The topic of Homo Sapiens origins is not directly related to our group main subject. But few remarks can be useful for better understanding the whole picture.

 The topic of Homo Sapiens origins is not directly related to our group main subject. But few remarks can be useful for better understanding the whole picture.

Ancient DNA confirmed that Homo Sapiens the modern humans were related to Neanderthals. They were two sister species (or subspecies ) ultimately stemming from the same common ancestor. Homo erectus. Geneticians have found another parallel species that they labeled Denisovan. We learned about Denisovans thanks to ancient DNA studies otherwise few bones were not permitting to classify them.

Now the most surprising result of genetic studies is that modern Africans have virtually no ancestry from Neanderthals and Denisovan. Only modern Eurasians do have. And whatever Africans do have is a result of recent back migration from Eurasia.

This complicates the whole story of human origins. Because the Homo Erectus was already present in Eurasia already 2 million ago ( Dmanisi site in Georgia ) and nothing forbids us to imagine that the forementioned three daughter species ( modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovand) of hominids formed in Eurasia from the intermediate Homo heidelbergensis.

Nevertheless the phylogenetic trees of Y dna and mtdna still support the African origins of modern humans. The haplogroups A and B are found exclusively in Africa.

David Reich speaks about this contradictions in his book and in this interview.

Apparently the origins of humans was a more complicated story than just a simple out of Africa model. It's possible that deep origins of humans are in Eurasia. Then 400-500 thousands ago they moved to Africa and reexpanded from there 100 thousands years ago.

This by the way is the reason that some caution is needed when speaking about the origins of some old and large haplogroups like the E.

Obviously more research is needed to clarify those subjects.

Paeonians Y DNA from ancient North Macedonia

Ancient Iron Age Y DNA from modern North Macedonia. Two outliers are not included. Based on Lazaridis 2022 paper data.

Those people were known as Paeonians in Greek records. G2, C1 and J2a-Z6055 are from Neolithic period. R1b is from Yamnaya. The E1b is V13 related to Thracian expansion from Carpathian Mountains around 1000BC.

Based on this data Paeonians were less likely to be related to Illyrians, given the absence of J2b-L283. They were probably related to Phrygian and ancient Macedonians. A connection with Thracians is also possible but less likely.

An obsolete theory proposed a Paei> Hai shift to prove a migration of Proto Armenians from Balkans. But now we know that it was a wrong theory.

In any case Armenian and Paeonians are related to each other as part of Indo-European family. Also based on shared Neolithic ancestry from genetic point of view.

See also

• Mycenaean Greek Y DNA from continental part of Greece and a Minoan Y DNA from Crete

The haplogroup G

 The haplogroup G is the third most frequent in Armenia after R1b and J2.

G was prominent in early Neolithic farmers, especially in those that moved to Europe. Despite its popularity in West Caucasus Rootsie 2012 analyzed the modern diversity of G and made this conclusion about its homeland.

..by evaluating 1472 haplogroup G chromosomes belonging to 98 populations ranging from Europe to Pakistan. Although no basal G-M201* chromosomes were detected in our data set, the homeland of this haplogroup has been estimated to be somewhere nearby eastern Anatolia, Armenia or western Iran, the only areas characterized by the co-presence of deep basal branches as well as the occurrence of high sub-haplogroup diversity. ...

In the last decade ancient DNA supported this homeland theory with a slight shift to more southern regions toward Fertile Crescent.

Three branches are frequent in Armenia.

• G2a2b-M406 more than 3.5%
• G2a2b-P303 around 3%
• G2a2a-PF3147 around 2.5%
  

Other branches are less frequent.

• G2a1
• G1 prominent in Hamshen Armenians
• G2b - The genetic history 
• Over time there will be reviews about those branches.