A theory about the origin of E-V13

[Aspar]

Or through central asian peoples under achaemenid/hellenistic dominion such as Sogdians considering they had a significant presence in China and E-V13 had been found in such a context already, while it is entirely lacking in the hundreds of iron age steppe samples we have inluding those from China.

I think the association of E-V13 with the Hellenistic expansion was way overblown, resting on the fact that this haplogroup today is quite solid among the Greeks.
However this new science of archaeogenetics has shown us already why we should not rely on modern people's genetics in order to decipher frequency of a said haplogroup in a place x.
The other fact that has overblown this is the romanticism that most people have towards the Greeks and so forgetting that other people also existed and probably left a bigger mark on demographic level.

As such, I believe the Cimmerians and other Iranic people will be shown to have played the major part of dispersing E-V13 towards the east and Asia.
It's not a coincidence that people such as Dacians and Thracians have had very close connections to the Iranic people such as the Scythians and such.

[Coldmountains]

I think the association of E-V13 with the Hellenistic expansion was way overblown, resting on the fact that this haplogroup today is quite solid among the Greeks.
However this new science of archaeogenetics has shown us already why we should not rely on modern's people genetics in order to decipher frequency of a said haplogroup in a place x.
The other fact that has overblown this is the romanticism that most people have towards the Greeks and so forgetting that other people also existed and probably left a bigger mark on demographic level.

As such, I believe the Cimmerians and other Iranic people will be shown to have played the major part of dispersing E-V13 towards the east and Asia.
It's not a coincidence that people such as Dacians and Thracians have had very close connections to the Iranic people such as the Scythians and such.

Has E-V13 shown up in any non-recently mixed Steppe_IA sample east of the Dnjepr? It doesn't seem that the mixed types of the southwestern steppe border zone ("Scythian Farmers", "Moldovan Scythians",..) contributed significantly if at all to Steppe populations east of the Don (autosomals, Y-DNA)

[Aspar]

Has E-V13 shown up in any non-recently mixed Steppe_IA sample? It doesn't seem that the mixed types of the southwestern steppe border zone ("Scythian Farmers", "Moldovan Scythians",..) contributed significantly if at all to Steppe populations east of the Don (autosomals, Y-DNA)

And how many such samples do we have?

The Moldovan Scythians including the one that is E-V13, have got small levels of East Asian which goes to show that mixing with Asian Scythians wasn't a recent phenomenon.
Then, we have the E-V13 mercenary in Sicily, fighting in Himera, entirely Caucasian like that goes to show that E-V13 was already present in the Caucasus and the adjacent areas by the 5th century BCE.

The Scythian farmers aren't important at all for the history of E-V13.
These were Baltic-Slavic dominated hence why E-V13 hasn't shown up there.

[Decivs]

We don't know what ethnolinguistic affiliation they had, we have no actual Daco-Thracian samples (confirmed) other than the very South Eastern Thracian samples. And I wrote about Daco-Thracian and Daco-Thracian admixed people. Because the origin of the haplogroup is Daco-Thracian.
It is like haplogroup N being not Pre-Germanic Indoeuropean, but you may consider some subclades later Viking and Germanic, for example. But N originally was Uralic/Finno-Ugrian in Northern Europe, and not Pre-Germanic/Proto-Germanic.

In the same way some subclades of E-V13, while all being originally Daco-Thracian and not Illyrian, might be considered part of specific Illyrian people later. Like e.g. we might find Dardanian and Iapodian subclades of E-V13 in the Iron Age.

Another issue is that we got multiple E-V13 carriers from different branches (!), no J-L283 or other haplogroups. That in itself is very suspicious. The Illyrians were very clan based and patrilinear, the Thracians too, but they had fealty and hierarchy as well. Anyway, there won't be an E-V13 dominated Illyrian people, those don't exist. So finding multiple E-V13 branches without classical Illyrian J-L283 means these were likely a different people which happened to be autosomally similar. Might be wrong, but that's my current position.

We're talking about the Himera samples. Why are you calling a 5th century BC Illyrian-like E-V13 a Daco-Thracian just because you believe 1000 years earlier it originated with Daco-Thracians?

