Unmasking AIT

[Husky]

This is actually an important post.



Post 3/3



Excerpts follow. First the summary.



Summary



1. Apparently the steppe is not the home of the Kurgans: 5th millennia BCE (proto-)Kurgans seen in "Leyla-Tepe" in Azerbaijan. I.e. before the steppes. Copper Age.

Q: Why still credit the Ukrainian/Russian Steppes with the Kurgans - i.e. why define "Kurgan theory == Steppe" - when said steppes didn't invent "Kurgan Kultur" (and all that that entails)?



2. Leyla-Tepe in Azerbaijan (Caucasus space) is thought to be predecessor to Maykop (unless Maykop was magically a parallel development?).



3. Finally one reaches Maykop at the Caucasus boundaries to the steppes, which is thought to have influenced Yamnaya to its north. And Maykop already has wheeled carts, note.



From Yamnaya (preferred PIE urheimat of white supremacists) are the bronze age invasions into Europe. <- Note: "Massive Migrations From The Steppe" has so far only used aDNA to explain modern European genetics. Not Indian-Afghan-Iranian, whose steppe origins have only been assumed via the post Yamna steppe cultures "Sintashta" (and Srubnaya or Andronovo).

But Sintashta, where the aDNA found displays "Asian-specific" R1aZ93 Y-Haplogroup dominating the Sintashta culture (a.o.t. Yamna steppe culture which is dominated by R1b) - may well be derived from Maykop and hence explain the difference between Sintashta and Yamna. (They're supposed to be checking aDNA in Maykop. But see note on mtDNA found at Maykop grave site further down.)



4. PIE is argued to trace to Caucasus: i.e. "Caucasus = urheimat, not Steppe".



5. At least one set of researchers (and possible another paper, have only seen the abstract so far) who argue for the Caucasus to be the PIE urheimat seem to insist that not Steppe but Caucasus is the origin for the arrival of "Indo-Iranian" in "C/SW/S Asia" (i.e. Indian-Afghan-Iranian space). INSERT CORRECTION: They seem to speak only of "Indo-Aryan" and "Indians" in "South and Central Asia" as tracing to the Caucasus. They seem to have left out "Indo-Iranian", "Iranian" etc.



Argument provided seems to be of the form that: EHG (IIRC "Eastern European Hunter Gatherers") genetic component at site of Yamnaya culture is not seen in "Indo-Iranians"*, whereas CHG ("Caucasus Hunter Gatherers") component is seen in significant amounts in both Yamnaya AND S/SW/C Asia (i.e. Indo-Afghan space) and that "therefore" IE reached S/SW/C Asia directly from Caucasus rather than via Steppe.



* INSERT CORRECTION: Again, they seem to speak only of "Indo-Aryan" and "Indians" in "South and Central Asia" as tracing to the Caucasus. They seem to have left out "Indo-Iranian", "Iranian" etc.



6. Major whining by white supremacist oryanists since they wanted their EHG component in Yamnaya to be source of R1a/R1b and "therefore PIE" using the logic - oh no, I'm not making this up - that R1a/R1b is the haplogroup that's behind IE success in the form of patriarchy (replacing other Y haplogroups) + women-stealing.



Considering for the moment that Caucasus = PIE Urheimat, then Steppe is not so - obviously - and either R1a/R1b will still be declared the invasion marker, if its presence is demonstrated in the aDNA of the region of the Caucasus under question and from there traced to Maykop and Yamnaya, or - less likely - perhaps something else becomes the "invasion marker".



The Hindoo heathens don't [yet?] win, but it's so much fun to see the Steppe-supremacist IE-ists howl, resorting to special pleading such as "linguistic continuity from EHG Hunter Gatherers era" (i.e. pre-PIE, undermining linguistic arguments) and insisting that EHG* "must be" the sole source R1a/R1b and "hence PIE". Etc.

