
800-600 Bc Urartu. Completly new culture from Van. In some places a new syncretic culture called Lchashen 6 emerges."

What are your assumptions about the Y-haplogroups of the main population of these cultures? I can only assume the R1B-Z2103 Trialetti.

Anonymous said...

Aram said...

"I guess You still believe that Etruscans are from Iron Age Anatolia because Herodotus said."

The genetic data fully confirmed Herodotus' information. Believe it or not, facts on the face. Those who deny the facts, those who believe in pseudoscience.

If Herodotus hadn't written anything like that, we still wouldn't have been able to deny the Aegean-Bosporus region of Etruscan arrival.

A said...

An influx of 'sardinian-like' (neolithic anatolian) ancestry into east Africa around 3000 years ago on average has been identified by other papers. It probably correspondd to the semitic (sabaean) colonization of Ethiopia in the 1st millennium BC.

FrankN said...

Some addition to EBA (Areni Cave):
https://www.academia.edu/34605042/Obsidian_Track

By the final Neolithic (from ca. 5000 BC) an Obsidian trade route emerged that connected the Syunik 3 (Armenia) and Baksan (Elbrus piedmont, between Nalchik and Progress 2) sources via processing centers on the Egorlyk (Rassypnaya 6 etc.) to the Lower Don, the Dniepr Rapids area, also Crimea, the Donetsk Basin and the Lower Volga (Jangar).

Leyla Tepe became involved in this trade, importing some of ist Obsidian from the Elbrus piedmont. The connection towards Dniepr/Don/Volga appears to break with the Eneolithic (Leyla Tepe/ Maykop expansion?).

Anonymous said...

Aram said...
"I guess You still believe that Etruscans are from Iron Age Anatolia because Herodotus said."

The path Αἰνείας through genetics. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Aeneae_exsilia.svg/1920px-Aeneae_exsilia.svg.png

1. After leaving Troy, he arrived at Αἰνεία in Thrace. This is one starting point for the invasion of the Sea Peoples into Anatolia. By Herodotus there before the war lived Teucroi, that is Trojans.

Neolithic Bulgaria Malak Preslavets [I0700 / MP5] 1d_rel_I1108 5800-5400 calBCE M T1a1a T2e

2. After leaving Thrace, he went to Crete. From it Sea Peoples Teukroi TJKR, Tursenoi TRS, Sardana SRDN, Pelasgian PLST made attacks on Egypt and Palestine.

Bronze Canaanite Lebanon Sidon [burial 63] 1600 BC M J2b
Iron Etruscan Italy Civitavecchia, La Mattonara, T. 4 [R474] 700 - 600 BCE M J2b2a H
Target: ITA_Etruscan:RMPR474b
Distance: 0.6830% / 0.00682953
42.8 Bell_Beaker_CZE
25.4 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1
14.4 Bell_Beaker_ITA
7.6 GRC_Mycenaean
7.0 ITA_Remedello_BA
2.8 Levant_PPNB
0.0 ITA_Proto-Villanovan
0.0 ITA_Villanovan
0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA_o
0.0 GRC_Minoan_Lassithi
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_C
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_C_o
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_EBA
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_ECA
0.0 Levant_Canaanite_MBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_LBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_C
0.0 Levant_ISR_MLBA
0.0 Levant_JOR_EBA
0.0 Levant_Natufian
0.0 Levant_PPNC
0.0 MAR_Taforalt

https://yfull.com/tree/J-M241/

After that, the Nuragic Sardinians appear J2b2a1, which was not in Sardinia before. The Sea People of Sardans were also representatives of this haplogroup, in Sardinia it appeared after 1200BC.In Sardinia there was no steppe component and Αἰνείας did not swim into it, but the Nuragic culture is close to the Etruscan culture.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d6/07/5b/d6075bd7cc5e161d907dc98c05df53d4.gif

3. Then he goes to the Ionic Sea to which the Teucroi spread before the war by Herodotus and he meets the Trojans in Ἀμβρᾰκία-Δωδώνη.

Bronze Croatia Veliki Vanik [I4331 / VV1] 1631-1521 calBCE (3305±20 BP, PSUAMS-2257) M J2b2a

In ancient times, Illyrian did not contact with the Greek language, between them there was a layer of a certain language, apparently the Luvian language of the Teucrians.

4. Then he sails to Sicily, from where he gets to Carthage because of the storm.
From where two Etruria samples have the Moroccan component.

Iron Etruscan Italy Civitavecchia, La Mattonara, T. 6A [R475] 700 - 600 BCE F T2b32
Target: ITA_Etruscan_o:RMPR475b
Distance: 0.6210% / 0.00620998
29.6 Bell_Beaker_CZE
23.0 GRC_Minoan_Lassithi
13.6 ITA_Sardinia_C
8.2 MAR_Taforalt
7.8 Levant_PPNB
5.2 ITA_Sardinia_C_o
5.0 ITA_Sardinia_EBA
4.0 GRC_Mycenaean

3.2 ITA_Remedello_BA
0.4 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1
0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA
0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA_o
0.0 ITA_Proto-Villanovan
0.0 ITA_Villanovan
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_ECA
0.0 Levant_Canaanite_MBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_LBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_C
0.0 Levant_ISR_MLBA
0.0 Levant_JOR_EBA
0.0 Levant_Natufian
0.0 Levant_PPNC

5. Arriving in Italy (Troas(>rasna) > Etruria=Turrhenia/Tursci>Tusci), he is at war with Rutuli of Ardea, Rutuli are not Latin. Interesting name of Rutulian king: Turn.

Iron Rutuli Italy Ardea, T101 II, 2.5.2018 [R850] outlier 800 - 500 BCE M T1a1a T2c1f with the high Iran component and the Maroccan (in the reference) and/or Levant component. He could be the Pelasgian.
Target: ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA_o:RMPR850
Distance: 1.4360% / 0.01436030
36.2 GRC_Mycenaean
24.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_LBA

18.8 Bell_Beaker_CZE
14.4 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1
4.6 Levant_ISR_C
2.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2

0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA
0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA_o
0.0 GRC_Minoan_Lassithi
0.0 ITA_Proto-Villanovan
0.0 ITA_Remedello_BA
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_C
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_C_o
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_EBA
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_ECA
0.0 ITA_Villanovan
0.0 Levant_Canaanite_MBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_MLBA
0.0 Levant_JOR_EBA
0.0 Levant_Natufian
0.0 Levant_PPNB
0.0 Levant_PPNC
0.0 MAR_Taforalt

https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-T.gif

Anonymous said...

@Aram

Look at Table 1, there is a way from the Balkans to Armenia, so there is nothing to object.

FrankN said...

Another question: Since the Skourtanioti et al. paper (including SuppMats) is paywalled, would someone mind to provide a bit of archeological background on the Caucasus_lowlands_LN samples, plus a G25 analysis?

Simon_W said...

@Archi

You need a sanity check, your models prove nothing because they're overfitted.

For the following runs I always used this list of sources (always all of them):

TUR_Barcin_N
WHG
Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
TUR_Ovaoren_EBA
Levant_Natufian
MAR_Taforalt

These are not random; there is a certain logic behind this selection: Barcin, Yamnaya and WHG are the basic constituents of Europe. In addition there is Anatolia BA for the CHG-related geneflow that changed Anatolia, Greece, Southern Italy and the Middle East. Plus there's Natufian for the ancient Levant and Taforalt for ancient North Africa.

Target: ITA_Etruscan:RMPR473
66.0 TUR_Barcin_N
25.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
9.0 WHG

Target: ITA_Etruscan:RMPR474b
59.8 TUR_Barcin_N
32.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
8.0 WHG

Target: ITA_Etruscan_o:RMPR475b
65.4 TUR_Barcin_N
15.6 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
13.0 MAR_Taforalt
6.0 WHG

Thus, only the outlier of the three Etruscans does have North African admixture. However, North African doesn't equal Anatolian. Nor do the other Etruscans have any Anatolia BA related admixture.

Now take the Minoans from Lassithi for comparison:

Target: GRC_Minoan_Lassithi:I0070
57.8 TUR_Barcin_N
42.2 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA

Target: GRC_Minoan_Lassithi:I0071
59.6 TUR_Barcin_N
38.2 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA
2.2 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara

Target: GRC_Minoan_Lassithi:I0073
65.4 TUR_Barcin_N
34.6 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA

Target: GRC_Minoan_Lassithi:I0074
63.8 TUR_Barcin_N
36.2 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA

Target: GRC_Minoan_Lassithi:I9005
66.6 TUR_Barcin_N
33.4 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA

All of the Minoans have a clear, strong, unambiguous, undeniable signal of Anatolia BA admixture.
So why do the Minoans have it and the Etruscans don't? Can you explain this Archi? Anatolia BA admixture cannot be confused with anything else, it's eiter there, in the model, or there isn't any of it.

Already the Chalcolithic individual from Barcin has very strong Anatolia BA ancestry:

Target: TUR_Barcin_C:I1584
83.4 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA
9.4 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
7.2 TUR_Barcin_N

If the Etruscans were from Troy, which is near Barcin, why don't they have the Anatolian BA signal?

As for the Rutuli from Ardea:

Target: ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA:RMPR851
63.4 TUR_Barcin_N
25.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
11.6 WHG

Target: ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA_o:RMPR850
48.8 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA
23.4 TUR_Barcin_N
18.0 Yamnaya_RUS_Samara
9.8 Levant_Natufian

Yes, one of them, the one called outlier, has strong Anatolia BA related ancestry. But the Rutuli were not the Etruscans. And Anatolia BA related ancestry doesn't necessarily mean that person had roots in northwestern Anatolia.
The considerable Levantine admixture rather fits an origin in the northern Levant/southeastern Anatolia:

Target: ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA_o
61.0 TUR_Alalakh_MLBA
38.6 ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA
0.4 Levant_Sidon_MBA

I fear the stories of Aeneas and Tyrrhenus were just fairytales.

Anonymous said...

@Simon_W
You need a sanity check, your models prove nothing because they're overfitted.

your models are completely wrong, they don't prove anything because you're wrong in the model database. You just don't know how to model, you don't understand the concept of population. All these samples don't make up a population, so there's nothing to combine them, their combining is just a deception. The authors themselves analyze them separately because they are sane people, unlike you.

My models are made specifically from the same sources so that they can be compared. Models can only be compared from the same sources.

Your own numbers are just a deception, because you even hesitated to bring up distances. They don't show anything but some abstraction. My models show exactly the connection to Sea Peoples Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1, GRC_Mycenaean, MAR_Taforalt, and Bell_Beaker, which is their goal, to find those specific sources, specific advanced populations, and not certain abstractions.

Anonymous said...

^specific ancestral populations

@Simon_W

you didn't even notice, as usual, that two of the three I've mentioned are even marked as ITA_Etruscan_o:RMPR475b, ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA_o:RMPR850 outliers, because they have very different components, and the first one is different from Latini, because it has an admixture of the Sea Peoples (GRC_Mycenaean, Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1), in the face of other samples:

Target: ITA_Etruscan:RMPR473
Distance: 0.9143% / 0.00914338
31.8 Bell_Beaker_CZE
26.6 GRC_Mycenaean
17.6 ITA_Sardinia_EBA
13.8 ITA_Remedello_BA
3.4 ITA_Proto-Villanovan
2.2 Levant_Natufian
1.8 Bell_Beaker_ITA
1.6 GRC_Minoan_Lassithi
1.2 Levant_ISR_C
0.0 ITA_Villanovan
0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA_o
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_C
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_C_o
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_ECA
0.0 Levant_Canaanite_MBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_LBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_MLBA
0.0 Levant_JOR_EBA
0.0 Levant_PPNB
0.0 Levant_PPNC
0.0 MAR_Taforalt

Target: ITA_Ardea_Latini_IA:RMPR851 R1b1a2a1a-P311 H2a
Distance: 0.6947% / 0.00694730
37.6 Bell_Beaker_CZE
19.2 ITA_Proto-Villanovan
16.2 ITA_Sardinia_C
13.2 GRC_Minoan_Lassithi
11.2 ITA_Sardinia_EBA
1.6 GRC_Mycenaean
1.0 ITA_Remedello_BA
0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA
0.0 Bell_Beaker_ITA_o
0.0 ITA_Villanovan
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_C_o
0.0 ITA_Sardinia_ECA
0.0 Levant_Canaanite_MBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA2
0.0 Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_LBA
0.0 Levant_ISR_C
0.0 Levant_ISR_MLBA
0.0 Levant_JOR_EBA
0.0 Levant_Natufian
0.0 Levant_PPNB
0.0 Levant_PPNC
0.0 MAR_Taforalt

They just share a common substrate with Bell_Beakers, ITA_Proto-Villanovan, ITA_Sardinia, EEF, but Etruscans stand out with big GRC_Mycenaean.

The path of Aeneas is unequivocally confirmed by science and to deny it is already pseudoscience.

Gabriel said...

@Aram

So you think proto-Armenians came from the steppe, rather than from the Balkans?

Samuel Andrews said...

@Archi,

Myceneans aren't from Anatolia. Anatolian Bronze age had much higher levels of Caucasus ancestry than did Myceneans in Greece. This doesn't confirm Herdotus's story.

Etruscans can be modelled as Copper Age Italy, Bell Beaker, West Balkans BA. This Mycenean score could be result of Balkan ancestry. Low WHG Italian Neolithic farmers can just as well replace Myceneans.

Anonymous said...

Samuel Andrews said...
"Myceneans aren't from Anatolia. Anatolian Bronze age had much higher levels of Caucasus ancestry than did Myceneans in Greece. This doesn't confirm Herdotus's story."

Where did I write that Mycenaeans are from Anatolia? How do you read at all? Read more carefully - I wrote "the Aegean-Bosporus region of Etruscan arrival" June 25, 2020 at 6: 07 AM. Herodotus wrote about the Trojans, not about Anatolia. I wrote " Αννεία in Thrace. This is one starting point for the invasion of the Sea Peoples into Anatolia.".

Read more carefully and look at the maps that I have given.

"Etruscans can be modelled as Copper Age Italy, Bell Beaker, West Balkans BA. This Mycenean score could be result of Balkan ancestry. Low WHG Italian Neolithic farmers can just as well replace Myceneans."

can't, the Villanovians already have a Northern Balkan origin, and the southern one is just modeled by GRC_Mycenaean, Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1. Although haplogroups J2b2a, T1a1a have an undeniably Anatolian distribution to Europe, it is not that they arrived in Italy directly from Anatolia, but that they were brought to Italy by the Sea Peoples, including the Etruscans and Pelasgians, who came from the Balkans along the path of Aeneas.

Rob said...

In general, it has to be remembered that models with G25 are a lot more accomodating; and they are not always confirmed with qpADM.

Anonymous said...


Do not forget that on the path of Aeneas also arrived ŠRDN Sardans J2b2 to Sardinia immediately after the defeat in Egypt.

Naturally, it is not necessary to understand ancient legends quite literally, for example, "The Odyssey" wonderful way describes participation in the campaign against Egypt of JKWS Ἀχαιϝοί, DNJN Δαναοί. Odysseus sails to the North Africa, then to Palestine, and though formally the campaign lasts 10 years, he swims home already a deep old man, and in his house is already managed by completely other people.