What is a 5th century BC R1b-Z2103 from the Western Balkans? A Yamnaya?

I didn't see you calling the J2b-L283 from Mygdalia Illyrian despite them being mostly or half Illyrian-like. Why the double standards?

[Riverman]

Or through central asian peoples under achaemenid/hellenistic dominion such as Sogdians considering they had a significant presence in China and E-V13 had been found in such a context already, while it is entirely lacking in the hundreds of iron age steppe samples we have inluding those from China.

I would say both is possible, but the steppe route had to be taken, considering the ratio towards other Balkan lineages vs. the ratio vs. R-Z93. There is no way just some random Balkan derived E-V13 guys which took the Hellenistic route made it.

On the other hand we know that we have E-V13 also in Armenians and Azeri in the Caucasus region, we already have a Sogdian samples, we know that Kurds have a presence of E-V13 - so the both ways are not mutually exclusive, but the steppe highway was definitely involved.

Has E-V13 shown up in any non-recently mixed Steppe_IA sample east of the Dnjepr? It doesn't seem that the mixed types of the southwestern steppe border zone ("Scythian Farmers", "Moldovan Scythians",..) contributed significantly if at all to Steppe populations east of the Don (autosomals, Y-DNA)

They did contribute culturally and genetically, there can be no doubt about that. But that doesn't answer the question as to when exactly that happened primarily. If we assume that the ratio of R-Z93 : E-V13 was in some specific tribal group from the steppe say 10 : 1, and only in some specific subgroups and clans higher, it is pure chance to find them. But they will be found, eventually.

Who knows what that Copper/Bronze Age sample really was, probably the first contacts with the steppe groups are much older than most people, even myself, have thought.

We're talking about the Himera samples. Why are you calling a 5th century BC Illyrian-like E-V13 a Daco-Thracian just because you believe 1000 years earlier it originated with Daco-Thracians?

What is a 5th century BC R1b-Z2103 from the Western Balkans? A Yamnaya?

I didn't see you calling the J2b-L283 from Mygdalia Illyrian despite them being mostly or half Illyrian-like. Why the double standards?

I wrote about Cetina derived and that pretty much equates Proto-Illyrian at this point, wouldn't you say?

We are not there with Daco-Thracian and Gáva/Channelled Ware or latest Stamped Pottery/Basarabi, but we will get there too, with the latter being certain, the former pretty likely but still unproven to this point.

Again, this wasn't even my only argument, but the diversity vs. absence of other Illyrian markers. Why should there be such a diversity of E-V13, with obvious steppe-Caucasian R-Z93 and E-V13 involved as well, but no Illyrians? There is no reason to call them Illyrians just because of some sort of superficial similarity.

The same argument might be used for the steppe and Eastern E-V13 too: It's too old and diverse to be from recent expansions or coming from the Southern route primarily. E.g., most of the Central-East Asian subclades show a distinct overlap with the Hungarian Avar era samples we got. There is nothing particularly Southern Balkan or Aegean about them, not at all. This too points to a rather Carpathian-Western steppe contact zone.

The Scythian farmers aren't important at all for the history of E-V13.
These were Baltic-Slavic dominated hence why E-V13 hasn't shown up there.

Using your own argument: It is not like we got a lot of samples from them, even less so since the main element of Thracian origin would have cremated their dead in the crucial time frame for the most part, as did the Baltoslavs AFTER the contact with them and the Lusatians. They got their rite and the iron working, most likely, from a combined Thracian-Lusatian influence, with these groups (Thracians and Lusatians) forming a transregional network for trade, technology and military support to some degree.