(* From my limited/laughable understanding EHG is modelled as a group of European Hunter Gatherers who have inputs from "ANE" that Caucasus also is to have received. But not enough Caucasus aDNA may have been tested yet to determine R1a/R1b, I think. At present a now-geographically-restricted G something Y haplogroup seems to dominate some or perhaps large parts of the Caucasus.)



7. Small side note. Apparently a German paper noted that the mtDNA at a grave site in Maykop (in Caucasus - where it meets the steppes - exhibiting Kurgan kultur and which was to have influenced Yamnaya) showed Haplogroup M52. Steppe Supremacist IE-ist gradually got increasingly angry about it after noting that the M52 found at Maykop was "Indian-specific" - =direct quote. IIRC, the Steppe Supremacist first remarked this was merely surprising, but eventually said something about how if M52 and other such "weird" strains that were not attested in Yamnaya were to be found at Maykop hereafter, then he would boycott -I mean- he would consider Maykop did not influence Yamnaya. Or something desperate like that. Whatever he said exactly, he was clearly exasperated. (Did I mention he sounded pretty anti-Indian/Afghan/Iran in general since clearly he feels he's competing for the PIE Urheimat and the origins of "whiteness". Sad.)



Steppe Supremacists are way worse - being white supremacists - than people who are pontificating a Caucasus urheimat and contemplate a Caucasus-direct route to "C/SW/S Asia".

Although I'm not a fan of any IE-ism - especially when we haven't even yet seen aDNA from Indo-Afghan-Iranian space - at least the Caucasus-PIE type of IE-ists don't seem to yet articulate the sorts of B-fantasy visions of "Oryans (white people) thundering down and wife-stealing" the way Steppe-PIE Supremacists have. I may be wrong in my assessment however.



8. Small side-note. One Mariya Ivanova argues for Iranian origins to Maykop.



9. Smaller side-note still. Regular knowledgeable but *western* people - who notably at least use remarkable common sense in their arguments unlike their Steppe PIE nutters disputants - moreover are seen arguing Iranian origins for goat-domestication, pastoralism and burial rites/kurgans (don't forget wheeled carts) - i.e. all things the Steppe proponents were claiming for themselves - as a *precursor* to Leyla-Tepe. I.e. they're essentially saying "PIE" kultur is Iranian and by all others' arguments these trademark PIE kultur features go with the IE language. So essentially these *western* people are arguing - and not from white supremacism or the sudden oryan/white-wannabe-ism of some Iranians - that Iran=PIE urheimat (despite such western people not touching on the linguistic matter - not telling stories about it - and instead sticking to attested "Kurgan culture" features and continuity from Iran/C Asia).



+ Some *western* people were contemplating - almost arguing for - Afghanistan as Urheimat using the work of Joanna Nichols, whom Dhu has often summarised.

+ And one person even used the arguments of Robin Kar Bradley (also brought up by Dhu) - yes that Robin Kar Bradley, who argued that IVC=origins of western civilisation - to make an argument for Iran/Afghanistan as source of pastoral-nomadic culture and agriculture into steppe:

IIRC Bradley's argument of a radial distribution of outward pastoral then inward agricultural dispersal of the civilisation, but remixed for an Iranian or else Afghan PIE. (See arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2015/09/robin-bradley-kar-on-proto-indo-european.html. <- Credits: This last link found on Bharat Rakshak when googling for something about Kar Bradley recently.)







Anyway, the supporting data:



1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyla-Tepe_culture

Leyla-Tepe culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The Leyla-Tepe culture of ancient Azerbaijan belongs to the Chalcolithic era. It got its name from the site in the Agdam district. Its settlements were distributed on the southern slopes of Central Caucasus, mostly in Agdam District, from 4350 until 4000 B.C.



Monuments of the Leyla-Tepe were first located in the 1980s by I.G. Narimanov, a Soviet archaeologist. Recent attention to the monuments has been inspired by the risk of their damage due to the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the South Caucasus pipeline.