DRDNY Δαρδάνιοι is actually a clan of Aeneas, and MŠWŠ Μόσχοι are those who from captured Troy went east to destroy the Hittite Empire and reached Van Lake.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

@Simon_W

Great post, I am reminded of this piece

https://imgur.com/a/EYiaqOV

from this paper:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/584714v1.supplementary-material

I bet the Iranian Neolithic signal they detect show up and push out the earlier Steppe signal is the same BA Anatolian signal in the Latini.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

Lazaridis 2017

The Minoans and Mycenaeans, sampled from different sites in Crete and mainland Greece, were homogeneous, supporting the genetic coherency of these two groups. Differences between them were modest,viewed against their broad overall similarity to each other and to the southwestern Anatolians, sharing in both the ‘local’ Anatolian Neolithic like farmer ancestry and the ‘eastern’ Caucasus-related admixture. Two key questions remain to be addressed by future studies. First, when did the common ‘eastern’ ancestry of both Minoans and Mycenaeans arrive in the Aegean? Second, is the ‘northern’ ancestry in Mycenaeans due to sporadic infiltration of Greece, or to a rapid migration as in Central Europe? Such a migration would support the idea that proto-Greek speakers formed the southern wing of a steppe intrusion of Indo-European speakers. Yet, the absence of ‘northern’ ancestry in the Bronze Age samples from Pisidia, where Indo-European languages were attested in antiquity, casts doubt on this genetic–linguistic association, with further sampling of ancient Anatolian speakers needed. Whatever the answer to these questions, the discovery of at least two migration events into the Aegean in addition to the first farming dispersal before the Bronze Age, and of additional population change since that time, supports the view that the Greeks did not emerge fully formed from the depths of prehistory, but were, indeed, a people ‘ever in the process of becoming’.

Skourtanioti 2020

Overall, our large-scale genomic analysis reveals two major genetic events. First, during the Late Neolithic, gene pools across
Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus mixed
, resulting in an
admixture cline. Second, during the Early Bronze Age, Northern
Levant populations experienced gene flow in a process that
likely involved yet to-be-sampled neighboring populations from
Mesopotamia.
Even though we could detect subtle and transient
gene flow in Arslantepe, we acknowledge that disentangling
questions related to local-scale population dynamics within the
homogeneous Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Anatolian gene
pool might be beyond the resolution of current analytical tools.
Furthermore, while our sampling expands in number and
geographic range on previous studies, the critical area of Mesopotamia remains unsampled; thus, although our picture of the
genetic landscape of the Near East is highly suggestive, it remains incomplete. Nevertheless, the cumulative genetic dataset
of Anatolia, the Southern Caucasus, and the Northern Levant between the Early and Late Bronze Age indicates that, following the
genetic events of the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, there
was no intrusion of genetically distinct populations in this region.
This conclusion is of great importance with respect to our understanding of the formation of complex Bronze Age socio-political
entities.




What more is there to say?

Davidski said...

@Romulus

What more is there to say?

Well, Lazaridis admits that what sets apart the Mycenaeans from the Minoans is significant steppe ancestry.

This is exactly what was predicted by many historical linguists and archeologists, who said that Indo-European languages arrived in Greece from the steppe.

So they were vindicated, and I can tell you they'll be vindicated some more when new samples from Mycenae show that the steppe ancestry did not tickle into the region, but arrived there suddenly from the north.

As for steppe ancestry in Copper and Bronze Age Anatolia, it actually arrived there from both the west and east. That's coming soon as well.

ambron said...

David, can we expect R1a in Mycenae? I ask because:

"Although the exact origins and migratory patterns of R1a and R1b are still under rigorous investigation, it seems that they are linked to Bronze Age migrations from the Western Eurasian Steppe and Eastern Europe into Southern (including Greece) and Western Europe".

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179474

Davidski said...

@ambron

Not as far as I know, but then again I know the Y-hg results for less than 10 Mycenaean males.

Copper Axe said...

@Davidski

I'd kill to have your insider info, I only know of one Mycenaean Y-hg result :(

ambron said...

David, thanks! So probably all the Greek R1a comes from the medieval Slavs.

Anonymous said...

@Copper Axe @Romulus

Many different tribes lived in Mycenaean Greece, but only Achaeans were Indo-European Greeks. Other previous Indo-Europeans there could have been Luvians, who connected the Minyan civilization with Anatolia (pottery). But the Mycenae tested by Lazarides were not Achaeans. For the Achaeans we now only know mt-haplogroups that show their Eastern European origin.

Bronze Mycenaen Greece Grave Circle B, Mycenae [Z59] 1500 BC U5a1/U5a1a
Bronze Mycenaean period / Late Minoan Greece Armenoi, Crete [Armenoi 503 / I9123] 1370-1340 BC F U5a1

Samuel Andrews said...

@Copper Axe,

R1b Z2103 so far is popular in Bronze age West Balkan samples (Croatia, Serbia, Hungary). Maybe, that is the IE Y DNA marker for Greece. Maybe not.

On related note, I2a1b-Din erased most of pre-Slavic Y DNA of West Balkans. Possibly, ancient Illyrians will have decent frequency of R1b Z2103, therefore IE language there can be linked to Western Yamnaya.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Archi,

Etruscan samples are low in CHG ancestry. So low, they don't demand a Near East ancestor in G25 runs. Which means they can be modeled with 0% CHG. All we know for sure is they pull away from Latins towards Southeast Europe which is why Myceneans help their score. I concede you could be right this is from Aegean islanders, but it isn't definitive.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Archi,

Yes the J2b2a is interesting. Yeah, it could be Anatolia Bronze age lineage.

Anonymous said...

@Samuel Andrews "CHG "

The presence of GRC_Mycenaean, Levant_ISR_Ashkelon_IA1 in Etruscans is a fact. You cannot know the rest, because you do not have any samples from Western Anatolia and Bulgaria from the Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. That's why no one knows what happened to CHG there. The reasoning in terms of CHG is meaningless for such late samples, it gives nothing. Naturally, this component is present in all ancestral components, Bell_Beaker_, ITA_-Villanovan, GRC_.

Davidski said...

@ambron

So probably all the Greek R1a comes from the medieval Slavs.

I never said that and I seriously doubt it.

Copper Axe said...

The Luwian toponyms are interesting but there isn't much Luwian influence on the Greek languages, which to me suggests that the Luwians were only one of the mant pre-Greeks. Are there any Anatolian like toponyms around the western black sea shore or is it limited to the Peleponnese, particularly around the Agaean sea?

It could be that the migration wave which brought Minoans to Crete (where there are Anatolian toponyms as well) were also brought Luwians to the Peleponnese. Or alternatively, an early migration of Anatolians to Anatolia is why there was a Luwian presence in Greece.

epoch said...

D-stats from the sup info:

Armenian, Armenia_ChL; Minoan_Lasithi, Mbuti -0.0062 -3.275 47591 48186
Armenian, Armenia_ChL; Minoan_Odigitria, Mbuti -0.0086 -3.064 12924 13149
Armenian, Armenia_ChL; Mycenaean, Mbuti -0.0091 -3.865 19093 19442

Isn't that the opposite from what they state? Or am I missing something?

"To further investigate this pattern, we used a D statistics in the form D(Modern_Armenians, Ancient_Armenian_Highland; X_Balkan, Mbuti) to formally test whether modern Armenians received any genetic input from ancient and modern samples from the Balkans (Table 1, Supplementary Table 1). To account for attraction in ancient samples due to damage, we performed our analysis with transversions only. We did not observe any significantly positive values for the D statistic, implying that there is no Balkan-related ancestry in modern Armenians."

ambron said...

David, I'm teasing you. I saw in your reply that you doubt. Me too...

Anonymous said...

@epoch

Their analysis is very limited. Modern Armenia is the periphery of Greater Armenia, the core of which was Van Lake, not modern Armenians. It is the natives of Turkey who are the followers of the ancient Armenians (such as Armenian_Hemsheni), and those who live in modern Armenia only adopted the language, although in ancient times there were other Armenians (1400-1100 BCE Armenia_LchashenMetsamor.SG).

Mbuti.DG Germany_CordedWare.SG Armenian.WGA Armenian_Hemsheni 0.005700708 2.07759 Mbuti.DG Germany_CordedWare.SG Armenian Armenian_Hemsheni 0.004905741 2.62208
Mbuti.DG Germany_CordedWare.SG Armenian.WGA Armenian 0.000915986 0.35152 0.002606
Mbuti.DG Germany_CordedWare.SG Armenia_LchashenMetsamor.SG Armenian_Hemsheni -0.005768077 -1.03979
Mbuti.DG Germany_CordedWare.SG Armenia_LchashenMetsamor.SG Armenian -0.009623603 -1.75100 0
Mbuti.DG Germany_CordedWare.SG Armenia_LchashenMetsamor.SG Armenian.WGA -0.010751070 -1.83177

In fact, we need samples of ancient Armenians (Mushki) of the Iron Age from Van Lake, the Armenian homeland.

Aram said...

epoch

Yes it is the opposite of what they are saying. But there is much easier explanation of what they are saying.

Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.2783% / 0.01278271
54.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
25.4 ARM_LBA
20.4 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
0.0 BGR_IA
0.0 BGR_MLBA

So a proximate source of more western shifted population.Like Arslantepe where a lot of Y dna where found that are typical to modern Armenians. Unlike those Balkanians sample we have.

Also notice that they ignored completly even higher Z scores from Steppe.

Samuel Andrews said...

I've studied Middle East off and on using G25 PCA.

My conclusions on Arenians were......

Anatolia_Alalakh_MLBA and Kura-Araxes mix.

Alalakh isn't normal Anatolian Bronze age. Its from East Anatolia and has lots of Levant ancestry.

So, overall, I'd say Armenians's Eneolithic ancestors are from East Anatolia, North Levant, South Caucasus.

Samuel Andrews said...

Indigenous Northeast Turkey nearby Armenia lack Levant ancestry. As do, Armenians in Northeast Turkey.

The Levant acestry in Armenians, seems to be from Assyrian-like people from Northwest Iraq/Northeast Levant.

So, Armenians aren't totally a product of ancient events in South Caucasus documented by ancient DNA. They also have significant "southern" ancestry from near Syria.

Aram said...

Archi

Just two period samples are needed. One from LBA, the other from EIA. And not from Van which is Urartu but further west.

Anyway Balkanian theory is dead. Because we already know what type of people were living in western most part of historic Armenia.
But it seems some will struggle for some time to keep it as a walking dead. And there are others who are ready to bury it. And time will come we will hear them also.

As for Etruscans. The upcoming paper about Etruscans will strongly disapoint You. Kolgeh already posted the PCA.

Samuel Andrews said...

The models here show the same thing. Armenians intermediate between Southeast Turkey (with lots of Levant ancestry) and South Caucasus.

Score mostly Bronze age Southeast Turkey, which might mean they are mainly from there, then moved to Armenia recently.

Because, modern Armenians can't be modelled as mostly derived from Eneolithic/Bronze Armenians. They have huge amount of new ancestry from around Southeast Turkey.

Samuel Andrews said...

@Aram, Why do you think Armenia comes from caucasus route intsead of Balkan route?

If, so when do you think proto-Armenia arrived in the Middle East via Caucasus?

One thing, which needs explanation, is why is Yamnaya R1b Z2103 is common in the Middle East. Davidski links it to nonIE MItanni. But, maybe Armenian is single IE language left from this wave.

I side with Balkan route for Armenians. But........

Aram said...

Samuel

In Armenian Highlands every hundred miles matter. We don't have samples from Van and Erzurum which are in Eastern most Turkey. Which are the true Armenia. When those samples will be available nothing will be left of that Arslantepe. Maybe some 10% or less.
I always knew that and those Arslantepe guys are even more western than I imagined. Which is good.


Aram said...

What is non IE Mitanni? Hurrians?
Alalalkh MLBA was full of Hurrians. Do You see any R1b or steppe there?

Aram said...

Anyway there will be some R1b in Urartu. And maybe few in North Iraq Hurrians but this is of little importance.

A said...

@Davidski

"new samples from Mycenae show that the steppe ancestry did not tickle into the region, but arrived there suddenly from the north."

Any suggestion as to when it arrived?

Davidski said...

I don't know, but it couldn't have been too far back before the Mycenaeans formed.

Anonymous said...

@Aram
"Anyway Balkanian theory is dead."

Nothing is dead but one thing that modern Armenians from Armenia are Indo-Europeans for anything else, except the Indo-European language adopted from the Armenian elite of Greate Armenian. A huge layer of Hurritisms and Armenian anthropological type, which appeared very late as a result of thousands of years of biological self-isolation, has been asserting this for a long time.

"And not from Van which is Urartu but further west."

These are the descendants of the true Indo-European Armenians (who live to the west).

R1a-M420>M459>M198>M417>Z645>Z283>Z282>Y17491>YP4858>YP5820* Setrak Avdoyan (né Yeranossian)
R1a-M420>M459>M198>M417>Z645>Z283>Z282>Y17491>YP4858>YP5820-A-x Kurmanj Dersimían, Pílvenkan tríbe. Pértage
R1a-M420>M459>M198>M417>Z645>Z283>Z282>Y17491>YP4858>FGC64133>FGC64132* Çerkes Alhan, 1702 Malatya Turkey
R1a-M420>M459>M198>M417>Z645>Z283>Z282>Y17491>YP4858-x Unclustered Oskian Kaspar, Sepastia, Turkey

According to historians' calculations, Mushki was only 3% of the population of Urartu.

Anonymous said...

It can be said about modern Armenians that they had the Hungarian scenario of elite domination complicated by the loss of the initial homeland.

Aram said...

Vladimir

Y DNA is somewhat long subject. The only thing that I want to emphasize is that E-M84 expanded with KAC. So it's apparition in elite hurrian burial is probably not a random event.

On the other side it is now clear that Kura Araxes was a multiethnic place so that theory of Hurrians can get some changes or will not get. I would like to see Zagros and Levant KAC to have a definitive opinion.

grm said...

@Archi

"Their analysis is very limited. Modern Armenia is the periphery of Greater Armenia, the core of which was Van Lake, not modern Armenians. It is the natives of Turkey who are the followers of the ancient Armenians (such as Armenian_Hemsheni), and those who live in modern Armenia only adopted the language, although in ancient times there were other Armenians (1400-1100 BCE Armenia_LchashenMetsamor.SG)."

This is irrelevant. Most modern Armenians, both in Armenia and outside of it, are descended from those populations from Greater Armenia, at least partially, if not fully. And it was fairly recent--between 1 and 3 generations ago. The bulk of these recent ancestor populations came from Ottoman Armenia (i.e. Turkey). In other words, there was a significant influx of Armenians from Turkey to Armenia in the 20th century.

As far as ancient inhabitants of modern Armenia go, we don't know what they spoke. Lchashen-Metsamor, for instance, very well could have been descended from Proto-Armenians and been speakers of Proto-Armenian too. We don't have ancient samples from Turkey to compare them to.

gamerz_J said...

@Davidski

In one earlier thread you said that you expect future Mycenaean samples to sometimes be more Steppe-shifted than the ones we have so far, do you still think so? (genuinely asking)

As I've said before here, it is hard to believe that all of Greek's R1a and R1b arrived in Medieval periods.

@Samuel Andrews or @anyone else who knows

Is it true that Myceneans had Levant_N admixture? Someone told me that this might the case and they show it in some G25 runs apparently.

Also, it's hard to imagine Armenians being isolated for 6000 years or so, wondering why papers suggest so.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

What is the accuracy for "aDNA rumors" so far? 1%? I have been around too long to take them seriously anymore, sorry. It's easy to tell who here is an idiot by who buys it.

Davidski said...

These aren't rumors, and you'll have to accept them when they're published this year.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

If your source is an anthrogenicia comment it constitutes a rumour

Davidski said...

I have my own sources.

AWood said...

@Romulus

How so? He was spot on with the R1b in Corded Ware.

Samuel Andrews said...

Mycenaeans don't have Levant ancestry. They have Bronze age Anatolian ancestry which includes only minor Levant Neolithic ancestry.

The paper claiming 6,000 years continum in Armenia was based on mtdna. The claim is totally wrong.

Armenians in G25 largely come from South Caucasus but clearly have as a lot recent ancestry from southeast turkey. Which makes them different from ancient Armenia genomes.

LGK said...

Mycenaean kingdoms were probably the result of quick chariot-enabled takeovers of the Middle Helladic ("Minyan") cultures by limited clans from the steppe via the Balkans. Starting c.1800BC, by 1675BC they are defacto rulers of the mainland, in the 1400s they take over Minoan Crete, and next century begin to expand their power into the Aegean and western Anatolia (Ahhiyawa).

