Iranic Genomes Project posted this abstract on Twitter. I need to find out the origin, If you find the link please post it in the comments.
11 ancient individuals from the Seleucid-Parthian era (~300 BCE - 200 CE) from North Iran (Mazandaran, Gilan, Semnan provinces)
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| ★: Seleucid-Parthian new sites 🟣: Tepe Hissar Chalcolithic-Bronze age Base Map Credit: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) |
New paper - Paul Heggarty et al. ,Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages.Science381,eabg0818(2023).DOI:10.1126/science.abg0818
*Note, in the paper the authors use dates in BP (before present) where present = 2000 CE. While I appreciate the strictly secular nomenclature, I prefer BCE dates as they are easier to comprehend for my brain (for now). So I convert these into BCE by subtracting 2000. eg. 6000 BP = 4000 BCE. Do keep this in mind while reading. Thank you.
This paper's Bayesian phylogenetic inference analysis is based on a new improved database (IE - CoR 1.0). The IE‑CoR 1.0 database contains data on relationships of cognacy (shared word origin) between 161 Indo-European languages in a reference set of 170 basic meanings. The new languages include the Nuristani branch, extinct Iranic languages from central Asia and a representative of sub-branches of Celtic which was missing from previous databases (Gaulish). The coverage prioritizes non-modern languages, providing a deeper phylogenetic signal and better chronological estimation. This database was contributed by 80 experts of different language sub-families to maximize data accuracy.
The authors state they improved the cognate encoding (keeping 1 lexeme for each cognate set rather than many synonyms used in previous databases which created lots of cognate sets per lexeme. This, for example, artificially elongated the branch length of modern Greek and the age of old Greek). The IE-CoR data set has highly consistent counts of cognate sets across all languages, very close to the target of 1 cognate set per meaning, per language. They also removed the constraints previously placed on ancient languages to be directly ancestral to modern languages which need not be the case. This previously forced 0 branch length (and therefore no divergence), simply forced the changes onto the next branch and elongated branch lengths artificially.
The database also solves the loanword problem in computational cladistics. "IE-CoR introduced the concept of loanword event, through which it has become possible to encode correctly both non-cognacy to the source lexeme, and subsequent cognacy between vertical descendants of that lexeme, once borrowed and fully integrated into the borrower language."
The IE-Cor database can be found here https://iecor.clld.org/
Heggarty et al reaffirm the position of the earliest Indo-European speakers in the south of the Caucasus around ~6100 BCE. They support a hybrid model in which the steppe was a secondary staging ground for European languages. Notably, the beginning of the split from Indo-Iranian into Indo-Aryan and Iranic is dated to ~3500 BCE, a finding wholly incompatible with the Andronovo hypothesis.
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| DensiTree final output of the paper shows the probability distribution of various topologies. Orphan branches are sampled ancient languages in the database (some examples in red and yellow box markers) |
Yu, He, 2022, "Paleogenomics of Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers", https://doi.org/10.17617/3.Y1KJMF, Edmond, V2
The dataset for the above paper is available, but the paper/preprint is not. One of the samples is TTK001
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| Tutkaul, Sarazm, Khvalynsk locations |
qpAdm on this sample revealed that they possessed mainly ANE ancestry with additional Iran Neolithic component.
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| 12 metre Buddha in Nirvana: Ajina Tepe, Tajikistan 6th - 7th Century CE) |
I was going through the paper by Guarino-Vignon et al (2022) again and was struck by some very good insights. The paper is titled "Genetic continuity of Indo-Iranian speakers since the Iron Age in southern Central Asia".
The paper studies the modern Tajik and Yaghnobi people of Tajikistan. While the Tajik speak a Persian dialect (Iranian > West Iranian > SW Iranian > Persian > Tajik), the Yaghnobis speak an Eastern Iranian language, a descendant of ancient Sogdian (Iranian > East Iranian > Sogdian > Yaghnobi).
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| कर्ण (karNa), by @zdrava |
In my first post on this topic - 'The True source of steppe ancestry in modern Indians' - I laid out the genetic claim that the best source for steppe in Indians seems to be a sample from the Yaz II Iron Age culture site at Takhirbai 3, Turkmenistan (short name of the sample - TKM_IA), dated to approximately 850 BCE. Based on other archaeological, anthropological, epigraphic and literary evidence which also supported this claim, I proposed that only a post-1000 BCE movement of these 'proto-Śāka' people could explain the steppe ancestry present in modern Indians. The main reason to reject the view that steppe folks came to the core Vedic region (of Punjab, Haryana and East UP) around ~1500 BCE, and gave Indians the Vedic culture and Indo-European languages is the fact that absolutely no archaeological evidence exists to support such a big claim. This difference is important - a post-1000 BCE movement of Iranian-speaking proto-Śāka into India cannot bring the Vedic culture and language. Neither does it match the evidence from Rig Veda, which describes a pre-Iron Age life. Do read that article to understand all the evidence in support of my claim.
In my previous post, I concluded that the steppe ancestry in Indians is most likely to have arrived after 1000 BCE via the East Iranian-speaking Śāka. the ~850 CE TKM_IA sample turned out to be the best steppe source among the options provided.
Since then, a particular commentator on Twitter, who is adamant about the ~1500 BCE invisible steppe invasion into India has been putting alternative viewpoints in support of the old theory favoured by Kurganists.
In his first attempt, he argued for an Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) specific ancestry (Aigyrzhal_BA from Kyrgystan 2000 BCE as the proxy).
@Astra_2310 @DevarajaIndra @razibkhan @agenetics1
— Ummon Karpe | 𑀅𑀫𑀦 𑀓𑀭𑀧𑁂 💎 (@The_Equationist) December 13, 2022
Tl;dr I'm arguing we need bronze age Aigyrzhal, not just Sintashta, to model the steppe ancestry in Indians. Thoughts? https://t.co/7SRF1KwXWs
This post aims to clarify the source of the bronze age steppe ancestry in modern Indians. For this, I have chosen the following targets.
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| Modern targets and their details |