Characteristics and influences



The Leyla-Tepe culture is also attested at Boyuk Kesik, and Poylu, Agstafa (in the lower layers of these settlements). The inhabitants apparently buried their dead in ceramic vessels.[1] Similar amphora burials in the South Caucasus are found in the Western Georgian Jar-Burial Culture, that is mostly of much later date.



Among the sites associated with this culture, the Soyugbulag kurgans or barrows are of special importance.[2] The excavation of these kurgans demonstrated an unexpectedly early date of such structures on the territory of Azerbaijan. They were dated to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC.[3]



The culture has also been linked to the north Ubaid period monuments,[4] in particular, with the settlements in the Eastern Anatolia Region (Arslantepe, Coruchu-tepe, Tepechik, etc.).



Other sites belonging to the same culture in the Karabakh valley of Azerbaijan are Chinar-Tepe, Shomulu-Tepe, and Abdal-Aziz-Tepe.



The settlement is of a typical Western-Asian variety, with the dwellings packed closely together and made of mud bricks with smoke outlets.



It has been suggested that the Leyla-Tepe were the founders of the Maykop culture.



An expedition to Syria by the Russian Academy of Sciences revealed the similarity of the Maykop and Leyla-Tepe artifacts with those found recently while excavating the ancient city of Tel Khazneh I, from the 4th millennium BC.[5]





Metalwork



The appearance of Leilatepe tradition’s carriers in the Caucasus marked the appearance of the first local Caucasian metallurgy. This is attributed to migrants from Uruk, arriving around 4500 BCE.[6]



Leilatepe metalwork tradition was very sophisticated right from the beginning, and featured many bronze items. Yet later, the quality of metallurgy declined with the Kura–Araxes culture.[7]

2. On Maykop:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maykop_culture

Culture



Its inhumation practices were characteristically Indo-European, typically in a pit, sometimes stone-lined, topped with a kurgan (or tumulus). Stone cairns replace kurgans in later interments.



The Maykop kurgan was extremely rich in gold and silver artifacts; unusual for the time.



The Maykop culture (also spelled Maikop, Majkop), ca. 3700 BC—3000 BC,[1] was a major Bronze Age archaeological culture in the Western Caucasus region of Southern Russia.



[...]

Iranian Origins



A more recent suggestion, by Mariya Ivanova, [8] is the Maikop origins were on the Iranian Plateau:



"Graves and settlements of the 5th millennium BC in North Caucasus attest to a material culture that was related to contemporaneous archaeological complexes in the northern and western Black Sea region. Yet it was replaced, suddenly as it seems, around the middle of the 4th millennium BC by a “high culture” whose origin is still quite unclear. This archaeological culture named after the great Maikop kurgan showed innovations in all areas which have no local archetypes and which cannot be assigned to the tradition of the Balkan-Anatolian Copper Age. The favoured theory of Russian researchers is a migration from the south originating in the Syro-Anatolian area, which is often mentioned in connection with the socalled “Uruk expansion”. However, serious doubts have arisen about a connection between Maikop and the Syro-Anatolian region. The foreign objects in the North Caucasus reveal no connection to the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris or to the floodplains of Mesopotamia, but rather seem to have ties to the Iranian plateau and to South Central Asia. Recent excavations in the Southwest Caspian Sea region are enabling a new perspective about the interactions between the “Orient” and Continental Europe. On the one hand, it is becoming gradually apparent that a gigantic area of interaction evolved already in the early 4th millennium BC which extended far beyond Mesopotamia; on the other hand, these findings relativise the traditional importance given to Mesopotamia, because innovations originating in Iran and Central Asia obviously spread throughout the Syro-Anatolian region independently thereof"

"Innovations originating in Iran and C-Asia spread throughout the Syro-Anatolian region" presumably still talking about 4th millennium BCE.