All things considered we would expect their males to be R1a or R1b, possibly more likely the former according to linguistics and material culture. But the Mycenaean culture, by the time we have written evidence of Greek (1450BC) at the very latest, is not a transplant of steppe culture, it is a unique hybrid of this and the native Middle Helladic and Minoan on Crete).

The nobility, warriors, craftsmen of these cultures were integrated into the new Greek-speaking system, unsurprisingly, we therefore find J2, G2 males in otherwise "Mycenaean" contexts. This does not mean that Proto-Greeks came from Anatolia or the Levant, only that such people were already in Greece and became part of the new Greek-speaking system. Rest of the native populace was simply just "converted" to Greek speech and traditions under new order, with some holdouts.

The J2 in Greece is fascinating in its own right - possibly this reflects the "CHG-rich" Bronze Age migration from northwestern Anatolia, also to Crete and the Aegean islands. It is tied to not the emergence but the flourishing of the Middle Helladic, Minoan civilizations - advanced bronzeworking, mastery of maritime technology, organized and urbanized settlements.

If I had to go further, I would say the J2, CHG people are the basis for "Pelasgians", the link between pre-Greek mainland Greece and western Anatolia. As Archi says, only the Achaeans were direct descendants of Proto-Greeks. The "Danaans" who founded Mycenae slightly earlier were a sub-group of Pelasgians. That Homer's Mycenaeans are referred to as both Achaean and Danaan simply reflects the fact that Mycenaean culture, especially in the Peloponnese, was a hybrid of the two.

It would seem that Luwian is the most plausible language group for these people, but it is Indo-European, and so requires that Anatolian languages be spread to the west coast and beyond by people no longer containing direct steppe ancestry. Converts from further east so to speak. Who knows?

Rob said...

Minyan ware is a shadowy category. There hasn’t been a universal agreement to its relevance or ‘origin’
What’s the evidence for Luwians in Greece? Is it the -nth- & -ss- words ?

LGK said...

@Rob

Minyan isn't a great category. Nor is Pelasgian, which is very confused in histories spanning centuries, certainly not a definable material culture. "Pelasgian" usually refers to pre-Greeks of Attica, Euboea, Thessaly, Peloponnese, these being differentiated from other pre-Greeks like the Leleges, but eventually the term expanded to mean pre-Greeks collectively (which is how I use it).

Yes, that's the evidence for the mainland, toponyms. But there is also some evidence from Classical history that strongly suggests pre-Greek groups in the Aegean isles were direct ancestors of known historical Luwian-speaking groups. For example the Carians, who occpuied the Cyclades before Minoan expansion.

Onur Dincer said...

Here are the results of the population averages of the ancient genomes from what is now Armenia and the modern Armenian average based on my Northern Mediterranean-focused Global 25-based Vahaduo analysis:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yc_ibPzJMSIPWcbWEMBleK24dVIa3NJf/view?usp=sharing

Following Davidski, I used the AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LN ancient genomes to represent the Late Neolithic of Armenia. The Kura-Araxes_RUS_Velikent ancient genomes are from Dagestan rather than Armenia, so their high steppe compared to the Kura-Araxes ancient genomes from Armenia should not be so surprising.

What is striking is the significant increases and decreases in the steppe ancestry in the transitions to the various periods: the transitions to the Chalcolithic and MLBA for the increases and the transitions to the EBA (Kura-Araxes) and post-MLBA (Iron Age?) for the decreases. Despite their small steppe ancestry, modern Armenians are not genetically so similar to the Kura-Araxes because of the higher CHG and lower Levant Neolithic ancestries in the Kura-Araxes. Modern Armenians in fact genetically seem like a little steppe-admixed version of the Late Neolithic population of the Caucasus lowlands, but such a simple interpretation would require us to ignore the comparatively genetically distant Chalcolithic and Bronze Age populations of what is now Armenia. So yes, confirming what Samuel says, what is now Armenia experienced significant genetic changes from the Neolithic times until the Iron Age times at the earliest. I think the modern Armenian gene pool formed essentially in what is now eastern Turkey rather than what is now Armenia, this interpretation is strongly backed by history too. Hopefully, with increasing ancient genomes from eastern Turkey, the question of Armenian ethnogenesis will be resolved.

Anonymous said...

grm said...
"This is irrelevant."

No. That defines everything. Linguistics knows it's not. The Armenian language has more than 60 dialects divided into 12 dialect groups almost not mutually intelligible, the main thing is that they are not mixed for 2000 years already, already in the times of Grabar the Armenian language had several very different dialects. Armenians of Armenia who are of Turkish origin are those who lived in the nearest kilometers from the Turkish border, like Ararat Mount. Armenians are the nation with the strongest isolation between diasporas.

Davidski said...

@All

Does anyone have a clue why these Armenian scientists are behaving so strangely in regards to this issue?

Is it some sort of complex derived from the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and an attempt to make Armenians indigenous to the Armenian Highland?

Anonymous said...

@Davidski

Hurrites are indigenous people of the Armenian Highland, there is no doubt about it. Modern Armenians come from Hurrites, there is no doubt about it. The Armenian language has a huge number of Hurrian words. Armenians always try to prove that they are autochthonous, at the same time they deny the migration to the region, deny that Muski brought the Armenian language. This stumbles upon contradictions, as they were Hurrians who used to speak Hurrian could not get the Indo-European Armenian language by any other means than from outside. The hypothesis of the Indo-Europeans exodus from the Armenian Plateau is absolutely impossible, there were no far migrations from this plateau, as we see from genetics, anthropology and archaeology. It has been proved that the Armenian language is a migratory language that came to this region, it could not happen there. As far as I know, none of the serious historians denied that the Armenian language was spread as a result of the elite domination.

Samuel Andrews said...

Armenian_Hemsheni who Davidski added to G25 PCA a few months ago, is South Caucasus+East Anatolia. So more indigenous to area around Armenia. They live in Northeast corner of Turkey. They lack the Levant admix in "Armenians." Don't know if they are the real Armenians.

Aram said...

FrankN

They are two samples from Azerbaijan LN

One is from Mentesh tepe in NW Azerbaijan. It is a typical Shulaveri site.
While the other is Polutepe in SE Azerbaijan. It is called Mughan Neolithic.
The LC is Leyla tepe and it has y fna G1.

Thanks for the link about Areni. Makes sense.

Aram said...

Archi

If R1a is found in South Caucasus MLBA before 1200bc would You accept that they are proto Armenians. If You are so sure about that R1a elite dominance.

Agree?

As for Hurrians. Alas as usual You have obsolete theories. Greppin dismissed completly the massive presence of HU words in Armenian. More the morphology of Armenian is typically IE. No ergativeness, no agglutinative.
Zimansky thinks urarteans were minority in Urartu. It was just elite language which died with their downfall.

Aram said...

Think about it. The most popular Urartean king name is Rusa. This name starts with R which contradicts Hurrian language. Poor Urarteans were not able to correctly prononce that name and in many instances Assyrian sources use the form Ursa to denote that name. Because their intelligence was reoprting a distorted name.
Not surprisingly Zimansky and many others believe it is a IE name.

Onur Dincer said...

@Samuel

Armenian_Hemsheni who Davidski added to G25 PCA a few months ago, is South Caucasus+East Anatolia. So more indigenous to area around Armenia. They live in Northeast corner of Turkey. They lack the Levant admix in "Armenians." Don't know if they are the real Armenians.

The Hamshen Armenians are certainly genetically not like the ancient Armenians as Hamshen is not even a part of historical Armenia, it is a region that was Armenianized only during the Middle Ages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemshin_peoples#History

Indeed, autosomal results of the Hamshen Armenians indicate that they largely have indigenous eastern Pontian origins rather than ancient Armenian origins (note that the Laz samples are actually from NE Turkey rather than Georgia, which is normal given that the Laz are concentrated in NE Turkey):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qnlPO2SGC9woEa1NuQChlWNzK0SGw6w7/view?usp=sharing

https://easternblackseadna.blogspot.com/2018/01/autosomal-comparison-of-eastern-black.html

https://nezihseven.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/dna/

I have seen Armenian autosomal results from the northern parts of historical Armenia, they are fairly close to the Armenian academic average. As you move south in historical Armenia, the Armenians become more similar to the Assyrian academic average.

The Hamshen Armenian Y-DNA haplogroup distribution is also unlike those of the other Armenian groups:

https://easternblackseadna.blogspot.com/2017/12/hemshin-y-dna-haplogroups.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/ejhg2011192

The Hamshen Armenians are too high in G1 and also rather high in the eastern Pontian L-PH8. Their Y-DNA distribution shows strong effects of both indigenous eastern Pontian ancestry and genetic drift.

Aram said...

Hamshen G1 is Medieval founder effect. 1200 year old.
https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-GG266/

I am pretty sure it was introduced by Hamshenians in Middle Age. It is not native to that region. Maybe Amatuni was G1. Their leadership.

L1b is native. At last since LBA/IA.

Onur Dincer said...

@Aram

Hamshen G1 is Medieval founder effect. 1200 year old.
https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-GG266/

I am pretty sure it was introduced by Hamshenians in Middle Age. It is not native to that region. Maybe Amatuni was G1. Their leadership.

L1b is native. At last since LBA/IA.


Did not say that the Hamshen G1 is native, its high percentage is surely due to genetic drift as no other population in anywhere else in West Asia or the Caucasus has so high G1 percentage. But their high L-PH8 percentage should be due to eastern Pontian thus native ancestry.

Aram said...

Onur

Yes it seems Hamshenians assimilated some locals. Who themselves also assimilated other locales before that.

What You think about Iron Age L1b Pontic cluster. With what tribe or ethnicity or historic event You link it?

CrM said...

I've noticed that aside from a Steppe influx into Armenia MBA-LBA, there was also a Levantine influx, they're somewhat similar to Maykop_late in that regard. KAC barely any additional Levant_N that is already included in Tepecik, same applies to Chalcolithic Armenia but not to the new Azeri samples.

Armenians are also pretty similar to Dagestanis autosomally, both have KAC as their base source of ancestry, difference is Armenians are more South shifted, while Dags are shifted to the Steppe.

https://imgur.com/a/bynVg4G

Onur Dincer said...

@Aram

What You think about Iron Age L1b Pontic cluster. With what tribe or ethnicity or historic event You link it?

Here we are actually talking about the L-PH438 sub-haplogroup of L-PH8 rather than L-PH8 as a whole. L-PH438 is about 3000 years old and almost exclusively found in the populations of eastern Pontus (the L-PH438 samples shown from Erzurum and Kars on YFull are actually Erzurum and Kars Greeks with late Ottoman-era eastern Pontian Greek immigrant origins). We do not know what languages were spoken in eastern Pontus 3000 years ago. We know that it had not been colonized and assimilated by the Greeks yet. Probably some unknown ancient non-IE language or languages were spoken there during those times given the very low steppe percentages among eastern Pontians today.

Onur Dincer said...

@Davidski

Does anyone have a clue why these Armenian scientists are behaving so strangely in regards to this issue?

Is it some sort of complex derived from the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and an attempt to make Armenians indigenous to the Armenian Highland?


Well, if they are doing that for that reason, they are hurrying as we currently lack ancient genomes from most of the Armenian Highlands, from the parts in what is today eastern Turkey.

Leron said...

Armenians are naturally opposed to Steppe theory. They actually believe the origin of IE is in the posited homeland in Armenia. Yet they also want to claim some biblical connections white downplaying the actual autochthonous people and culture of the region.

CHG Chad said...

@Onur Dincer


Onur the languange of eastern Pontus was probably a Kartvelian dialect similar to Georgian and Laz.Eastern Pontus and Northeast Anatolia in general was always Colchian's culture region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchian_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchis


Trabzon,Artivn,Rize,Gumushane are all hellenized/turkificized native colchians.So the L1b Pontic cluster it is probably related with a west asian migration into the region of Eastern Pontus.As for Armenian Hemseni we are talking probably for Armenicized native Laz/Pontians.Their results are pretty much the same with Trabzon and Laz individuals on G25.To mention also something about Armenians i will agree with other user's that Armenians have mixed with populations over the centuries like Assyrians,Jews,Crypto-Syrians etc.They got a mesopotamian-levantine drift both on autosomal and when it comes to yDNA.

Anonymous said...

@Aram "Alas as usual You have obsolete theories. Greppin dismissed completly the massive presence of HU words in Armenian.
Zimansky thinks urarteans were minority in Urartu. It was just elite language which died with their downfall."

Alas as usual You just have marginal views. I have a mainstream proven by classical science, but you broadcast some unknown outcasts unknown to science who carry all sorts of nonsense.
My opinion is the opinion of the entire academic most modern science, but you are broadcasting categorical freaking. none of the people you mentioned proved anything, it's just their personal anti-scientific fantasies.

EastPole said...

@Davidski
“Does anyone have a clue why these Armenian scientists are behaving so strangely in regards to this issue?”

I suspect many Armenians like Gamkrelidze-Ivanov's theory.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/overview/indoeuropean/gamkrelidzeivanov.gif

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/10/on-gamkrelidze-ivanovs-dubious-map.html

They are not different from many Indian or German/American scientists who also have their theories.

CHG Chad said...

@Aram

You should not also forget the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Kingdom_of_Cilicia

Armenians there have come in contact with Levantine and Southeast Anatolians.People with a significant Levantine input and frenquent on J1 lineages(witch can be found among Armenians today).So,the Armenian ethnogenesis dosn't ends just in Urartu or in IA.Armenian's genetics like the majority of west asians are complex A.F because of the geographical position.

Anonymous said...

@Aram
"If R1a is found in South Caucasus MLBA before 1200bc would You accept that they are proto Armenians."
"As for Etruscans. The upcoming paper about Etruscans will strongly disapoint You. Kolgeh already posted the PCA."

You will be very disappointed with the development of modern science, as it completely refutes you. In spite of the fact that there were only three Etruscans, four(!) Etruscans turned out to be exactly the ones who came with the autosomes from the Sea Peoples/Aegean-Bosporus region and with haplogroups from the same region J2b2a and T1a1a, which were not in Italy until the Iron Age.
umor spreading will not help.

--
About L1a in Armemia
Copper Armenia Areni-1 (Bird's Eye Cave) [I1407/ARE 12] 4350-3700 BCE M L1a L863+, L878+, M61+ (L), L656+, L1304+ (L1), P329+, M27+, M76+ (L1a). No calls were made for SNPs downstream of L1a
Copper Armenia Areni-1 (Bird's Eye Cave) [I1634/ARE 1/44] 4330-4060 calBCE (5366±31 BP, OxA-19331) M L1a L863+, L878+, M61+ (L), L656+, M22+, L1304+ (L1), P329+, M27+, M76+ (L1a). No calls were made for SNPs downstream of L1a
Copper Armenia Areni-1 (Bird's Eye Cave) [I1632/ARE 1/46] 4230-4000 calBCE (5285±29 BP, OxA-18599) M L1a L878+, M185+, M11+, M61+, L855+ (L), L656+ (L1), P329+, M27+ (L1a)

A said...

@ Davidski

"Does anyone have a clue why these Armenian scientists are behaving so strangely in regards to this issue?"


Any idea why the Agranat-Tamir 2020 paper (Genomic history of the Bronze Age Levant), which David Reich was involved in, completely failed to mention the presence of steppe ancestry in Armenia_MLBA and in the Megiddo outliers?

Onur Dincer said...

@Leron

Armenians are naturally opposed to Steppe theory. They actually believe the origin of IE is in the posited homeland in Armenia. Yet they also want to claim some biblical connections white downplaying the actual autochthonous people and culture of the region.

Proto-Armenian should be from the steppe even based on the recently promoted Armenian Highlands theory of IE origins as are all non-Anatolian IE languages. Thus it is clear that the modern Armenians are genetically largely descended from the non-IE natives of their historical regions. What is not yet clear is for how long the Armenians have been living in historical Armenia (since the Iron Age times or since the Bronze Age times?) and through which route the Armenian language arrived in historical Armenia (the Balkans or the Caucasus?).

Onur Dincer said...

