Also, not really that related, but today there is a huge ethnic difference between the Stepnyaks of Crimea, and the Mountain/Coastal Tatars. The Mountain/Coastal Tatars have very little East Eurasian ancestry while the Stepnyaks have some of the highest among all non-Siberian Tatars. And, of course, Crimean Tatars are fairly close cousins to the Cumans. Albeit, I've heard the Stepnyaks have Nogai influence, and also that the other Tatars (in the hills and the coast) were more devout Christians
From an old Anthrogenica thread I found:
_
Distance to: Crimean_Tatar_Coast_K13_sim_Avg
0.02794890 Greek_Macedonia:688
0.02992889 Turkish_Rumeli:Turkish_Selanik1
0.03007540 Greek_Izmir:GreecePhokaia60
0.03242397 Ashkenazi_Russia:Ashk_RU_RU_10
0.03285642 Ashkenazi_Belarussia:Ashk_BY_BY_7
_
Distance to: Crimean_Tatar_Mountain_K13_sim_Avg
0.02951013 Turkish_Rumeli:Turkish_Gumulcine1
0.03210498 Turkish_Northwest:Turkish_Northwest2
0.03397035 Turkish_Balikesir:Balikesir16837
0.03730093 Turkish_North:Turkish_North1
0.03869003 Turkish_Balikesir:Balikesir17006
_
Distance to: Tatar_Crimean_steppe:Crimean_steppe1
0.04037849 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka3
0.04352549 Turkmen:TUR013
0.04545680 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka4
0.04778858 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka5
0.05130935 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka6
_
Distance to: Tatar_Crimean_steppe:Crimean_steppe2
0.03176766 Nogai:NOG-125
0.04360489 Uzbek:495_R02C02
0.04401422 Nogai:NOG-129
0.04830810 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka6
0.04837552 Turkmen:TUR028
_
Rumelian Turks are very European, they do have some East Asian but they are genetically close to Balkan Christians
These tables are interesting. I would guess that lowland Tatars have experienced repeated introgression from East Asian types (though not en masse maybe) since they first settled there.
'Rumelian Turks are very European, they do have some East Asian but they are genetically close to Balkan Christians'
I suppose a lot of them (most?) are descended from Byzantine converts to Islam.
Yeah, they are mostly converts, but they also demonstrate how Turkic the early ottomans are. They’re almost as Turanic as many Anatolians despite the rest of their genetic profile being European.
Ahh, interedasting, I didn't weawize the degree of integration the Cumans underwent in Europe!
On the topic of the "Tocharian Hypothesis", I find it rather unlikely for a few reasons:
1. Tocharians were probably not as fair-featured as their Indo-Iranic cousins, and may have gotten their fair features from Sogdians and other Indo-Iranic groups like the Wusun and Yuezhi. Afanasievo men (who probably represent early Tocharians) are very Yamnaya-like with dark hair and eyes (albeit they have some blue-eyed Afanasievo people -- maybe Repin culture has more blue eyes than Yamnaya?) while Andronovo men are like 50% light-haired and light-eyed.
2. Tocharians were not that mobile, they were a desert people mostly. There is certainly Tocharian DNA in Uyghurs and probably to some extent in all Turks but there is a much stronger influence from Iranic tribes like Sogdians and Sarmatians. Modern Tatars in the Volga-Ural region definitlely have high Sarmatian ancestry. Scythians were also a people with a much more similar nomadic pastoral lifestyle and were also fairly heterogenous. The Goths are also a possible component of Cuman DNA, and obviously known for their Blondism. Goths were still around in Crimea by the 17th century, and I think we have a good amount of Turkic samples from late Antiquity and early Medieval which clearly are assimilated Goths.
Chinese described the Cumans as blond too. A Goth overlay is not impossible, but it seems as though the Cumans were blond long before they ever reached the Crimea.
Yes the Coooomans = Tocharians part admittedly holds much that is disputable.
How blond would Central Asian Iranoids like the Sogdians have been by the time the Cuman migration was passing through there? I'd say not very but I could be wrong. That's why I like the Tocharians as the Cuman elite: basically a people inhabiting a sort genetic refugium who are known to have retained a notably fair Europoid phenotype until very late. The testimony of Slavs and German monks that they were blond is not easy to dismiss, unless it was just some kind of unexamined convention.
Also a Tocharian back-migration is very romantik. It seems a terrible shame to accept that they were just bred out, supine in an oriental desert.
The horse-riding thing is a problem too. But were the later Tocharians really not into horses? I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have used them for warfare (I can't be bothered now to look into it), even if they preferred camels(?) for trade etc. For sure all their neighbours would have been mainly cavalrymen.
Still pretty blond. Sogdians were more europoid and more fair-pigmented than modern Pamiris despite being genetically not terribly different. I'm not sure how pure the Tocharians were, they probably had some admixture from nearby peoples just like the Sogdians and I think that they in particular had a lot of influence from their Iranic cousins
"I'm not sure how pure the Tocharians were, they probably had some admixture from nearby peoples just like the Sogdians and I think that they in particular had a lot of influence from their Iranic cousins."