3. Harvard claims Oceania is the new Eurasia. (Orwell 1984 reference)

I mean: Researchers declare Causasus is the new PIE Urheimat AND - as I understand it - argue that "Indo-Iranian" went directly from Caucasus into C/SW/S Asia. (Actually, they specifically mention "Indians". Not sure about Iranians? <- Interesting #1)



EDITED: Although this article is from start DEC 2014, while Haak et al (submitted end DEC 2014, pub Feb 2015) and more importantly Mathieson et al were published in 2015 with sampled aDNAs from the steppes including Sintashta,

the argument is still that that there's no EHG (Eastern European Hunter Gatherer or something) genetic component in Indians and Armenians.



news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/12/the-surprising-origins-of-europeans/

The surprising origins of Europeans

Researchers discuss new theories on human migration revealed by sophisticated DNA tests

December 3, 2014 | Editor's Pick



[...]

On Tuesday, geneticists from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT highlighted those evolving techniques and talked about recent findings that revealed that a previously unknown group made a major contribution to the gene pool of modern Europeans and Native Americans. They also discussed the result of preliminary investigations that suggest that an ancient civilization located between the Black and Caspian seas (which geography implies Caucasus region, in my understanding) may have created a major group of modern languages, spanning English, German, Russian, Urdu, Punjabi, and Hindi.



[...]



Patterson said that linguistic evidence has tracked the ancestral language, called “late proto-Indo-European” to about 3,500 years ago in the Caucasus, among a people who had wheeled vehicles at a time when they were just being put into use.



Genetic evidence ruled out one likely related group in the region, the Yamnaya, because their DNA showed the group had hunter-gatherer ancestry, which is inconsistent with the fact that two Indo-European groups, Armenians and Indians, don’t share it, Patterson said. That made Patterson look south, to the Maikop civilization, which likely had significant contact with the Yamnaya, as a plausible culture where Indo-European languages originated. Samples have been obtained from Maikop burial sites, but the DNA work to test that proposal is pending, Patterson said.



Such testing is dependent on sophisticated techniques, Reich said. When DNA can be extracted from bones found at burial sites, most of it actually is microbial DNA from the organisms that have colonized the bones since its owners’ death. In addition, researchers have to be careful that samples aren’t contaminated by handling after they are unearthed.



Reich’s lab uses a technique that targets 390,000 sites of variation on the human genome, extracts them from background DNA, and allows them to generate genome-wide data.



“A lot of it is microbial. Typically only 1 percent comes from the individual whose bone it was,” Reich said.

David Anthony may not be happy.



Important to remember, so repeating:

Haak et al's 2015 paper (includes David Anthony) - which was "Posted in Feb 2015" - about Massive Bronze Migrations from the Steppes, concerned Steppe genetic diffusion into Europe onlee (not Hindu homeland or Iranian space*). And this steppe diffusion into Europe was then of course tied with IE language diffusion into Europe, since if white supremacists' idols/"ancestors" - the PIE Oryans - do the migrating, then genes & language always go together.



* Which they only hypothesised/concluded from the usual assumpton of AIT, without having even analysed any let alone sufficient aDNA from "SW, C/SC, S Asia" i.e. India-Afghan-Iran space.



4. Going by the abstract alone, this next paper from July 2015 seems to confirm the above Harvard postulation.

Specifically: going by the way the following abstract lists the CHG (Caucasus Hunter Gatherer genetic component) going into Yamnaya Steppe Culture separately from their mentioning of the CHG component in "C/S Asia", it seems to further be arguing for "Indo-Aryan" languages going from Caucacus directly to "central and south Asia". Interesting that they mention "Indo-Aryan" not "Indo-Iranian" though... (<- Interesting #2)



nature.com/ncomms/2015/151116/ncomms9912/full/ncomms9912.html

Jones et al, "Upper Palaeolithic genomes reveal deep roots of modern Eurasians" (dated as "Received 20 July 2015")



We extend the scope of European palaeogenomics by sequencing the genomes of Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,300 years old, 1.4-fold coverage) and Mesolithic (9,700 years old, 15.4-fold) males from western Georgia in the Caucasus and a Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,700 years old, 9.5-fold) male from Switzerland. While we detect Late Palaeolithic–Mesolithic genomic continuity in both regions, we find that Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) belong to a distinct ancient clade that split from western hunter-gatherers ~45 kya, shortly after the expansion of anatomically modern humans into Europe and from the ancestors of Neolithic farmers ~25 kya, around the Last Glacial Maximum. CHG genomes significantly contributed to the Yamnaya steppe herders who migrated into Europe ~3,000 BC, supporting a formative Caucasus influence on this important Early Bronze age culture. CHG left their imprint on modern populations from the Caucasus and also central and south Asia possibly marking the arrival of Indo-Aryan languages.

