search this blog
Showing posts with label Neolithic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neolithic. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Did South Caspian hunter-fishers really migrate to Eastern Europe?
The idea that most of the Near Eastern-related ancestry in the ancient populations of the Pontic-Caspian (PC) steppe is, one way or another, sourced from the territory of present-day Iran is a fairly popular one nowadays (for instance, see here). It might turn out to be correct, once there are enough relevant samples to test it properly, but in my opinion the chances of this are slim.
My skepticism is based on literally hours of analyses with the currently available ancients from the Caucaso-Caspian region, like, for instance, the admixture graphs below featuring foragers and early farmers from Russia, Georgia and Iran. The relevant qpGraph and dot files are available here.
Note that the further I move away from Eastern Europe in these graphs when looking for the source of the southern ancestry in the Eneolithic population from the southernmost part of the PC steppe (Piedmont_En), the more difficult it is for me to create a statistically sound model. What might this tell us about the provenance of this so called southern ancestry?
See also...
The PIE homeland controversy: August 2019 status report
Some myths die hard
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)