Example for a burial which haplogroup we will never know:

Summary/Abstract: In the publication are analyzed materials from the destroyed soil burial, which have been found out in 1979 under casual circumstances on the southeast outskirts of town Slobodzeja, in steep of the left coast of the river Dniester. Initial form and the sizes of a funeral complex were not established. In it were found three ceramic vessels (two urns and one basin), and also a bone fastener and an iron bracelet which were in one of urns. Besides in filling of two vessels are revealed calcinated bones.The burial was performed by cremation ceremony whereupon ashes together with inventory have been placed in ceramic urns. The funeral practice and inventory unequivocally point out a Thracian accessory of a complex and find analogies on the monuments of type Byrseshti-Feridzhile. Based on a bone fastener and black lustred basin of Feridzhile type burial is dated by border of VII-VI centuries BC.Appearance of the given complex on the left coast of the river Dniester is connected by the author of the publication with migration of the regular wave of the Thracian population from southern regions of Romania. Materials from multilayered settlement near village Chobruchi (bowls with a decor on an upper edge), located in immediate proximity from a burial and at a certain stage of the existence making with it a single whole also testify to it.

https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=516744

That in Chernoles E-V13 would have popped up all around when the cremation burials with Thracian accessories appeared is beyond doubt. We might discuss frequency, but we can't doubt the presence. Absolutely no doubt.

I think its possible that E-V13 entered the Slavic gene pool when they took over, but Chernoles was initially rather not the Proto-Slavic group, unless the role of the Lusatian and Thracian groups was far greater than initially thought, because it was very influential on them. I underestimated it in the past, when I even considered Chernoles to be important for the Slavic ethnogenesis, but some reading changed my mind. In the end it is a very difficult topic because of the widespread usage of cremation.

Bronze artefacts indicate significant contact with Scythian nomads, and finds of finer ceramic wares suggest contact with Thrace and Black Sea Greek colonies. Inhabitants practised biritual burials: inhumation under barrows and cremation in urnfields (the latter predominated in later periods)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoles_culture

[CopperAxe]

I think the association of E-V13 with the Hellenistic expansion was way overblown, resting on the fact that this haplogroup today is quite solid among the Greeks.
However this new science of archaeogenetics has shown us already why we should not rely on modern people's genetics in order to decipher frequency of a said haplogroup in a place x.
The other fact that has overblown this is the romanticism that most people have towards the Greeks and so forgetting that other people also existed and probably left a bigger mark on demographic level.

As such, I believe the Cimmerians and other Iranic people will be shown to have played the major part of dispersing E-V13 towards the east and Asia.
It's not a coincidence that people such as Dacians and Thracians have had very close connections to the Iranic people such as the Scythians and such.

What do either of these groups have to do with Central Asia, Mongolian steppes or Northern China during the historical eras? Cimmerians were only present in the eastern Black Sea and ended up being assimilated/driven out by Scythians from the east. Pontic Scythian history is a one-way track of them losing eastern territories and ultimately being drowned out by eastern migrations. There is a historical pattern there, one repeated many times after.

Alexander's army was not just made up of ethnic Greeks, Thracians had a presence there for instance. Thrace was also part of the Achaemenid empire and they regularly sent subjects from rebellious to the far eastern regions as punishments, many Greeks were already present in places such as Sogdia when Alexander arrived for example. Then after both Thrace and Sogdiana were part of Alexander's empire. So no it is not based on E-V13 in "modern Greeks".

And how many such samples do we have?

The Moldovan Scythians including the one that is E-V13, have got small levels of East Asian which goes to show that mixing with Asian Scythians wasn't a recent phenomenon.
Then, we have the E-V13 mercenary in Sicily, fighting in Himera, entirely Caucasian like that goes to show that E-V13 was already present in the Caucasus and the adjacent areas by the 5th century BCE.

The Scythian farmers aren't important at all for the history of E-V13.
These were Baltic-Slavic dominated hence why E-V13 hasn't shown up there.

We have literally hundreds of iron age steppe nomad samples, they are one of the most well-samples population from that period. In particular we have tons of samples from the Kazakh steppes, the Altai region, the Kazakh/Chinese Tian Shan area and we even have samples from Eastern Xinjiang bordering Gansu. Not one of these had E-V13. More importantly is the fact that we don't even have significant evidence of mixing between Scythians from the western and eastern sphere, particularly western geneflow reaching towards places such as the Tian Shan and the Altai, the areas where the Scythians which had eastern impacts would have lived. Meanwhile southern Central Asia during this period has far less samples, a few dozen at most, and we already have a case of E-V13 there found in a Kangju period context in southernmost Kazakhstan. The Moldovan "Scythian" is just some Getae individual, no surprise considering Glinoe is a border region between Scythians and the Getae.