5. 2015 Paper (in German, haven't read it myself)



academia.edu/16867978/2015_Der_Kaukasus_im_Spannungsfeld_zwischen_Osteuropa_und_Vorderem_Orient_Dialog_der_Kulturen_Kultur_des_Dialoges_im_Gedenken_an_den_140._Geburtstag_von_Alexander_A._Miller_Materialien_der_Internationalen_Fachtagung_Humboldt-Kolleg_In_Germany_English_and_Russian_



"2015 Der Kaukasus im Spannungsfeld zwischen Osteuropa und Vorderem Orient: Dialog der Kulturen, Kultur des Dialoges (im Gedenken an den 140. Geburtstag von Alexander A. Miller): Materialien der Internationalen Fachtagung/Humboldt-Kolleg (In Germany, English and Russian)"



The following excerpt was mentioned as being from p.166:

Majkop verfügen sowohl über eine «paläolithische» Haplogruppe (U8) als auch über «neolithische» Haplogruppen: V (Недолужко u. a. 2014), T2, N1. Bei einem Objekt aus einem Grab bei der Staniza Novosvobodnaja fanden wir auch die Haplogruppe М52. Die gewonnenen Daten sprechen für eine (auf dem Niveau der mitochondrialen DNA) mögliche genetische Gemeinschaft der archäologischen Kulturen von Majkop und Novosvobodnaja.

Translation (don't sue me for errors, I'm doing this as a free service):

Maykop possesses a paleolithic haplogroup (U8) as well as neolithic haplogroups: V (Недолужко u. a. 2014), T2, N1. At/near an object from a grave at Staniza Novosvobodnaya, we also found the Haplogroup M52. The information obtained speaks of a (at the level of mitochondrial DNA) possible genetic community of the archaeological cultures of Maykop and Novosbodnaya.

And the discovery of mtDNA Haplogroup M52 at Maykop located on Caucasus-Steppe threshold - CORRECTION: at the "genetic community connection" Novosvobodnaya grave site, but immediately inferred by others to be inclusive of Maykop's own genetic make-up - made a Steppe White Supremacist geneticist blogger unhappy: he stated it was "Indian-specific". (And IIRC implied it was not present in all the many aDNA samples retrieved from Yamnaya/steppe sites. Relevant because: Yamnaya was influenced by Maykop.)



And so because the presence of "Indian-specific" mtDNA M52 at a grave site at Novosvobodnaya culturally associated with Maykop is apparently bugging a Steppe White supremacist geneticist, I take it as a possibly important and certainly good thing.



But soon we'll hear how Oryan PIE-ists from the Caucasus went to steal themselves some wives in India. :Any minute now:



[Oh duh, I just missed how the title on the paper says "In Germany, English and Russian", presumably it's already been translated by professionals (?).]





6. For general information on the "revolutionary" new ways of testing DNA extracted from skeletal material at burial sites:



news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/12/the-surprising-origins-of-europeans/

Such testing is dependent on sophisticated techniques, Reich said. When DNA can be extracted from bones found at burial sites, most of it actually is microbial DNA from the organisms that have colonized the bones since its owners’ death. In addition, researchers have to be careful that samples aren’t contaminated by handling after they are unearthed.



Reich’s lab uses a technique that targets 390,000 sites of variation on the human genome, extracts them from background DNA, and allows them to generate genome-wide data.



“A lot of it is microbial. Typically only 1 percent comes from the individual whose bone it was,” Reich said.

This was actually an important post.





ADDED: Corrections, in blue.