People frequently ask the same question.

 People frequently ask the same question. Why Armenians score less Steppe than more Southern pops in charts. They are numerous reasons. But the most important is the different baseline used for Armenians (and sometime wrong ) and other Near Eastern pops. Imagine You measure the height of two persons. One stands on the chair and the other on the floor. Who will be higher?

But when You force things with the same baseline things change. I just removed CHG and Anatolian Neo and affiliated to them Central farmer.

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Comparing Armenians, Jews, other Levantines and Iranians.

 Comparing Armenians, Jews, other Levantines and Iranians.

Central farmer calculator. G25 scaled/Fast Mode Yes/Cycles 0.5

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We have discussion about Late Chalcolithic period (4500-3600bc) in Armenia

 We have discussion about Late Chalcolithic period (4500-3600bc) in Armenia. Here an old thread.

Given that the LC period samples from Areni have brides from North we can't see what was the main population living in Armenia in that period. But fortunately we have one Leyla Tepe period sample from SE Azerbaijan.

Here it's closest population.

Distance to: AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LC

0.05500375 Assyrian

0.05532908 Kurdish_Jew

0.05570551 Georgian_Jew

0.05889126 Iranian_Jew

0.05911183 Iraqi_Jew

0.05970955 Georgian_Meskheti

0.06119708 Mountain_Jew

0.06183801 Armenian

Now compare it to preceding Neolithic period.

Distance to: AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LN

0.03104339 Armenian

0.03205364 Turkish_Trabzon

0.03259038 Greek_Trabzon

0.03464551 Armenian_Hemsheni

0.03542676 Armenian_Erzurum

0.03863799 Assyrian

0.03870143 Georgian_Meskheti

0.04121813 Armenian_Syunik

The shift to South in Late Chalcolithic is obvious. This is consistent with archaeologic records that in that period there was a influence from North Mesopotamia. Which introduced Chaff face ware instead of gritstone tempered ware. Also rectangular houses instead of round houses. Jar burials were another feature of this culture.

It must be noted that those Mesopotamian influences are not surprising. In 5th millennia BC it was the culmination of Ubaid culture that started to have influences to all neighbours. For example in Syunik LC Godedzor we have pottery made in Ubaid manner. This offcourse do not mean a direct migration from Mesopotamia like some Georgian scholars who suggested "the so called Uruk people" . But definitely a cultural influence occured.

As for Areni. We still don't know why they have an admixture from North. But it's also visible in archaeology. The occasional presence of shell tempered ware in that cave points to contacts with regions in North. Maybe it was a just trade contact. Maybe something more serious. It must be noted that none of Y dna found there is from North. Only the women MitoDNA.

In 313 AD, the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which accepted Christianity.

In 212 AD Edict of Caracalla, granted Roman citizenship to all free men in Roman Empire. It increased the internal mobility inside the Empire. In 313 AD, the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which accepted Christianity.  We usually discuss about human migrations in language change context. But human migrations also change the culture and occasionally even the religion. We have two papers discussing Imperial Rome period and both shows the same event. In Imperial period there was large inflow from West Asia to the territory of modern Italy. The upcoming paper will confirm this and will pinpoint more precisely the most important source of those migrants. Anatolia.

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""The demographic significance of Anatolia on a Mediterranean-wide scale is further documented by our finding that following the Roman conquest, the Anatolian population remained stable and became the geographic source for much of the ancestry of Imperial Rome itself.""

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One simplistic explanation would be slave deportation but this do not explain why there is no similar shift toward Western Europe ( France, Spain ) or Balkanes which also were a source of slaves. Another more realistic explanation is that we are dealing with economic migration. Skilled craftsmen, paysants, traders, military recruits move to Italy just because they can earn more money there. Those new migrants will introduce new cults via religious preachers searching new adepts. Christianity, Mithraism , Judaism etc.

In the picture below You can see the special affinity of modern Italians to Anatolian BA and CHG.