Trve
...possibly including transmission of Iranoid equestrian warfare traditions
E Asian genes there certainly were.
eh maybe the Cuman-Vlachs originated in a splinter group of Bactrians or something from the broader Cuman horde. But that they were Tocharians still seems plausible to me.
Great poast, and interesting idea concerning the possible Tocharian presence. I am certain though that with archaeo-genetics we could learn the truth of the matter. Tocharians are an interesting group of folk.
I was surprised to see that there is more EEF in the Balkanoids. Why would that be? They are right by the steppe? I guess they are also right by Anatolia, where the EEF spread from. HMmmmm
'I am certain though that with archaeo-genetics we could learn the truth of the matter.'
This would be difficult in Romania. As I say above and elsewhere, the ex-aristocracy was done away with by communism. Maybe descendants of the original boyar families could be located in other European countries (a number of them went eg to France I think).
Another problem is the fact that many of the original boyar families went extinct in the male line by the end of the 16th century and were then widely replaced in the 17th and 18th centuries by Ottoman Christians (Kantakuzenos, Mavrokordatos, Ghica, etc) as Turkish control was asserted. So there's very little left of what *might* have been the Cuman/Tocharian/whatever element.
Anyway as you are evidently perceptive enough to understand I am only speculating about the Cuman stuff. I genuinely believe it's plausible but who knows if it's true.
'I was surprised to see that there is more EEF in the Balkanoids. Why would that be? They are right by the steppe? I guess they are also right by Anatolia, where the EEF spread from.'
The Balkans were settled earlier and much more thickly by the EEFs because (1), as you say, it's close to Asia Minor and (2) it's warmer and in the plains there is very fertile land for farming. Even in relatively barren Greece, where the Myceneans were so culturally influential, the Aryan genetic contribution is very small. As you would expect, the Myceneans had more Yamnaya ancestry than the modern Greeks. The same is probably true of the Dacians vs modern Romanians.
Northern Europe (esp Scandinavia and British Isles) is much colder and further from the EEF homeland. By the time they got to Scandinavia there were many fewer of them and their crops wouldn't grow so well there. So the hunter-gatherer strain survived to a much greater extent than it did in the south. In some cases the northern hunter-gatherers took up agriculture much later, with relatively little direct genetic contribution from the EEFs; a lot of the EEF genes in NW Europe came, I think, with the IEs rather than from the original farmers.
Also, not really that related, but today there is a huge ethnic difference between the Stepnyaks of Crimea, and the Mountain/Coastal Tatars. The Mountain/Coastal Tatars have very little East Eurasian ancestry while the Stepnyaks have some of the highest among all non-Siberian Tatars. And, of course, Crimean Tatars are fairly close cousins to the Cumans. Albeit, I've heard the Stepnyaks have Nogai influence, and also that the other Tatars (in the hills and the coast) were more devout Christians
From an old Anthrogenica thread I found:
_
Distance to: Crimean_Tatar_Coast_K13_sim_Avg
0.02794890 Greek_Macedonia:688
0.02992889 Turkish_Rumeli:Turkish_Selanik1
0.03007540 Greek_Izmir:GreecePhokaia60
0.03242397 Ashkenazi_Russia:Ashk_RU_RU_10
0.03285642 Ashkenazi_Belarussia:Ashk_BY_BY_7
_
Distance to: Crimean_Tatar_Mountain_K13_sim_Avg
0.02951013 Turkish_Rumeli:Turkish_Gumulcine1
0.03210498 Turkish_Northwest:Turkish_Northwest2
0.03397035 Turkish_Balikesir:Balikesir16837
0.03730093 Turkish_North:Turkish_North1
0.03869003 Turkish_Balikesir:Balikesir17006
_
Distance to: Tatar_Crimean_steppe:Crimean_steppe1
0.04037849 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka3
0.04352549 Turkmen:TUR013
0.04545680 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka4
0.04778858 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka5
0.05130935 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka6
_
Distance to: Tatar_Crimean_steppe:Crimean_steppe2
0.03176766 Nogai:NOG-125
0.04360489 Uzbek:495_R02C02
0.04401422 Nogai:NOG-129
0.04830810 Tatar_Lipka:Tatar_Lipka6
0.04837552 Turkmen:TUR028
_
Rumelian Turks are very European, they do have some East Asian but they are genetically close to Balkan Christians
These tables are interesting. I would guess that lowland Tatars have experienced repeated introgression from East Asian types (though not en masse maybe) since they first settled there.
'Rumelian Turks are very European, they do have some East Asian but they are genetically close to Balkan Christians'
I suppose a lot of them (most?) are descended from Byzantine converts to Islam.
Yeah, they are mostly converts, but they also demonstrate how Turkic the early ottomans are. They’re almost as Turanic as many Anatolians despite the rest of their genetic profile being European.
Ahh, interedasting, I didn't weawize the degree of integration the Cumans underwent in Europe!