@Johnny Ola

Onur the languange of eastern Pontus was probably a Kartvelian dialect similar to Georgian and Laz.Eastern Pontus and Northeast Anatolia in general was always Colchian's culture region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchian_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchis


Trabzon,Artivn,Rize,Gumushane are all hellenized/turkificized native colchians.


The pre-Greek language(s) of Eastern Pontus could be Karvelian or not, we just do not know. What is clear is that the Laz came to Eastern Pontus much later than Greeks did as indicated both by history and genetics.

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

https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive

https://easternblackseadna.blogspot.com/2018/01/autosomal-comparison-of-eastern-black.html

https://nezihseven.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/dna/

As you see, the Laz genetically lean much more towards the Georgians than the Eastern Pontian Greeks and Turks and the Hamshenis do.

Anonymous said...

@Onur Dincer "What is not yet clear is for how long the Armenians have been living in historical Armenia (since the Iron Age times or since the Bronze Age times?) and through which route the Armenian language arrived in historical Armenia (the Balkans or the Caucasus?)."

We should also take into account that before the spread of Armenians to the south and west there were two other peoples of Hettito-Luwians and Mitanni.

Onur Dincer said...

@Archi

We should also take into account that before the spread of Armenians to the south and west there were two other peoples of Hettito-Luwians and Mitanni.

Not sure if the Mitanni were in West Asia before the Armenians. The Hayasa-Azzi could be Armenian or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayasa-Azzi

Vladimir said...

Johnny OlaJune 27, 2020 at 6:06 AM
@Onur Dincer


Onur the languange of eastern Pontus was probably a Kartvelian dialect similar to Georgian and Laz.Eastern Pontus and Northeast Anatolia in general was always Colchian's culture region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchian_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchis

Here is an interesting hypothesis. NN somewhat subjective view, but curious.
« HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ASPECTS OF HATTIAN AND KASKA ETHNONYMS
Abstract. An attempt is made to overcome uncertainty concerning the historical and cultural aspects of Hattian and Kaska ethnonyms. In our understanding, of two semantically unequivalent names of Hattian-Abkhaz-Circassian tribes, the first - Hattian - functioned, mainly, as the self-name (endoethnonym), as a way of self-identification of the Caucasian Anatolian community connected by bonds of ethnic relationship. The second - Kaska /Kashka/Kaskeans - performed functions
of an exoethnonym - the term, which representatives of other, in the first place, neighboring people referred to the Maikop Anatolian tribes. It emerged and was actively used mainly among Indo-Europeans with which the Hattians were in continuous contact. Connection is established of the Caucasian branch of the Maikop Anatolian tribes with emergence of a toponym the Caucasus and myths about an ethnarkh by the name of Caucasus, with distribution in the North Caucasus of the Kaskean (Circassian) population. It is emphasized that the ethnonym Kaska/Kashka in all its further modifications - Kas / Kasa / Kavkasi / Kashkon / Kashak / Jarkas / Circassian appeared to be, owing to certain, mainly, external reasons, far more durable, than the term Hattians.» . B.Kh. Bgazhnokov

rozenblatt said...

@Davidski Regarding Armenian scientists. I recently found a video of a lecture given by one of the authors of this preprint, Levon Yepiskoposyan, in November 2019, in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blPxfmDao6U&feature=emb_title

Factual wise it has nothing new, but it may give an idea about how Armenian scientitsts(or at least Yepiskoposyan) think about all these things. My impression is that Yepiskoposyan firmly believes that Armenians were isolated in Armenian highlands for last 4000 years. Some things I noyiced in his presentation:

13:40 Here he talks about ancient DNA studied in Turkey and the way he speaks about it is somewhat iffy.
31:40 Here he uses Uyghurs as a typical Turkic population to estimate genetic input of Turkic populations into Armenians. That's a weird choice, since Uyghurs have tons of pre-Turkic genetic ancestry. Also, on that paper he wrote Atrpatakan instead of Azerbaijan.
42:10 Wrong map, I mean this map would make sense in 2010, but not in 2019, Also afterwards he talks about ancient DNA, but nothing new.

CHG Chad said...

@Onur Dincer

That's true but all of them are heavily CHG admixed thought Laz are indeed between Trabzon and Georgians.Colchians in eastern Pontus have been mixed with native anatolian folks(Hattians,Kaskians and later Hittites).Their Anatolian N shift it is not just because of the Greek Colonization but more specific because of their geographical position to Anatolia making them more Anatolian N influenced.To model northeast anatolians(Pontians,Hemsheni,Laz) you will need a LC/EBA/LBA anatolian refrence otherwise the distance/fit will get wrecked.Armenians are a similar situation.You will need an Anatolian refrence and ofc a transcaucasian like K.A or Maykop(thought K.A fits better).With a few words eastern and northeastern anatolia witch is the basis of the ethnogenesis for Armenians and Colchians-Georgians are mostly a combination of BA anatolia and K.A/Maykop.The rest admixed coming in a second fate.

CHG Chad said...

@ Vladimir


Good post!It is well known that Hattic,Hurrian and Kaskians were probably before Hittites and other anatolian IE folks.I believe that these groups come indeed from caucasus or somewhere close to modern Georgia.They invade Anatolia and mixed with Barcin/Tepecik_Ciftlik_N like farmers forming the Hattians,Kaskians,Hurrians etc.I would categorize them as the caucasian elite upon native anatolian farmers.Thus how Copper Age,EBA,MBA,LBA Anatolia form.Τhought the K.A culture played also their role influenced Anatolians during the periods.Even Myceneans and Minoans have a K.A/BA Anatolia input.


Matt said...

@epoch: re; your comment "Isn't that" (significantly negative stats of form D(Armenian,Armenia_CHL;Ancient_Greek,Mbuti) "the opposite from what they state?" (D statistics in the form D(Modern_Armenians, Ancient_Armenian_Highland; X_Balkan, Mbuti) show no significantly positive values for the D statistic, implying that there is no Balkan-related ancestry in modern Armenian.)

No, it's not the opposite. Signficantly positive stats would indicate modern day Armenian shifted *towards* ancient Greek (assuming not caused by any attraction towards Mbuti) but negative stats indicate that the ancient CHL population is more shifted to Ancient Greek than modern Armenians.

However! I'm not sure this is a good test though, as the stats still seem heavily confounded by ancient-ancient attraction and modern-modern attraction.

It's not really clear to me either what was the case with the stats in the supplement, whether they were limited to transversions or what.

There is probably some modern:modern attraction, e.g. https://imgur.com/a/koY5pz3, so I guess only the shifts of ancient populations relative to each other is relevant.

Vladimir said...

@Johnny Ola

Given that the Anatolian farmers who came to Europe are G2a2b, and the Abkhazians, Adygs, and Georgians are now G2a2a, they could just live nearby in the North-East of Anatolia.

Targamos the Based, son of Kavkasos son of CHG son of said...

@Vladimir
You have it confused. Georgians have about equal G2a1 and G2a2, and most of the G2a2 is G2a2b not G2a2a. G2a1 is however significantly less frequent among Adygs. Also they did find a G2a1 in LN France I think, so this does go well with the idea that G2a1 originated in North-East Anatolia.

Anonymous said...

@Onur Dincer

"Not sure if the Mitanni were in West Asia before the Armenians."

Of course, Mitanni was before Armenians, there are no two opinions. Mitanni was about 1600-1500BC.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

Cooper Axe;

"The primordial deity of the Baltic pagan religions was a Sky father named Dievas or Dievs, coming from *Deiwos (celestial) which is derived from *Dyeus."


Dyaus Pitar (Vedic), Zeus Pater (Greek), Jupiter (Roman), Dei Patrous (Illyrian), Dievs (Baltic).
Uṣas (Vedic), Eos (Greek), Aurora (Roman), Aushrine (Baltic).
Varuṇa (Vedic), Odinn/Wodan (Germanic), Ouranous (Greek), Velinas (Baltic).
Asura (Vedic), Aesir (Germanic), Ahura (Avestan).
Marut (Vedic), Ares (Greek), Mars (Roman).
Parjanya (Vedic), Perkunas (Baltic), Perunu (Slavic), Fjorgyn (Germanic).
Traitana (Vedic), Thraetaona (Avestan), Triton (Greek).
Aryaman (Vedic), Airyaman (Avestan), Ariomanus/Eremon (Celtic).
Saramā/Sārameya (Vedic), Hermes (Greek).
Pūṣan, Paṇi (Vedic), Pan (Greek), Vanir (Germanic).
Rudra (Vedic), Ruglu (Slavic).
Danu (Vedic), Danu (Irish).
Indra (Vedic), Indra (Avestan), Inara (Hittite).
Śarvara (Vedic), Kerberos (Greek).
Śrī (Vedic), Ceres (Greek), Freyr/Freya (Germanic).
Bhaga (Vedic), Baga (Avestan), Bog (Slavic).
Apām Napāt (Vedic), Apām Napāt (Avestan), Neptunus (Roman), Nechtain (Celtic).
Ṛbhu (Vedic), Elbe (Germanic).
Yama (Vedic), Yima (Avestan), Ymir (Germanic).

Batic: 4
Slavic:3

Batlic is more archaic not just numerically but qualitatively also in terms of their Europeanness and historical attestation. Baltic shares 3 out of their 4 with Greek which is the oldest recorded European branch. Moreover, 2 of the 3 that Slavic has they share with Indo-Iranian and NONE with Greek.
To use Igor TB's words Balto Slavic just like Indo-Iranian is a linguistically reconstructed phantom.

CHG Chad said...

@ Vladimir

That is a hard question to answer.We need ancient DNA to know much more about their yDNA.But in general i smell a lot of J2a and G2a among them with R1b as well.The G2a lineages of europeans have nothing to do with the anatolian and caucausian clades of G2a.Personally I belong to G2a2b1 M406> FGC5081 and my clade has been found in Arslantepe lately.And Arlantepe has transcaucasian like Ikitzepe does influences.So,it is very likely my yDNA to be a Kura-Araxes lineage but at the same time it can be native to anatolian.Anyway it is obvious that both BA anatolia and Kura-Araxes/Maykop are mixes between Anatolia N and CHG/Iran N with a limited Natufian component.So,we should wait for more G2a/J2a and steppe R1b from both Kura-Araxes and BA Anatolia.Btw i can't wait for Hittite,Luwvian and IA anatolia samples.Its gonna be the best day of my life!!!!

CHG Chad said...

The mittani kingdom took place along with Kassite Babylonia.A period when Hurrians and Zagros tribes conquering the whole Middle East.The Mittani kingdom is ofc before the arrival of Armenians.Not even Urartu didn't existed yet.Btw the Alalakh samples have a Hurrian admixture.And the Arslantepe was probably a hurro-Hattic-hittite hotspot.

Onur Dincer said...

@rozenblatt

Factual wise it has nothing new, but it may give an idea about how Armenian scientitsts(or at least Yepiskoposyan) think about all these things. My impression is that Yepiskoposyan firmly believes that Armenians were isolated in Armenian highlands for last 4000 years.

Yes, it seems at least Yepiskoposyan has that belief, which is refuted by the ancient genomes we have, at least for the territory of the Republic of Armenia. Claiming 4000 (or more) years of genetic continuity is one thing, claiming 4000 years of genetic isolation is another, I guess not many people would object to the former.

31:40 Here he uses Uyghurs as a typical Turkic population to estimate genetic input of Turkic populations into Armenians. That's a weird choice, since Uyghurs have tons of pre-Turkic genetic ancestry. Also, on that paper he wrote Atrpatakan instead of Azerbaijan.

Yes, certainly the methodology of that analysis is flawed. If we are to take it as a measure of Turkic ancestry, we should claim non-negligible Turkic ancestry even in Poles and Serbians, which is not the case in reality. Of course it is not a measure of Turkic ancestry, and it is based on the Y-DNA data while they could use the more reliable genome-wide data.

42:10 Wrong map, I mean this map would make sense in 2010, but not in 2019, Also afterwards he talks about ancient DNA, but nothing new.

Yes, also the mtDNA PCA he shares is very much unlike any I have seen. Here is a typical mtDNA PCA involving the Armenians:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J2HhHvbcCFy4P7KDefqKSoC8ZmzYDmcf/view?usp=sharing

Anyway, in 2019 he is still showing population genetic distances based solely on Y-DNA- and mtDNA-based analyses! No where in his presentation he shares genome-wide genetic distances or PCAs. His interpretation of the ADMIXTURE components is also very problematic.

He also seems to neglect the fact that most of Anatolia (i.e., the West Asian territories west of the Armenian Highlands (Greater Armenia) and the Euphrates and north of the Greater Syria) was Greek-speaking Orthodox rather than Armenian-speaking Gregorian before the spread of Islam and the Turkish language, even in the Cappadocian and Pontian parts.

He is of course right in stating that the modern Armenians show almost no Mongolian, Turkic or Islamic Arabian admixture.

Onur Dincer said...

@Archi

Of course, Mitanni was before Armenians, there are no two opinions. Mitanni was about 1600-1500BC.

What do you think about the language or languages of the Hayasa-Azzi?

epoch said...

@Matt

But if that is the case, how to interpret this?

"Armenian Armenia_ChL Steppe_Eneolithic Mbuti -0.0209 -8.794 35717 37245"

Armenians have less steppe admixture than chalcolithic armenians?

Jatt_Scythian said...

Isn't the western origin of Armenians in the Balkans supported by I2b/ I2c clades among them?

@Onur

If the Armenian gene pool formed in Eastern Turkey what happened to the population of Armenia?

Also interesting that there is so much L1b in the Pontic region. L is such a weird haplogroup. L2 is predominantly EUroppean. L1b in the South Pontic Region , L1c in South Central Asia and L1a in the Indus Valley. I wonder where the L1-L2 split happened and where the split between the L1 subclasses happened. So weird that there isn't that much L1 between Turkey and South Central Asia (last time I checked at least , I could be wrong)

Rob said...

@ GLK

''Mycenaean kingdoms were probably the result of quick chariot-enabled takeovers of the Middle Helladic ("Minyan") cultures by limited clans from the steppe via the Balkans. Starting c.1800BC, by 1675BC they are defacto rulers of the mainland, in the 1400s they take over Minoan Crete, and next century begin to expand their power into the Aegean and western Anatolia (Ahhiyawa).
''


The view in mainstream academia (to be tested) is that Mycenean society emerges from preceding late MH groups , some of which elevate to elite status from a background of relative egalitarianism. If there is any migrations of invasion, these occurred ~ 2200 BC when the region is said to witness a series of destruction events, indeed much like other areas assoc. with the 4.2 ky disturbances.
Now the association of the 2200 BC horizon looks to northwest via the Cetina phenomenon, although their tumuli differ to earlier steppe barrows, granted the occasional Yamnaya-style tumuli might be found too, suggesting a blending of traditions. The appearance of chariots has been explained like the appearance of amber and other exotica (e.g. from Egypt) trade. A clear thread line from the steppe to Greece cannot be drawn at present evidence


''All things considered we would expect their males to be R1a or R1b, possibly more likely the former according to linguistics and material culture.''

That would be surprising. R1a is relatively uncommon (but not missing) in ancient DNA from Balkans thus far, and all modern Balkan R1a falls within characteristically 'pan-Slavic' clades like M458 & CTS1211

R1b-Z2013 seems like a safer bet, although the context is oging to be important (are they elites, or commoners, as in Vucedol). The Armenoi sample is intriguing , suggesting that steppe ancesty peaks in late Mycenean (females) - signifying either structured population or (IMO) a late pulse of steppe ancestry in the Balkans, after the fact

Rob said...

Drews has recently resurrected the “recent military invasion” scenario, and although looking to charioteers , he opts for a movement via Anatolia (some Trialeti related groups) arriving via ships . I don’t think there’s much to support that scenario because the people coming from Anatolia were traders & merchants

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...