See also

• Samples of Anatolian/Aegean origin from the Roman empire city Vimminacium in what is now the eastern part of Serbia

 

Let's see other parts of Reich's lecture

 Let's see other parts of Reich's lecture

""Our comprehensive sampling shows that Anatolia received hardly any genetic input from Europe or the Eurasian steppe from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age; this contrasts with Southeastern Europe and Armenia that were impacted by major gene flow from Yamnaya steppe pastoralists.""

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""The impermeability of Anatolia to exogenous migration contrasts with our finding that the Yamnaya had two distinct gene flows, both from West Asia, suggesting that the Indo-Anatolian language family originated in the eastern wing of the Southern Arc and that the steppe served only as a secondary staging area of Indo-European language dispersal. ""

This means that they didn't found any evidence of migration from Steppe to Anatolia via the Balkans. Between the Chalcolithic and Iron Age. This is important because David Anthony and some others proposed a theory about Balkanian migration of proto-Anatolians. This would be the second paper addressing this issue. And it seems his conclusion will repeat the one made in Mathieson et al.

We can safely say that IE Anatolian language were introduced to Anatolia from East. There is simply no alternative to this They label that region with a strange term "Eastern Southern Arc". Whatever You call it would be historic Armenia or South Caucasus. And we can say that IE speach was spoken in Armenia the last 6000 years, from which the 4400 years are the formation and spread of Armenian. Not bad at all even if the IE homeland issue remains unsolved in the near future

Origins of Sumerians

The archaeological culture that is unambiguously related to Sumerians is known as Uruk period (4000-3000bc). Uruk period comes after the Ubaid culture (5500-4000bc)

Unfortunately, we don't have ancient DNA from modern Iraq. But we have data from neighboring regions. Both from West of Iraq and East.

So, let's see Central South Zagros first. It's quite close to Mesopotamia. The samples are from Seh Gebi site and are usually marked as Iran Chl.

The change from Neolithic to Chalcolithic is quite dramatic when compared to distant sources like CHG (63%) and Levant_N (20%). But it is quite unrealistic that there were two distinct migrations from Caucasus and Levant to Central South Zagros. More likely there was just one migration from a place that was between Caucasus and Levant.

Indeed if one use Hajji Firuz Chl (5000bc) from North West of Iran as a source of change then he gets quite good models in G25.

So we can assume that there was a mass migration from North West Iran or probably from North Iraq also to South Zagros sometimes after the Neolithic and before the 4000bc.

I must add that Iran_Chl do not show any evidence of migration from places like Turkmenistan, India or Siberia that has been proposed as possible homelands of Sumerians.

This migration from North is visible in Levant also. Chalcolithic era samples from Israel are close to preceding Neolithic period, but they also show an unambiguous migration from North Mesopotamia.

Target: Levant_ISR_C
Distance: 2.8615% / 0.02861488
81.0 Levant_PPNB
15.6 IRN_Hajji_Firuz_C

3.4 TUR_Anatolia-South_N

Those genetic results are not at all surprising. Because they fit well to the known facts that North Mesopotamian cultures like Halaf and Hassuna were important for the emergence of Ubaid.

Summing up all this. In the current stage of our knowledge the most likely origins of Sumerians are the Northern Iraq region. And maybe even more Northern but not as North to reach lake Van. This is also in accordance with some linguistic data about the relation of Hurrian and Sumerian.

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A chart where one can see what is the difference between Nakh ( Chechen and Ingush ) and other Daghestani people

 A chart where one can see what is the difference between Nakh ( Chechen and Ingush ) and other Daghestani people.

They have lower Steppe than Daghestani !

They have higher CHG than Daghestani.

And more interestingly they have Anatolian Neo ancestry which Daghestani lack ( except Udins who are a special case )

So in sum Nakh people have extra ancestry from a Western and Southern region than their homeland which makes very inlikely any influx from Nakhichevan and Urmia region. Because an influx from there wouldn't increase the CHG.

Interestingly this fits well into Strabo's recount about the origins of Gargareans from Pontic region. Also the high level of J2-CTS900 which is the result of founder effects point toward a western region. Daghestani people for example do not have CTS900. It must be noted that I don't mean the origin of Nakh languages. Because they can be local but the extra non Nakh migrants could have been assimilated into locals creating the Proto - Nakh community that expanded 2000 years ago.

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