On the topic of the "Tocharian Hypothesis", I find it rather unlikely for a few reasons:
1. Tocharians were probably not as fair-featured as their Indo-Iranic cousins, and may have gotten their fair features from Sogdians and other Indo-Iranic groups like the Wusun and Yuezhi. Afanasievo men (who probably represent early Tocharians) are very Yamnaya-like with dark hair and eyes (albeit they have some blue-eyed Afanasievo people -- maybe Repin culture has more blue eyes than Yamnaya?) while Andronovo men are like 50% light-haired and light-eyed.
2. Tocharians were not that mobile, they were a desert people mostly. There is certainly Tocharian DNA in Uyghurs and probably to some extent in all Turks but there is a much stronger influence from Iranic tribes like Sogdians and Sarmatians. Modern Tatars in the Volga-Ural region definitlely have high Sarmatian ancestry. Scythians were also a people with a much more similar nomadic pastoral lifestyle and were also fairly heterogenous. The Goths are also a possible component of Cuman DNA, and obviously known for their Blondism. Goths were still around in Crimea by the 17th century, and I think we have a good amount of Turkic samples from late Antiquity and early Medieval which clearly are assimilated Goths.
oh yeah on the Goth thing...
Chinese described the Cumans as blond too. A Goth overlay is not impossible, but it seems as though the Cumans were blond long before they ever reached the Crimea.
Yes the Coooomans = Tocharians part admittedly holds much that is disputable.
How blond would Central Asian Iranoids like the Sogdians have been by the time the Cuman migration was passing through there? I'd say not very but I could be wrong. That's why I like the Tocharians as the Cuman elite: basically a people inhabiting a sort genetic refugium who are known to have retained a notably fair Europoid phenotype until very late. The testimony of Slavs and German monks that they were blond is not easy to dismiss, unless it was just some kind of unexamined convention.
Also a Tocharian back-migration is very romantik. It seems a terrible shame to accept that they were just bred out, supine in an oriental desert.
The horse-riding thing is a problem too. But were the later Tocharians really not into horses? I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have used them for warfare (I can't be bothered now to look into it), even if they preferred camels(?) for trade etc. For sure all their neighbours would have been mainly cavalrymen.
Still pretty blond. Sogdians were more europoid and more fair-pigmented than modern Pamiris despite being genetically not terribly different. I'm not sure how pure the Tocharians were, they probably had some admixture from nearby peoples just like the Sogdians and I think that they in particular had a lot of influence from their Iranic cousins
"I'm not sure how pure the Tocharians were, they probably had some admixture from nearby peoples just like the Sogdians and I think that they in particular had a lot of influence from their Iranic cousins."
Trve
...possibly including transmission of Iranoid equestrian warfare traditions
E Asian genes there certainly were.
eh maybe the Cuman-Vlachs originated in a splinter group of Bactrians or something from the broader Cuman horde. But that they were Tocharians still seems plausible to me.
Great poast, and interesting idea concerning the possible Tocharian presence. I am certain though that with archaeo-genetics we could learn the truth of the matter. Tocharians are an interesting group of folk.
I was surprised to see that there is more EEF in the Balkanoids. Why would that be? They are right by the steppe? I guess they are also right by Anatolia, where the EEF spread from. HMmmmm
Thank you sir
'I am certain though that with archaeo-genetics we could learn the truth of the matter.'
This would be difficult in Romania. As I say above and elsewhere, the ex-aristocracy was done away with by communism. Maybe descendants of the original boyar families could be located in other European countries (a number of them went eg to France I think).
Another problem is the fact that many of the original boyar families went extinct in the male line by the end of the 16th century and were then widely replaced in the 17th and 18th centuries by Ottoman Christians (Kantakuzenos, Mavrokordatos, Ghica, etc) as Turkish control was asserted. So there's very little left of what *might* have been the Cuman/Tocharian/whatever element.
Anyway as you are evidently perceptive enough to understand I am only speculating about the Cuman stuff. I genuinely believe it's plausible but who knows if it's true.
'I was surprised to see that there is more EEF in the Balkanoids. Why would that be? They are right by the steppe? I guess they are also right by Anatolia, where the EEF spread from.'
The Balkans were settled earlier and much more thickly by the EEFs because (1), as you say, it's close to Asia Minor and (2) it's warmer and in the plains there is very fertile land for farming. Even in relatively barren Greece, where the Myceneans were so culturally influential, the Aryan genetic contribution is very small. As you would expect, the Myceneans had more Yamnaya ancestry than the modern Greeks. The same is probably true of the Dacians vs modern Romanians.
Northern Europe (esp Scandinavia and British Isles) is much colder and further from the EEF homeland. By the time they got to Scandinavia there were many fewer of them and their crops wouldn't grow so well there. So the hunter-gatherer strain survived to a much greater extent than it did in the south. In some cases the northern hunter-gatherers took up agriculture much later, with relatively little direct genetic contribution from the EEFs; a lot of the EEF genes in NW Europe came, I think, with the IEs rather than from the original farmers.
Survive the Jive is good on this stuff.
Yeah Survive the Jive does a good job explaining lots of this stuff, I've learned of a lot of genetic studies just by watching his jive talks.
Thanks again for sharing more of this fascinating history.