Funny, I was just looking up Robert Brooks.

https://books.google.com/books?id=fcVIcaJxgdUC&pg=PA25&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

"As we have seen from the time that Franz Bopp published his influential comparative grammar in 1833 until late in the nineteenth century most philologist located the Indo European homeland
in the general vicinity of what is today Afghanistan.."

But now the "chariots" are arriving on a boat. Academic consensus. What can anyone do?


Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

Robert Drews that is.

Onur Dincer said...

@Jatt

If the Armenian gene pool formed in Eastern Turkey what happened to the population of Armenia?

Modern Armenians in general (of various parts of historical Armenia) have similar results to each other:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13aKT7Isp8sevR7tNg9J9ur5_3TT8_kXe/view?usp=sharing

So I think as the Armenian language spread throughout historical Armenia it brought some genetic homogenization to the general region due to the loosening of genetic barriers.

FrankN said...

Aram, Onur: Thx for answering my questions about Az_LN

Aram: I had been wondering whether it really represented ShuSho, considering that so far archeologists had hardly been able to recover ShuSho burials. However, Mentesh Tepe was certainly ShuSho, and I had overlooked the burial there:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326720213_Mentesh_Tepe_Azerbaijan_a_Preliminary_Report_on_the_2012-2014_Excavations

Onur: I had been expecting a non-neligible Levantine element in ShuSho, as confirmed by your analyses. Reasons for that assumption on my behalf:
1. PPN_Levante ancestry also appearing in Meshoko;
2. Obsidian trade from Armenia to the Levante (Jericho) evidenced from the Mesolithic (i.e. after the Younger Dryas);
3. ShuSho farming/settlement pattern, focusing on alluvial fans from mountain outflows, earliest evidenced from Levante_PPN [and notably also typical of the Central Asian Neolithic, especially Jeitun].

Clearly, Az_LN is signifigantly differring from Elbrus (Steppe) Piedmont aDNA, and can't have been its origin. [Conversly, I think that the Steppe element in EBA_ARM (Areni 1) is very likely to have originated near Progress 2/Vonyushka/Nalchik].

An open question is still the genetic make-up of Sioni. I feel they may have been "natives", adopting some farming elements from clearly intrusive ShuSho people, as such being and remaining predominantly CHG. aDNA should ultimately tell, provided Sioni burials will be recovered.

A few other notes:
@GLK: Chariots weren't really helpful when it came to conquering mainland Greece - it's too mountaineous. For Crete etc., seahorse domestication would have been required :)

The main turning point was the Thera/ Santorini eruption & tsunami, devastating all of the Aeagean coastlines (and possibly beyond: Levante, Lybia, E. Sicily). It clearly marked the end of Unetice (losing their market for tin channelled from Cornwall), and might even have contributed to the demise of the IVC. The vacuum left by the eruption and its aftermath was apparently filled by Indo-Europeans, (partly) re-building long-distance trade relations anew.

On the Mushki: My understanding is that the term doesn't exclusively mean Old Armenians, but may also relate to Kartvelians (c.f. the old Georgian capital Mzkheta). [I find the term "Meshoko", relating to an obviously Colchian-related culture, very approximate, and whatever people (Kartvelians, NW Caucasians, Russians) gave the name to the eponymous settlement some 40 km S of Maykop did in all likelyhood not relate it to Armenians residing there].

FrankN said...

MMK (and implicitly Copper Axe):
I'd warn against building too much argumentation around PIE *dyéws->Lat. Theos, Grk. Zeus, Balt. Dievas etc. "god(s)".
Nahuatl (Aztec) Teo "gods" (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan#Name) suggests that we may be well dealing with a Paleo-word (ANE) here.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

"A real problem" - https://twitter.com/iosif_lazaridis/status/992450706647994368

Samuel Andrews said...

That tweet by Lazaridis is from 2018 though.

Davidski said...

This is not a problem.

The leading theory is that the ancestors of the Anatolian speakers moved into Anatolia during the Copper Age (or at least well before 2,000 BCE) and their languages made a big impact there much later, largely due to the Hittite Empire, rather than mass folk migrations.

So this is the theory that either needs to be corroborated or contradicted with ancient DNA.

The idea that there was a mass migration from the steppe and this is what led directly to the Hittite Empire is a straw man argument, and it won't debunk the steppe theory.

I'm surprised the Iosif Lazaridis is putting out tweets like this. They look incredibly naive by any standards.

Romulus the I2a L233+ Proto Balto-Slav, layer of Corded Ware Women said...

The earliest we will most likely see R1b-M269 in Greeks is 1200 B.C., after Mycenaean collapse. Only after that point only will samples pull towards Central Europe, but the effect will be minor.

Davidski said...

@Romulus

The earliest we will most likely see R1b-M269 in Greeks is 1200 B.C., after Mycenaean collapse.

Well there's M269 in the new Mycenaean pre-publication results, so we're likely to see that in the new Harvard paper that's apparently coming in a couple of months.

Samuel Andrews said...

Ha ha. I was right about R1b Z2103 being the Indo European paternal marker for Greek.

Rob said...

@ Sam

''Ha ha. I was right about R1b Z2103 being the Indo European paternal marker for Greek.''

No, you were actually saying for Anatolian Sam, and you don't appreciate the importance of subclades and the difference between modern & ancient frequency

Targamos the Based, son of Kavkasos son of CHG son of said...

@FrankN
"On the Mushki: My understanding is that the term doesn't exclusively mean Old Armenians, but may also relate to Kartvelians (c.f. the old Georgian capital Mzkheta). [I find the term "Meshoko", relating to an obviously Colchian-related culture, very approximate, and whatever people (Kartvelians, NW Caucasians, Russians) gave the name to the eponymous settlement some 40 km S of Maykop did in all likelyhood not relate it to Armenians residing there]."

Oh but it gets better than that, clearly people here are actively peddling the "Armenian Mushki" narrative. South-West Georgia had and has two regions that are cognates to Meskhi, one is Samtskhe (literally land of the Mtskhe, just like in Mtskheta -eta indicates "land of") and a larger region that includes Samtskhe - Meskheti. There is more, in North-Eastern Georgian mountainers, the locals referred to heroes and lesser deities as Meskhi,clearly indicating at Meskhians being their ancestors, and they are overwhelmingly J2 and J1 with some I2, R1a and G2a. There is also a village in the most isolated region of NEG, Khevsureti, with a village called Dumatskho, also related to the "Meskhi" ethnonym clearly.

Also there was some talk about Diaokhi/Taokhi and their possibly Hurrian nature, but Diaokhi actually letter for letter means land/earth in Megrelian (Zan) language, and is a cognate with Georgian niadagi (soil) and PIE deghom (earth), so it is definitely false that Zan spread Southwards to North-East Anatolia in a late period.

CrM said...

Seems like Azeris have a strong affinity to Armenians. Makes you wonder if the Armenian gene pool really was molded outside of the Caucasus.

Target: Azeri
Distance: 0.8761% / 0.00876056
49.8 Armenian
23.4 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
16.4 Uzbek
6.8 ARM_LBA
2.4 Turkmen
1.2 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps
0.0 ARM_Lchashen_MBA
0.0 ARM_MBA
0.0 AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LC
0.0 AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LN
0.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kalavan
0.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Talin
0.0 Kura-Araxes_RUS_Velikent
0.0 Tabasaran

Target: Azeri
Distance: 1.1761% / 0.01176089
31.8 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
14.8 AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LN
14.6 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
13.6 Uzbek
12.6 ARM_LBA
6.6 Turkmen
3.6 ARM_MBA
2.4 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kaps
0.0 ARM_Lchashen_MBA
0.0 AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LC
0.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Kalavan
0.0 Kura-Araxes_ARM_Talin
0.0 Kura-Araxes_RUS_Velikent
0.0 Tabasaran
0.0 TUR_Arslantepe_LC

I think Azeris prior to Iranian and Turkic input were something like 75% Armenian 25% Arm_MBA/Lezgin. It would be interesting to see what Udis and Khinalug are like autosomally.

Tetris said...

@epoch

"But if that is the case, how to interpret this?

"Armenian Armenia_ChL Steppe_Eneolithic Mbuti -0.0209 -8.794 35717 37245"

Armenians have less steppe admixture than chalcolithic armenians?"

Yes, very significantly so according to that stat.

LGK said...

@Rob

The "academic consensus" is only half right, the Middle Helladic culture surely contributes to Mycenaean "Greek" identity but there is no evidence they spoke Greek or that they have steppe ancestry. Subject to further ancient DNA of course, but I don't see this changing too much.

The Mycenaean culture associated with known Greek is sudden, though maybe proto-Greeks are in northern Greece a bit earlier. The Grave Circle burials have much in common with contemporary steppe cultures, too much to be coincidence have been derived from 500+ year common steppe origins and just "latent" all this time until local elite develops organically. More likely there is a direct connection.

R1b is not unexpected, if Greek R1a is not totally post-Hellenistic, it may increase in southern distribution after the Doric migration (an Iron Age linguistic and cultural reality, but not clear in Proto/Geometric material culture so most archaeologists deny it). I suspect it is mostly post-Roman though.

IMO the Middle Helladic "Minyans" are Anatolians, they don't have well developed chariots for war, they arrived by boat, their main military power is naval. The fact that even well inland places of Greece have Luwian (apparently) toponyms shows these are not loaned in by coastal foreign traders, sailors, etc., but long time residents.

These are the people that taught the proto-Greeks maritime skills, such that their Mycenaean descendants become feared corsairs in the Aegean, seaborn mercenaries in Egypt, Cyprus, and Libya. Their entrance to Greece prior to 2000 BC may well have been destructive but some of the "destructions" are now thought to be simple fires, so take with a grain of salt.

Rob said...

@ LGK

“ The "academic consensus" is only half right, the Middle Helladic culture surely contributes to Mycenaean "Greek" identity but there is no evidence they spoke Greek or that they have steppe ancestry.”

Yes they might be incorrect ; but your statement isn’t qualified
I mean; prior to 1400 there was no evidence for any language . It’s kind of like people who claim proto-Anatolian arrived to Anatolia after 2000 BC on the basis of texts from far eastern Anatolia
Do we know what Greek aDNA will look like~ 1900 BC ?
If R1b (or R1a, if you prefer) does not correlate with elite burials; then they might have been mercenaries arriving in LBA ; not protoGreeks

LGK said...

@Davidski

Yes, and remember the M269 in the Philistines, this lineage is probably linked to late Mycenaean Greece. Most parsimonious explanation is that it represents the Greek-speaking population, but also could be Balkan or Central European mercenary elements (the Sea Peoples ships vs Ramesses III support the latter).

Rob said...


This is not an argument against a steppe homeland, grosso modo. Rather the specific question of local dynamics
We remind ourself of Nordic elites comprising heftily of (originally non-IE) Hg I1

Samuel Andrews said...

@Rob,

Yes, I did say Anatolian language is linked with R1b Z2103. It looks like I was wrong.

But, i also did say Greek language is linked to R1b Z2103. Now, it looks like I'm right.

One R1b sample from Myceneans is enough. There's no need to explain it away as a fluke. Indo Europeans in Greece may have not practiced extreme form of patrilinealism they did elsewhere in Europe, which can explain why their paternal lineages madeup a minority of Mycenean Y DNA.

Samuel Andrews said...

I was the only one at this blog arguing R1b M269>Z203 is the IE paternal marker source of Greek. Davidski had been saying R1a Z93.

Samuel Andrews said...

Maybe Greek and Illyrian come from Western Yamnaya. Deep look at R1b Z2103 subclades is what is needed to answer this question.

Davidski said...

@Samuel

See here for what I said in regards to the Greeks...

Main candidates for the precursors of the proto-Greeks in the ancient DNA record to date

It's yet to be decided which Y-haplogroups the Proto-Greeks were associated with. We need samples from the Achaeans and Grave Circle B.

Rob said...

@ Sam

“ was the only one at this blog arguing R1b M269>Z203 is the IE paternal marker source of Greek. Davidski had been saying R1a Z93.”

Lol I’m fairly sure that claim is somewhat hyperbolic

Anonymous said...

"The view in mainstream academia (to be tested) is that Mycenean society emerges from preceding late MH groups , some of which elevate to elite status from a background of relative egalitarianism. If there is any migrations of invasion, these occurred ~ 2200 BC when the region is said to witness a series of destruction events, indeed much like other areas assoc. with the 4.2 ky disturbances."

They're not mainstream academic concepts, they're outdated concepts of old Greek autochthonists. They have long been unscientific, they appeared even before the languages in which Linear Letter A and B are written became known, etc., these people simply ignore scientific facts. The problem is that these people are just aggressive propagandists, they are old literally, they jam the voice of academic science.

Rob said...

That’s not an accurate summary. They’re actually the most recent perspectives of western scholars studying in Greece. They might or might not be correct that’s for bioanthropology to prove

Anonymous said...

Blogger Samuel Andrews said...
"Maybe Greek and Illyrian come from Western Yamnaya. Deep look at R1b Z2103 subclades is what is needed to answer this question."

What do the Illyrians have to do with Yamnaya? What does Illyrian have to do with Greek? All they have in common is that they are Сentum and nothing else. The Greeks came with the Danube from the KMK culture, in the past the area was occupied by Western Yamnaya (Bujak), the Illyrians were always tied to the Western Balkans. The link between them could only be if the resettlement of post-CWC groups to the Catacomb culture area that led to the formation of the KMK were also involved Beakers groups.

Matt said...

@epoch, "But if that is the case, how to interpret this?
"Armenian Armenia_ChL Steppe_Eneolithic Mbuti -0.0209 -8.794 35717 37245"
Armenians have less steppe admixture than chalcolithic armenians?"


Fair question. In principle that stat co-existing with negative stats of the same type for D(Armenian Armenia_Chl Ancient_Greek MbutI) would simply mean that modern Armenians have *both* less relatedness (in a phylogenetic D-stat sense) than Armenia_Chl to *both* Steppe and ancient Greek/Anatolian groups. They would simply have some other ancestry that is unreleated to either that makes this so. This is not unimaginable.

But I think there are good reasons to believe this may be confounded by purely statistical/data issues.

Firstly, we see that in their stats modern Armenians tend to converge less with all ancient groups and more with all modern populations: https://imgur.com/a/3klfEDI

Secondly, this tendency for apparent ancient-ancient and modern-modern attraction is absolutely nothing new for us in ancient dna. I remember in Haak's paper back in 2015(!) that we saw that the stats from the paper or produced from its data for us by David showed that Corded Ware Germany and Bell Beaker Germany samples (narrowly) converged more with LBK_EN than a range modern day Northern European groups who should have more Anatolia_N related ancestry - https://imgur.com/a/EUcu50y (literally a graphic I made in 2015).

There are likely to often be confounds in taking a range of simple D(Modern dna, Ancient dna, Ancient dna, Modern outgroup) stats and then trying to infer change from those. If the differences in ancestry are really extreme then the stats should still show a signal, but potentially these things can be overrriden by batch effects making adna more similar to other adna etc. (This is also the case for Fsts and such).

The best practices for modelling modern people with ancients and talking about shifts are probably to follow the qpAdm procedures in Harney's recent 2020 paper. (We also have these PCA distance minimization based methods which we've popularized in the community built around this blog... but academia will probably not accept or publish these due to ongoing PCA compression questions and so on.)

At the moment, when it comes to formal stats, adna produced under the same procedures are best compared to adna produced under the same procedures, and modern dna produced under different procedures is less comparable (some broad inferences can still be made but it can be tricky to be too specific I think.)

Davidski said...

The Human Origins dataset should've been based on UDG-treated capture data, just like the ancient samples are.

Also, ideally, such modern samples should not be from living people, but rather from remains that are a couple hundred years old.

Hopefully, the Reich Lab is working on something like this, even if only limited to a handful of populations from each continent.

Anonymous said...

@Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar

Stop reposting something that means nothing, the number of name matches means nothing. Especially if you bring them with phonetic mistakes:

Varuṇa (Vedic), Ouranous (Greek) have nothing to do with Odinn/Wodan (Germanic) and have nothing to do with Velinas (Baltic).
Marut (Vedic) have nothing to do with Ares (Greek) and have nothing to do with Mars < Māvors(Roman).
Parjanya (Vedic), Perkunas (Baltic), Fjorgyn (Germanic) "god of oak" have nothing to do with Perunu (Slavic) "god of lightning".
Saramā/Sārameya (Vedic) - name of dog, Hermes (Greek).
Pūṣan, Paṇi (Vedic), Pan (Greek) have nothing to do with Vanir (Germanic).
Rudra (Vedic), Ruglu (Slavic - not exists and phonetically irrelevant).
----Śarvara--- karbura (Vedic), Kerberos (Greek).
Śrī (Vedic), Ceres (Greek) have nothing to do with Freyr/Freya (Germanic).
Ṛbhu (Vedic), Elbe (Germanic) ???

Aram said...

FrankN

Mushk being linked with Armenians has a linguistic basis. Armenian plurial suffix -k and a typical Balkanic root Mush or Mus. For example Musoi in NW Anatolia or Moesan.

On the other hand the shift from -k to kh is Greek influence. It has been discussed in Diakonoff's book.

Aram said...

Saying that East Armenia is periphereal is wrong.
Araratian plain is the largest plain in Arm Highland and the most important source of food.
Not surprisingly after Urartu the capital was transfered in East Armenia and remains there till now.

And those Lchashen people genes are still in Armenia.
Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.2783% / 0.01278271
54.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
25.4 ARM_LBA
20.4 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
0.0 BGR_IA
0.0 BGR_MLBA

CrM said...

@Aram

Does ARM_LBA and ARM_MBA belong to the Lchashen horizon? ARM_Lchashen_MBA differed from other MBA-LBA samples by having a more Steppe_Maykop-like Steppe input, I'm not sure if this signal is found among modern Armenians.

https://i.imgur.com/7zAXM5e.png

Rob said...

@ Arame
How go you think I2c came to Armenia ?

A said...

Someone needs to translate Sylvia Penner's 'Schliemanns Schachtgraberrund und der Europaisch Nordosten' (1998)

Anyone here speak German?

https://www.docdroid.net/nGYJe1d/penner-1-50-pdf

LGK said...

@Rob

I guess we'll have to wait and see what steppe levels (if any) and Y-dna haplotypes most Middle Helladic males have. I personally doubt the picture of no steppe admixture, J2 and G2 dominant will change much.

If steppe ancestry and R1 lineages appear only in late Helladic (Mycenaean), and these are overwhelmingly the dominating elites, you would assume they are Greek speaking natively.

If they are an intrusive element (highly likely in context) that, alternatively, simply adopted Greek from the natives, well, what did they speak beforehand? And why change?

The glory days of Mycenae (Grave Circles) begin centuries before the "Lydian" Pelopids take the throne, who may hypothetically be said to have a non-Greek tongue (though this is surely unlikely itself).

As earlier, toponyms throughout Greece being from non-Greek say enough to me about this. There probably just isn't enough time for Luwians/Anatolians to fully inhabit the Greek peninsula prior to a hypothetical Proto-Greek entry in excess of 2200BC. This had to be later, it is very hard to explain them otherwise.

Anonymous said...

@LGK

"There probably just isn't enough time for Luwians/Anatolians to fully inhabit the Greek peninsula prior to a hypothetical Proto-Greek entry in excess of 2200BC."

In 2200BC, only the Luwians could come to Greece, who destroyed everything there and went to Anatolia.

Luuk said...

We know more or less where and how the Y-dna haplotypes E1b, G2, J1 and J2 originated in the Near East.
Does anyone know where we can put the Neolithic origin of the Y-dna haplotypes G1, H2, L and T?

Rob said...

@ LGk
“ If they are an intrusive element (highly likely in context) that, alternatively, simply adopted Greek from the natives, well, what did they speak beforehand? And why change? ”

It really depends on their number and position. If it’s minor and nonruling; then they have to adopt to the language of their hosts ;‘unless they want to starve.

“ As earlier, toponyms throughout Greece being from non-Greek say enough to me about this. There probably just isn't enough time for Luwians/Anatolians to fully inhabit the Greek peninsula prior to a hypothetical Proto-Greek entry in excess of 2200BC.”

Toponyms are pretty useless unless carefully analyses. They can’t be dated; nor are they even universally agreed upon by linguists as to their provenance
I personally think the Luwian theory is pretty dubious . The minyan ware is a product of Anatolian - Greek chalcolithic koine. It has little to do with indo european anatolians
It’s an outdated theory with little Solid support.

Anonymous said...

Once again about the mainstream, a very strange notion, because the fact that the Greeks were after the Louvians is the mainstream of the 20th century.

Leo Klein wrote:

Even A. Fick suggested that before the Greeks in Greece invaded the Hittites, later Illyrian Thracian tribes, and then there were Greeks (Fick 1909). E. Forrer believed that these suffixes belong to the Hittite relatives of the Luwians, who occupied vast territories from the Adriatic to Persia, being the predecessors of the Greeks (Forrer 1921). He was supported by P. Kretschmer, who reconstructed the "real Minor Asian invasion" of the Aegean world (Kretschmer 1940: 253). They identified the appearance of the Greeks with the emergence of the Mycenaean culture.
So Palmer and Hoybeck had a strong linguistic tradition behind them. Palmer was probably encouraged by the appearance of archaeological concretization in the form of a work by Mellaart, and Palmer's innovations are a reference to the Luwian toponym Parnassus - from the word "parna" 'house', 'temple' - compared with the Greek Parnassus by E. Laroshe (1957, 2:5). Palmer concluded from this that Parnassus was first the sanctuary of Louvia. He was fascinated by the Louvian analogies to the words of the undeciphered Cretan script, as well as some parallels in culture.
Hoybeck, on the other hand, proceeds from some phonetic features of the Prehistoric substrate, to which there is a correspondence in the Hittite language. For example, Odysseus is referred to in some dialects of Olusseus as the Hittite title of king "Tabarna", sometimes spelled "Labarna".

Anonymous said...

Minyan ceramics is not naturally chalcolytic, but appeared only in the Bronze Age in Western Anatolia.

Klen:
This transition from EH to MH is marked by the appearance of miniature ceramics approx. 1900 BC by traditional chronology (new, 2500). John Caskey later determined that this was only the end of the change that had begun earlier and that had occupied the entire RH III (Caskey 1968; 1969; Marinatos 1968). It is now clear that already EH II (or Koraku culture, as Renfrew 1972 called it) meant the last period of the previous civilization, ending around 2200BC (in a new chronology, around 3000). It ended with fires in almost all the centres of Greece, with some cities abandoned and not rebuilt. Life resumed in Lerna, but a mound with a cromlech was erected on the ruins of the local ruler's house, which remained intact during the subsequent period.

They came from the north, as the mounds say, straightened arrowheads, apsides of houses and graves, clay anchors, stone battle axes (fig. 6 - Hood 1973b; Howell 1973; Hiller 1982; 1986). Mikhail Sakellariou compiled a table (fig. 7 - Sakellariou 1980a, 76 - 77), in which he showed the number of locations with traces of immigration between EH II and RE III in different regions of Greece (there were 11 of them), as well as with ceramics from RE III (63 of them) and only with ceramics from RE II (160 of them). As can be seen, RE III is considerably worse than RE II. Mostly affected by changes in Boeotia, Attica, Corinth, Argolida, Arcadia, Laconia and Messenia. Sakellariu believes that the first wave of aliens (at the end of EH II was small and was moving by sea, while the second wave, at the end of EH III, was massive and rolled on the mainland.

LGK said...

@Rob

Clearly they are ruling, they have amassed never before seen (in Greece) amounts of material wealth, captured the most valuable citadels in the Argolid and elsewhere, taken control of trade routes. The natives, whoever they are, are not in a place to impose language on them.

If the big cultural break between the Grave Circle people and preceding Middle Helladic types is also reflected in a shift in DNA, surely this reflects different ethnic affiliation of some kind, and is not irrelevant.

I'm not a linguist, but I think most agree these toponyms aren't of Proto-Greek origin, and many think the closest match is Luwian. I don't know how else Luwians get to name places (well inland) in Greece without being there. You are free to speculate how these conclusions are reached otherwise.

As for Minyan ware, I don't think this is meaningful to this issue. My mention of "Minyan" refers not to pottery but to people the Greeks understood as preceding them in Greece, often interchangeable with Pelasgian. They used and further developed "Minyan" pottery, maybe they brought it from Greece to Anatolia or vice versa, maybe not. This is not a pots = people instance.

A said...

'The Rise of Bronze Age Society' (Kristiansen and Larsson, 2005):

“Sylvia Penner has recently proposed that the archaeological distributions of the early second millennium BC represent a conquest migration into the Aegean, leading to the formation of the shaft grave dynasty. This interpretation is not far from that of Robert Drews. Some evidence would seem to support Penner’s argument, including the osteological determination of the skeletons in the B-circle (Angel 1972), where the male population is characterised as Nordic Caucasian (robust and tall), in some opposition to the female population, which is more Mediterranean.

[We are aware that the anthropological evidence and the categorisations employed are subject to criticism. More recently this problem has been critically analysed by Day (2001), within a broad comparative framework of Indo-European osteological data. Even here, the shaft grave osteological material shows connections to the steppe of eastern Europe/Romania.]

The recently discovered shaft grave of a chiefly male warrior from Aegina from the LMH [Late Middle Helladic] period belongs in the same group as the male chieftains of the B-circle, and he had injuries and muscle insertions on the right arm from sword fighting (Manolis and Neroutsos 1997). This evidence may show the intrusion of a new ruling segment of warriors and charioteers. They employed the specific wavy band decoration from antler, bone and ivory of the chariot complex on several of the grave stelae with horse and chariot motifs in the A- and B-circles at Mycenae (Younger 1997). Other evidence, however, points to some continuity between MH [Middle Helladic] and LH [Late Helladic], although not in the settlement system (Maran 1995).

What can be inferred with some certainty is the importation of a new horse and chariot package, including steppe horses. This was recently verified by an analysis of the two horse burials of paired horses from Dendra from the Late MH period, which showed they were of the larger steppe type (Payne 1990). They were well bred and out of an established breeding tradition. Thus, trade in horses, accompanied by new specialists in chariotry and horse dressage, would seem to be a necessary implication of the evidence. In addition our previous analyses of relations between the east Mediterranean and the Carpathians underpins this picture of well-organised long-distance trade connections and travels of chiefly retinues and specialists. ...

As the textual evidence of the Near East and Egypt describes conquest migrations and the influx of specialists, warriors and rulers of Aryan origin, it may seem justified to reassess some earlier interpretations of the origin of the shaft grave kings. […] The material culture of chariotry in the Aegean was accompanied by new burial rituals exemplified by the shaft graves in the B- and A-circles, later followed by tholos tombs, all of which resemble the burial forms in Sintashta and the steppe region. In addition the physical anthropology of the male chiefs in the B-circle showed so-called Caucasian-Nordic traits, in opposition to the women buried there. Settlement evidence further shows a break or reorganisation on the mainland during this period (Maran 1995). Also, new foreign weapon types such as lances with split socket are spread along the same lines of communication, but extend further into the east Mediterranean. … this additional evidence suggests that we are dealing with a conquest migration in the Aegean penetrating further into the east Mediterranean to Crete (the end of the Old Palace period). From here they joined forces with the Hyksos in Egypt, as originally suggested by Mylonas (1972).”

(p.182-185)

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

Targamos wrote:


"Also there was some talk about Diaokhi/Taokhi and their possibly Hurrian nature, but Diaokhi actually letter for letter means land/earth in Megrelian (Zan) language, and is a cognate with Georgian niadagi (soil) and PIE deghom (earth), so it is definitely false that Zan spread Southwards to North-East Anatolia in a late period."

PIE deghom

Ksam related words for earth are widely attested in geographically spread out IE dialects Sanskrit, Greek, Hittite, Latin, Persian and Russian and possibly Germanic. This is an early loan into PIE from Tibeto Burman in an agricultural context.

Refer to 1) below:

https://www.academia.edu/35493286/A_brief_note_on_the_two_older_Indo-European_words_for_earth_and_man_as_compared_to_Tibetan_-_2017

"Thus we propose that the word might have been borrowed into common Indo-European from some proto-Tibeto-Burman dialect somewhere in eastern Central Asia (far from Caspian sea). as it is present in Hittite the fact of borrowing should have taken place at least earlier than 2600 BC.) Note, that Germanic developed the word "land" for the same idea of "dry soil " (as needing irrigation in agricultural context and as opposed to both swamp/water/rivers/sea )."

Whatever the geneticist want to do with this information/opinion if anything.

Archi,

page 30

http://omilosmeleton.gr/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/IDR.pdf

Onur Dincer said...

@Aram

Saying that East Armenia is periphereal is wrong.

It is too early to make such an inference as we currently lack ancient genomes from the parts of Greater Armenia within the boundaries of modern-day Turkey. Maybe the Bronze Age genomes from there will turn out to be genetically closer to the modern Armenians than the Bronze Age genomes from the territories of modern-day Republic of Armenia are, we just do not know. What we know is that most of historic Armenia lies within the eastern territories of modern-day Turkey and those territories have played the biggest part in Armenian history, so it is very likely that the Armenian genepool largely took its current shape in there. The ancient genomes from the Republic of Armenia so far do not contradict this prediction, in fact, they are one of the main reasons I make such a prediction.

Araratian plain is the largest plain in Arm Highland and the most important source of food.
Not surprisingly after Urartu the capital was transfered in East Armenia and remains there till now.


The Armenian kingdoms in historic Armenia changed their capital several times in history and some of them were within the boundaries of the modern Republic of Turkey and some within the boundaries of the modern Republic of Armenia (most of them in the former). Personally it does matter for me where they are located as those territories were then both populated and ruled by Armenians and this is what really matters historically.

And those Lchashen people genes are still in Armenia.
Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.2783% / 0.01278271
54.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
25.4 ARM_LBA
20.4 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
0.0 BGR_IA
0.0 BGR_MLBA


I am sure many modern Armenians have some descent from that Lchashen population too, among others. My main objection was to the claim of 4000-year genetic isolation rather than continuity. Shape of genepools can change over the millennia, but that does not necessarily contradict large degree of genetic continuity (e.g., see the well-researched Iberian and Latium cases).

Jatt_Scythian said...

@Luuk

I'd be interested in that too.

Rob said...

@ LGK
“ what did they speak beforehand?”

For this point I agree with Sam suggestion.
They could’ve been some centum dialect of Indo European in the Balkans. I see no problem with potential multiple waves of Indo Europeans arriving into South East Europe
Until we get more data points, it’s admittedly all a bit speculative at the moment.

Anonymous said...

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar said...

"PIE deghom
This is an early loan into PIE from Tibeto Burman in an agricultural context."

Total unscientific nonsense.

"page 30"

I don't care what it says, I know better and understand better.

Rob said...

@ GLK

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said; in fact what you’re saying is self evident

Eg
“Clearly they are ruling, they have amassed never before seen (in Greece) amounts of material wealth, ”

Yes but who were these people are “they” ? You’ve proposal is they’re Predominantly R1a warriors . We might soon evaluate that


“ I'm not a linguist, but I think most agree these toponyms aren't of Proto-Greek origin, ”

nobody is proposing a paleolithic continuity theory in Greece
If they are not Greek; (a) they could be Luwian or non -IE, there seems to be no consensus
(B) they do not inform us when they were created; because there is no verification of their dating
Pre-Greek or non-Greek names could have been created during Greek times by Greeks ; just like Slavic villages were created during Byzantine times; or -wahl (roman) names towns in southern Germany were created german dukes; not “Romans” or their leftovers

Anonymous said...

"Pre-Greek or non-Greek names could have been created during Greek times by Greeks"

So Homer invented toponyms like Parnassus himself?

LGK said...

@Rob

"They" clearly refers to Mycenaean (Achaean) elites, the Shaft Grave/Grave Circle people. It is a fact that they were immensely rich and powerful, in a few centuries they are the major Aegean power, acknowledged as an equal by the Hittite king. Specifically by name, Achaean, an ethnonym tied to Greek speakers specifically.

Grave Circles material similarities are specifically with steppe entities, these are so specific and convincing that there are those who tried to argue they are an imposing Indo-Iranian elite on the already Greek-speaking peninsula. Clearly this is wrong, but so are other hypotheses for their origins like Hyksos, or Phoenicians, or whoever, it will be borne out by ancient DNA.

Drews' slowly dying "South Caucasian" (Trialeti or related chariot gang) theory rests on a Caucasian type kettle and some weapons of apparent Caucasian design in the Grave Circles, the latter were already in Crete centuries before, and probably came to Mycenae by way of there. As for the Greco-Armenian language relationship probably this represents shared ancestry on the steppe, not Armenia-> Greece afterwards. Phrygian may or may not be related, its provenance is not well attested before the LBA catastrophe puts a power mixer into the language distributions of Anatolia.

"Again. Irrelevant ."

How is it irrelevant? The simple facts are that written Greek is first attested around 1450BC, with a culture that has its clearest hallmarks at around 1700 in the Argolid. There is zero evidence that Greek was spoken before this culture, zero evidence to connect any of the continuing Middle Helladic material culture to Greek language specifically. If the R1b in Mycenaean posted above is correct, this also represents a genetic novelty from the Middle Helladic population.

The MH itself is marked by an influx of J2 and "CHG rich" ancestry from elsewhere. It is logical to connect this to non-Greek toponyms, rather than to some population that somehow precedes both Greek at 2200BC AND whatever you think the ~1700s Grave Circle people are. Again, I don't see how else to explain their Luwian affinities, and you have not offered a viable alternative.

FrankN said...

A:
"Someone needs to translate Sylvia Penner's 'Schliemanns Schachtgraberrund und der Europaisch Nordosten' (1998)

Anyone here speak German?

https://www.docdroid.net/nGYJe1d/penner-1-50-pdf
"

Checked it. Unfortunately, the link only covers pages 1-50 of this 217 pages thesis. That part deals with cycloid cheekpieces found in Grave Circle A, which Penner typologically links to a variety of finds between Romania and Sintashta, often poorly dated, and in several cases (e.g. Potapovka finds) clearly much older than the Grave Circle A finds. In a review, Y. Goncharova states:
"the author agrees with the main conclusion of the researcher that this cultural phenomenon takes its origin in Eastern Europe, extending thereafter to the Carpathian and Balkan region and Greece. The author believes, however, that so general conclusions would hardly meet the demands to this paper. She thinks that the obtained types, first of all discoid bone cheekpieces, cannot serve as a basis for study of cultural and historical development of the phenomenon, the so called “chariot aristocracy”. This material can neither be used for relative dating of the sites. "
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=645212

IOW: While Penner is probably right in qualifying cycloid cheekpeaces as early Abashevo or even Poltavka invention, by ca. 1,600 BC that invention should have been all over the place (and apparently was, as evidenced by finds from W. Romania, or near Nalchik), and as such isn't really helpful in geographically pin-pointing Hellenic origins.
Moreover, the Grave Circle A pieces (Variant 1) are apparently an outlier among Mycenean cheekpieces. The far more frequent Variant 3 had apparently a more westerly Distribution, including Füzesabony/ HU. [On other cultural parallels between Mycene and the Central Europe, c.f.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282321610_The_stone_fortifications_of_the_settlement_at_Spissky_Stvrtok_A_contribution_to_the_discussion_on_the_long-distance_contacts_of_the_Otomani-Fuzesabony_culture].

Penner's second line of evidence concerns "wavy band decoration". This part has received a disastrous review by W. David, who a.o mentions the omission of more than 100 gold disks with such ornamentation, and neglection of any finds outside E. Europe (and Greece). David speaks of a "wavy band decoration" sphere from S. Moravia down to the Amuq plain, which has more commonality than the E. European examples, that in addition are only present on bone, instead of - as elsewhere - equally in jewellery, glassware or on stelae.

https://www.academia.edu/33018028/_Rezension_Silvia_Penner_Schliemanns_Schachtgräberrund_und_der_europäische_Nordosten._Studien_zur_Herkunft_der_frühmykenischen_Streitwagenausstattung._Saarbrücker_Beitr._z._Altertumskunde_60_Saarbrücken_1998_

LGK said...

@Rob

"Pre-Greek or non-Greek names could have been created during Greek times by Greeks ; just like Slavic villages were created during Byzantine times; or -wahl (roman) names towns in southern Germany were created german dukes; not “Romans” or their leftovers "

But in those situations, there is a reason for the application of such foreign naming conventions, either migrants from that culture are present, or they are used following the precedent of a foreign power who was previously influential there or claimed as ancestor etc. There is no such equivalent for Mycenaean Greece, unless of course, Luwians are present throughout mainland Greece before Homer.

Anonymous said...

@FrankN

"While Penner is probably right in qualifying cycloid cheekpeaces as early Abashevo or even Poltavka invention, by ca. 1,600 BC that invention should have been all over the place (and apparently was, as evidenced by finds from W. Romania, or near Nalchik), and as such isn't really helpful in geographically pin-pointing Hellenic origins."

The Poltavka culture has nothing to do with it, there are no cheekpeaces of such antiquity. There is no evidence that Poltavkans were involved in horse breeding at all.

We are not talking about some abstract wave motifs, namely the wave motifs on cheekpeaces. There's a complete coincidence of steppe cheekpeaces and Mycenaean cheekpeaces.

Romania is just on its way from the steppes to Greece, and there the cheekpeaces are just in Babino context.

FrankN said...

Two more notes on Penner's thesis:

1. She points out that Chariots were fairly useless in the mountaineous Greek Terrain, and apparently rather served as status symbols. She cites literary descriptions of warriors riding in their chariot to the battlefield, to then dismount and fight on foot. Of the 33 persons buried in Grave Circles A & B, only a single one was buried with bridle cheekpieces, plus a golden ring with a charioteer encarving, which seems to signify that charioteering was rather the exeption than the rule for the Mycenaean (warrior) elite.

2. As intriguing as her comparison between Mycenaean shaft graves and Sintashta burials looks initially - there are various places across W. Eurasia that have been liked to Mycenae (e.g. El Argar), often w/o the analogies surviving a closer look (see the Slovakian example in my link above). I personally deem it pretty unlikely that proto-Hellenic was spoken at Sintashta, or that Sintashta people brought IndoAryan to Mycenae to become re-centumised there again by some natives..

3. In a sidenote Penner mentions Mycenaean parallels to the Wessex culture. Looks possible - after all the Aegaean sourced their tin from Cornwall (via Unetice and Otomany-Füzesabony). And amber from the Curonian Lagoon, Silver from Andalusia, Lapis-Lazuli from Afghanistan, Ostrich eggs from Africa, ivory from India... But let's just stay with the amber: The trail in all likelyhood went along the Dniepr, and would alone explain some kind of cultural (maybe also genetic) interaction with at least Ukraine. If Mycenaeans had an appreciation for fur (as Byzantines had later on), that would have give reason to also interact with the NE European (Russian) forest zone..

Anonymous said...

@FrankN
"She points out that Chariots were fairly useless in the mountaineous Greek Terrain, and apparently rather served as status symbols. She cites literary descriptions of warriors riding in their chariot to the battlefield, to then dismount and fight on foot."

It's a mistake, in Greece they fought on chariots that have images. In the Mycenaean texts there are many lists of chariots that were made by Mycenaean chariot for the army. Mycenae transported even chariots with horses by sea, already in the Mycenae culture there was a myth about a wooden horse on a ship sailing by sea, which was then used by Homer to describe the capture of Troy. Homer described the Mycenaean tactics of chariot fighting with spears put forward:
μηδέ τις ἱπποσύνῃ τε καὶ ἠνορέηφι πεποιθὼς / οἶος πρόσθ᾽ ἄλλων μεμάτω Τρώεσσι μάχεσθαι, / μηδ᾽ ἀναχωρείτω: ἀλαπαδνότεροι γὰρ ἔσεσθε. / ὃς δέ κ᾽ ἀνὴρ ἀπὸ ὧν ὀχέων ἕτερ᾽ ἅρμαθ᾽ ἵκηται / ἔγχει ὀρεξάσθω, ἐπεὶ ἦ πολὺ φέρτερον οὕτω. / ὧδε καὶ οἱ πρότεροι πόλεας καὶ τείχε᾽ ἐπόρθεον / τόνδε νόον καὶ θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἔχοντες
The same tactic is depicted in Mycenaean images.

Battles in a dismount from the chariot appeared only with the Sea Peoples, they brought it and used it in the siege of Troy. This is not the Mycenaean tactics.

LGK said...

@FrankN

With regards to chariots, Greece is full of plains and flatter coastal areas in which decisive battles over strategic sites (on trade routes) would take place. And they don't have to be used in Kadesh style massed charges of hundreds of chariots to be useful in war. Imagine dropping off your heavy infantry (elites) on the flank or rear of the enemy troop formation, or harassing them with arrows in this manner, with no capacity of their own to respond in kind.

Sintashta was probably not proto-Greek speaking, I agree. But proto-Greeks were part of the steppe community sharing in some of these innovations with close neighbors, among whom are counted the Sintashta.

The eastern European mtdna lineages in Grave Circle people may represent their immediate heritage from the steppe via Balkans, but it is also plausible these are subsequent female marriages from these regions into the Mycenaean royalty. Amber is the main difference to the Minoans, whose own trade networks were good enough to import the other things you mention, the Mycenaeans just slotted themselves into the Minoan position on these trade routes. But for amber (and Carpathian gold), Mycenaeans were operating new northern trade networks with contacts that were probably recognised as their relatives. Good indication as to direction of their origin.

A said...

@ FrankN

the rest of the text is here:

https://www.docdroid.net/pymPusH/penner-51-100-pdf
https://www.docdroid.net/AYKJEhj/penner-101-150-pdf
https://www.docdroid.net/o9wzMA9/penner-151-215-pdf

A said...

@Archi

"in the Mycenae culture there was a myth about a wooden horse on a ship sailing by sea, which was then used by Homer to describe the capture of Troy."

Probably has something to do with the fact that they carved horse heads on the prow of their ships, rather than wooden horses travelling on ships. The wooden horse story might be about a ship with a horse-head prow. This also fits with the association of Poseidon with horses.

LGK said...

@ A
@ Archi

Michael Wood (In search of the Trojan War) also suggests that the "horse" which allows Homeric capture of Troy is metaphor for an earthquake that breaks the impenetrable wall of the acropolis; the two are linked by association with Poseidon. Poseidon supports the Achaeans against Troy, because he is angry with the Trojan king cheating him before.

That Mycenaeans transported chariots on ships is probably a given, at least in late Mycenaean times if not before. The Hittite king complaining about the Achaean "Atreus" terrorizing a western Anatolian vassal, who fields a good number of chariots against the Hittite force dispatched to put him in place. Maybe some were locally manufactured but probably some had to be brought over from Greece.

This is epic storytelling, not too surprising that things like the "wooden horse" might have had multiple meanings, both real and symbolic.

A said...

@FrankN

There are also about 60 pages of plates and descriptions.

Onur Dincer said...

@Rob

The earliest attestation of other IE languages are even later .

When Greece was in the Middle Helladic period, in Anatolia we see the earliest known texts written in the Anatolian IE languages, the earliest known texts in any IE language. So we at least know that the Anatolian IE languages were already established at least in nearby Anatolia during the time.

Rob said...

Yes I meant in Europe

Rob said...

LGK

''@ LGK

“Grave Circles material similarities are specifically with steppe entities, these are so specific and convincing that there are those who tried to argue they are an imposing Indo-Iranian elite on the already Greek-speaking peninsula. Clearly this is wrong, but so are other hypotheses for their origins like Hyksos, or Phoenicians, or whoever, it will be borne out by ancient DNA.”

I don’t understand here; I have not claimed they’re Phonecians or Iranians
These are obvious elites, local in some way. Th question is who they were and when they arrived. I don't think inscriptions and toponyms are in anyway useful herre, because no language is attested in Greece before 1400, IE or not; and the latter cannot be dated precsiely

“ There is zero evidence that Greek was spoken before this culture, zero evidence to connect any of the continuing Middle Helladic material culture to Greek language specifically.”

There are certainly shifts between 2000 and 1600 BC, but at least a couple of interpretations are possible. Again linguistics and philology do not tell us whether Greek arrived in 2000 or 1600, if one is objective here.

“ I don't see how else to explain their Luwian affinities, and you have not offered a viable alternative.”

If you mean the supposedly 'Luwian' - nth- and -ss-, then I already suggested that these migth be pre-IE groups of the Aegean - Anatolian chalcolithic cultures. They are preserved in Crete, Greece and Anatolia. The above explanation is at least as economical, if not more so, than proposing a Luwian migration to Greece (& Crete)

“ The MH itself is marked by an influx of J2 and "CHG rich" ancestry from elsewher”

CHG ancestry was already arriving by 4000 BC; and DStats and qpADm support that scenario (as Greece LN Peloponnese as a viable source for Mycenaeans). Of course, more might have been coming in ¬ 2000's , because it was an active network.

Vladimir said...


All this suggests that the middle helladic period is R1b-Z2103, migrating from the steppes kotakombnye culture. They are also apparently luwians. Since the Luwian language was related to Hittite, the Hittites must also be R1b-Z2103, but they could enter Anatolia through the Caucasus, for example, the Alazano-Beden culture, Trialet culture. They met in Anatolia. And after the" luvians " in Greece entered Mycenae, Babino culture, R1a-Z93. Greek is a mixture of the Z2103 and Z93 languages. Subsequent migrations of Z93 to the region created the Thracians.
I always doubted the thesis that such a powerful group R1b-Z2103, which captured the entire steppe, just disappeared.

LGK said...

@Rob

"I don’t understand tangential argument; I have not claimed they’re Phonecians or Iranians"

These are others' candidates for the Grave Circle people as non-Greek identities; you did not specify a particular group, but you are making the same largely baseless argument. A generic unknown, maybe centum, that was the dominant ruling group but whose language vanished into thin air without a trace.

"If you mean the supposedly 'Luwian' - nth- and -ss-, "

Various branches of Anatolian are well established as being nearby even earlier than Greek at 1450BC, a stone's throw across the Aegean. If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that pre-IE groups giving such toponyms to Greek speaking Middle Bronze populations, then non-local elites arrive but their language is not preserved despite being the focus of Homeric and other myths and so on...

again this rests on a VERY shaky proposition that Grave Circle people are intrusive non-Greek speaking, which is far more speculative than just accepting they are Greek speakers based on what they write in and what their descendants spoke, and the general pattern of IE elites' interactions with existing Asian cultures. It is just the most parsimonious option given that absolutely nothing about Middle Helladic suggests Greek language.

"CHG ancestry was already arriving by 4000 BC"

CHG in the Aegean at 4000BC is probably not meaningful, from 2200 we are talking something more particular and distinct, associated with Y-DNA J2. Seems to me precisely dated human remains from the relevant time period in the Aegean have not been sampled, but I'll bet it isn't a coincidence that the Middle Minoan and Middle Helladic both develop circa 2200-2000BC.

Rob said...

The formation of distinctive entities & branches within the Balkans is a separate issue.
Ive already dicussed the Vucedol R1b-Z2013 (if he can even be connected to Vucedol)
the recently analysed Mokrin was extremely interesting. Of the 3 R1b-M269, 2 have no grave goods, and 1 had a bowl
The 'chief' with a bronze dagger was I2a1b
The stone battle axe was J2b
Whatever the case, status here was earned, not inherited.
I wonder if a similar phenomenon is seen in Graves circles

This is completely different to BBC in western Europe.

Rob said...

@ LGK

''Various branches of Anatolian are well established as being nearby even earlier than Greek at 1450BC, a stone's throw across the Aegean. ''

What's your point ? Anatolian is an earlier branch, as all but a few fringists from Angthrogenica know


'' then non-local elites arrive but their language is not preserved despite being the focus of Homeric and other myths and so on...''


Sorry I don't understand what you're trying to say


''again this rests on a VERY shaky proposition that Grave Circle people are intrusive non-Greek speaking, w''

Who said they're not Greek-speaking ?
If you seek to elucidate what Im meaning, refer to the observations on Mokrin above



“ CHG in the Aegean at 4000BC is probably not meaningful, from 2200 we are talking something more particular and distinct, associated with Y-DNA J2. “

CHG expanded west ~4000/3800 BC with Leilatepe/ Majkop Copper technology. We see it in Barcin Chalc., we see it in LN Peloponessus
The 2200 BC phenomenon produced a subtle Levant shift in Anatolia ; due to Assyrian colony formation
I'd be curious to see your calculations as to why it is not very relevant

“ but I'll bet it isn't a coincidence that the Middle Minoan and Middle Helladic both develop circa 2200-2000BC.”

They’re in fact very different
Mainland Greece at this time was comparitively undeveloped and in turmoil. Seems like a opportunities for and / or result of invasions

LGK said...

@Rob

Point is we know Anatolian languages to be in the neighborhood at the right time to also occupy Greece and provide pre-Greek toponyms of apparent Anatolian convention, and also, apparently at a time of gene flow of ancestry and Y-DNA haplotypes come into the Aegean, apparently from Anatolia. Joining the dots, probably they are speaking Anatolian languages.

I have heard alternative ideas, that Hurrian is the common element between pre-IE Anatolia, Greece, Crete, and even Italy, and this might make sense of the CHG and J2, but frankly it is even more far fetched.

Earlier I asked:

“ If they are an intrusive element (highly likely in context) that, alternatively, simply adopted Greek from the natives, well, what did they speak beforehand? And why change? ”

and your reply:

"It really depends on their number and position. If it’s minor and nonruling; then they have to adopt to the language of their hosts ;‘unless they want to starve."

and

"They could’ve been some centum dialect of Indo European in the Balkans. I see no problem with potential multiple waves of Indo Europeans arriving into South East Europe"

So, the Grave Circle inhabitants are intrusive elements with apparent clear ties to the steppe and Carpathian regions, but are they originally Greek-speaking or did they speak Greek because this is what their new subjects spoke?

Linear A is of course not Greek, but is found in some places in mainland Greece (Mycenae, Tiryns, Laconia), presumably because Middle Minoans and southern Middle Helladic people could understand one another (and extends to Cyclades). I'd have to guess this is the language family that proto-Greeks encountered in the Peloponnese.

LGK said...

@Rob

"They’re in fact very different
Mainland Greece at this time was comparitively undeveloped and in turmoil. Seems like a opportunities for and / or result of invasions"

Middle Helladic marks beginning of a new period, whether it is characterized by periods of disruption or not. If, like me, you characterize it as marking entrance of a new population at its start (2200-2000BC) and the violent invasion of yet another at the terminal end (Grave Circle people by 1600-1500s) this is hardly surprising.

Rob said...

@ LGK

I see what’s happening here. You’re confusing yourself due to your own assumptions
So when I said - “ It really depends on their number and position. If it’s minor and nonruling; then they have to adopt to the language of their hosts ;‘unless they want to starve.”

I’m talking about your presumed R1-something migrants. I wasn’t referring to the actual elites from the Mycenaean graves which remain to be tested.
In my mind the 2 are not necessarily synonymous.
Again, in the above two example the R1b appear as commoners.


LGK said...

@Rob

Go back and read the posts, it is easily inferred from your response you are talking about grave circles people (since this is a direct reply to me talking about them).
We'll see what the Grave Circle or close equivalent Y-DNA turns out to be. I will stake my bet on the former's close material similarities with steppe/Carpathian items and other burial peculiarities.

There doesn't need to be an archaeologically visible invasion horizon, burned layers, for Greeks/Mycenaeans taking power, they don't have to besiege and raze cities to the ground in order to control strategic sites. Their mere presence as foreigners is intrusive, and I assume they did not get all that gold by the pure generosity of the Middle Helladic natives, it was paid for one way or another. Unsurprisingly in following centuries the known Greek-speaking Mycenaeans prove to be highly aggressive in expansion and overseas activity.

Of course there is no change in Minoan Crete at 1600, the Greeks are not there yet. This is not a premise I ever suggested. Talk about clueless!

Rob said...


Blogger Rob said...
@ LGK

“ invasions
Middle Helladic marks beginning of a new period, whether it is characterized by periods of disruption or not. If, like me, you characterize it as marking entrance of a new population at its start (2200-2000BC) and the violent invasion of yet another at the terminal end (Grave Circle people by 1600-1500s) this is hardly surprising.


Your views are unsubstantiated .

This is what Aegeanists think- Eg Fitzgerald

“Strong evidence for the emergence of a new privileged class in the Argolid appearstowards the end of the Middle Helladic period with the appearance of two small groups of burials (Grave Circles A and B) dug into the midst of the Prehistoric Cemetery (Alden 2000) that spread northwest from the hilltop upon which the later palace at Mycenae would be erected (Fig. 5.1). The most visible indication of the newfound prosperity of these emerging elite can be found in the quantity and quality of tomb contents (e.g. Voutsaki 1995; Voutsaki 2001), the origin of which has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Early attempts to identify the occupants of the shaft graves as foreign intruders (e.g. Hammond 1967, Muhly 1979; Diamant 1988) have been dismissed in favor of arguments that stress an indigenous development. Indeed, despite the obvious escalation in material and symbolic wealth they signify, the range of funerary offerings deposited with these burials, as well as the form of the shaft grave itself, appear to be strongly rooted in the native MH tradition (e.g. Dickinson 1984; Hägg 1984, 120; Dickinson 1989, 132; Voutsaki 1999). There is, therefore, little reason to doubt that the occupants of the shaft graves, rather than representing an intrusive foreign element, were drawn from the local population(s) which had inhabited the region for generations.
Similarly, while the preponderance of military equipment in the burial assemblages and the prevalence of martial iconography in much of the artwork have led some to suggest that these grave goods represent booty acquired through the subjugation of distant lands, the absence of evidence for violent destructions in the Aegean during the later MB and early LB periods and the apparent lack of any logistical sophistication on the part of the mainlanders at this time makes it unlikely that these objects were acquired exclusively or primarily through conquest (e.g. Voutsaki 1999, 103). “

Your view of minoans is also incorrect . There 2200 BC marks no break in Crete; just a status quo
The mainland & Crete are therefore completely different

I’d say the chances of your model panning out are 0 %

Rob said...

@ Vlad
You also have a rather vivid imagination

LGK said...

@Rob

These people are sadly in a bit of denial.
Yes of course the shaft graves are going to incorporate some local "MH" elements. These are not guys that jumped off a boat direct from the Don or Volga, probably they have penetrated and acculturated through more northern parts of Greece for several generations.

It is much harder to explain why they have very steppe/Carpathian specific items and peculiarities without incorporating a direct link.

Either way, aDNA will have the final say (probably) so there is no point speculating beyond this, you and I fundamentally disagree on what the nature of these graves mean wrt. their heritage and that is ok.

In your deleted post, you said no break at 1600 in Minoan Crete, which I have addressed above. I will assume it was a mistake of confusion.
~2000BC in Crete marks the beginning of the real Palatial period, and also Cretan hieroglyphs (hieroglyphs also link Crete and Anatolia through the Cyclades). No destructions, but hardly a status quo. The nature of change is different but it is uncanny that changes occur at the same time on the mainland and on Crete, followed by communication between the two via Linear A language later on.

I assume the J2 "Anatolian" migrants were better received on Crete because this is the beginning of the best days the Minoans ever saw.

Rob said...

I meant to say there is a break in Crete after 1600 BC; not 2000 BC
2000 Bc is again, an evolution

If the archaeologists are wrong, One still cannot deny that the major disruptions in the mainland are 2200 BC
As for carpathian links; I’m all for it and have said several times

But in lieu of speculating; if you or anyone wishes to impress me- incorporate the data we do have into a scenario

Anonymous said...

A said..

"Probably has something to do with the fact that they carved horse heads on the prow of their ships, rather than wooden horses travelling on ships. The wooden horse story might be about a ship with a horse-head prow."

No, it was depicted as a horse on a ship, not a horse's head.
As the source says, it's a wooden horse on a ship https://i.ibb.co/XkJFn3P/image.png
A wooden horse is certainly a metaphor for comparing a chariot to a ship.

In general, the Greeks worshipped horses, everyone was called by name. The Mycenae treated chariots as limousines, carefully described their condition, repairs and all breakdowns.

Mycenae chariot attack
https://i.ibb.co/zZSYGdL/image.png


@Vladimir
"All this suggests that the middle helladic period is R1b-Z2103, migrating from the steppes kotakombnye culture. the Hittites could enter Anatolia through the Caucasus, for example, the Alazano-Beden culture, Trialet culture."

Don't fantasize, there's no such data. There's nothing to say for that. Nothing connects the Hittites-Luwians/Anatolia to the Catacomb culture.

LGK said...

@Rob

I don't have the know-how for the genetic side of things to do so, I admit freely, I welcome anyone else better equipped to do so.
Either way I'd guess actually direct dated southern Greek MH samples from the early phases, and the same from Crete 2200-1400BC, are necessities in working this out.

Anonymous said...

@Rob "Eg Fitzgerald"

Who told you Eg Fitzgerald's opinion was correct? He's just a man who is wrong because he is biased. He is one person, and the overwhelming number of scientists do not agree with him, and if we talk about the number, the loud autochthonists are now just in the minority, they just like to be defeated by categorical untruthful terms like "have been dismissed in favor of arguments that stress an indigenous development", it is just wishful thinking.

A said...

Penner: figures, maps etc:

https://www.docdroid.net/RfWjAtC/penner-plates-1-25-pdf
https://www.docdroid.net/9O3eOCI/penner-plates-26-62-pdf

Aram said...

Saying that East Armenia is periphereal is wrong.
Araratian plain is the largest plain in Arm Highland and the most important source of food.
Not surprisingly after Urartu the capital was transfered in East Armenia and remains there till now.

And those Lchashen people genes are still in Armenia.
Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.2783% / 0.01278271
54.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
25.4 ARM_LBA
20.4 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
0.0 BGR_IA
0.0 BGR_MLBA

Onur Dincer said...

@Aram

Not sure why you repeat your comment from yesterday to which I already replied yesterday.

In case you missed it, here is my reply again:

Saying that East Armenia is periphereal is wrong.

It is too early to make such an inference as we currently lack ancient genomes from the parts of Greater Armenia within the boundaries of modern-day Turkey. Maybe the Bronze Age genomes from there will turn out to be genetically closer to the modern Armenians than the Bronze Age genomes from the territories of modern-day Republic of Armenia are, we just do not know. What we know is that most of historic Armenia lies within the eastern territories of modern-day Turkey and those territories have played the biggest part in Armenian history, so it is very likely that the Armenian genepool largely took its current shape in there. The ancient genomes from the Republic of Armenia so far do not contradict this prediction, in fact, they are one of the main reasons I make such a prediction.

Araratian plain is the largest plain in Arm Highland and the most important source of food.
Not surprisingly after Urartu the capital was transfered in East Armenia and remains there till now.


The Armenian kingdoms in historic Armenia changed their capital several times in history and some of them were within the boundaries of the modern Republic of Turkey and some within the boundaries of the modern Republic of Armenia (most of them in the former). Personally it does matter for me where they are located as those territories were then both populated and ruled by Armenians and this is what really matters historically.

And those Lchashen people genes are still in Armenia.
Target: Armenian
Distance: 1.2783% / 0.01278271
54.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
25.4 ARM_LBA
20.4 IRN_Hasanlu_IA
0.0 BGR_IA
0.0 BGR_MLBA


I am sure many modern Armenians have some descent from that Lchashen population too, among others. My main objection was to the claim of 4000-year genetic isolation rather than continuity. Shape of genepools can change over the millennia, but that does not necessarily contradict large degree of genetic continuity (e.g., see the well-researched Iberian and Latium cases).

Vladimir said...

@Archie

HRONE-LIKE ARMCHAIRS AND WAGONS IN THE BRONZE AGE СULTURES OF THE CIRCUMPONTIC AREA
Gey A. N.

The recent discovery of two wagons and an unusual chair looking like an armchair attributed to the Novotitorovka culture (grave 21, kurgan 4, Mezhkirpilsky I burial ground in the steppe Kuban region), and likely analogies to this find in the Yamnaya and Catacomb assemblages from the Black Sea maritime steppes and the Fore-Caucasus as well as the Bedeni culture in Georgia raise the issue of emergence of a special, prestigious form of the funerary rite with the use of two wagons and an armchair that looks like a throne. Likely replicas have been found further to the south in Mesopotamia (the Ur cemetery). A special cult of the throne existed among the Hittites; for example, two wagons and a throne feature in the Hittite kingly funerary rite is known from written sources. The chronological priority of such finds in the Novotitorovka culture (2900-2800 СalBC) regarding kurgan 3 of Ananauri (2400 CalBC) attributed to the Bedeni culture, and, in particular, Hittite tablets dating to 2000 BC argues in favor of development of this rite among the steppe kurgan cultures with its subsequent dissemination in the South Caucasus and Anatolia. This fact is interesting for reconstruction of social processes in various Bronze Age cultures as well as clarification of the routes via which speakers of Indo-European dialects penetrated the Anatolia-Mesopotamia region.

https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=42749320

Aram said...

Onur
Claims of 4000 year continuity are not interesting for me. What is important to me is that the assumption that all Lchashen Metsamor people died is very wrong.

Their Y dba is still in Armenia. I2c2 reaches highest level in one East Armenia group not western. And the only source if steppe ancestry are them.

As for aDNa from East Turkey. Off course they will be close to modern Armenians but there will not be identic imho. In reality I expect some surprising results.

Aram said...

Rob

Honestly I2c2 is a puzzle.
What I know that he is not from Anatolia. He has clear evidence of contact with Lola culture.
Also it is very unlikely that he came after 1500bc.
Anyway I am sure it is a Proto Armenian marker of Euro Neolithic origin.

Aram said...

Those who understand Russian can listen the interview of Badalyan who speaks about the Etiunian origin of Armenians. Etiuni is associated with Lchashen Metsamor culture.
Badalyan is the director of Erebuni museum.

https://youtu.be/MzulGFZL6QQ

Rob said...

@ LGK

Bottom line is Anatolian influences came in 2500 BC; not 2200 BC .
In any case; Western Anatolia & the Aegean already had pronounced contact in their local chalcolithic

In 2200 BC, the influences came from the northwest - Cetina & BB spheres
If you don’t understand these basics; you shouldn’t debate perpetually; nor arrogantly call people who know 100x more than you “in denial”


@ Archi

Can you share those scientific studies ?

Anonymous said...

@Vladimir

You claimed otherwise that the Hittites-Luwians come from the Catacomb culture.And the Hittites are also separate from the Trialeti culture. None of this is in your reference, the presence of wagons is not a unique feature of the Trialeti culture, and the thrones are generally associated with Ur. It is about the banal fact of distribution of wagons, not related to Hittites-Luwians, and Novotitarovskaya culture in general was before the Catacomb culture and has nothing to do with it. You're reprinting some trivial facts irrelevant to the case.



Onur Dincer said...

@Aram

Claims of 4000 year continuity are not interesting for me. What is important to me is that the assumption that all Lchashen Metsamor people died is very wrong.

Their extinction is certainly not among my claims. I even have an alternative idea in mind that they might be the Proto-Armenians with recent steppe origin. That might explain their high steppe ancestry compared to the earlier and later populations of their general region.

As for aDNa from East Turkey. Off course they will be close to modern Armenians but there will not be identic imho. In reality I expect some surprising results.

I do not expect genetic identity either, but still I predict that they will turn out to be closer to the modern Armenians than are the Bronze Age populations of the Republic of Armenia.

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