[Riverman]

We have literally hundreds of iron age steppe nomad samples, they are one of the most well-samples population from that period. In particular we have tons of samples from the Kazakh steppes, the Altai region, the Kazakh/Chinese Tian Shan area and we even have samples from Eastern Xinjiang bordering Gansu. Not one of these had E-V13. More importantly is the fact that we don't even have significant evidence of mixing between Scythians from the western and eastern sphere, particularly western geneflow reaching towards places such as the Tian Shan and the Altai, the areas where the Scythians which had eastern impacts would have lived. Meanwhile southern Central Asia during this period has far less samples, a few dozen at most, and we already have a case of E-V13 there found in a Kangju period context in southernmost Kazakhstan. The Moldovan "Scythian" is just some Getae individual, no surprise considering Glinoe is a border region between Scythians and the Getae.

Well, we have the Sogdian E-V13: Karatau 1

Karatau 1 was a man who lived between 245 and 343 CE during the Iron Age Central Asia and was found in the region now known as Konyrtobe, Kazakhstan.

He was associated with the Otyrar cultural group.

His direct maternal line belonged to mtDNA haplogroup I1c1.

Reference: KNT001 from Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2021

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y...TS9320/ancient

He just happens to be too late, so you might argue his lineage came there with the Macedonian armies and you might be right, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case. His lineage might have been in this region for centuries as well, we don't really know.

Finding minority groups, restricted to specific tribes and clans, might prove to be a tricky thing. We can't say for sure how they came there, but chances are that this exceptional presence for a Carpatho-Balkan/continental European lineage in Central and Eastern Asia came via the steppe route.

[CopperAxe]

I would say both is possible, but the steppe route had to be taken, considering the ratio towards other Balkan lineages vs. the ratio vs. R-Z93. There is no way just some random Balkan derived E-V13 guys which took the Hellenistic route made it.

On the other hand we know that we have E-V13 also in Armenians and Azeri in the Caucasus region, we already have a Sogdian samples, we know that Kurds have a presence of E-V13 - so the both ways are not mutually exclusive, but the steppe highway was definitely involved.
.

If this E-V13 spread across the entire Scytho-Siberian sphere was so signifcant why not just show a few samples that have it? Not just E-V13 but any iron age Southeastern European Y-DNA lineages like J-L283 for example. The only Scythian groups of relevance in Chinese history are those of the Altai region as these migrated to the Ordos/Gansu region, and the Ili valley Saka as these are (briefly) mentioned in Chinese history. I think if you add the amount of ancient samples of these together you have well over a hundred samples from 950 BC to 400 AD. I could say the same thing "no way some random Balkan derived E-V13 Scythian from the western pontic steppe took the steppe route and landed in Han dynasty China", there is a reason you have like four different genetic clusters (six if you ask me) in the iron age Scythian steppe that have no real overlap beyond late bronze age/early iron age ancestry from the Altai mountains.

[CopperAxe]

Well, we have the Sogdian E-V13: Karatau 1


https://discover.familytreedna.com/y...TS9320/ancient

He just happens to be too late, so you might argue his lineage came there with the Macedonian armies and you might be right, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case. His lineage might have been in this region for centuries as well, we don't really know.

Finding minority groups, restricted to specific tribes and clans, might prove to be a tricky thing. We can't say for sure how they came there, but chances are that this exceptional presence for a Carpatho-Balkan/continental European lineage in Central and Eastern Asia came via the steppe route.

Yes that is the sample I was referring to when I said E-V13 was already found in southern Central Asia. As you know, Sogdians were not iron age nomads part of the Scytho-Siberian complex, they were sedentary Iranians with a quite urban culture and spread out through the Silk road. Sogdians were significantly present in Chinese areas and intermarried into Chinese society over time, particularly the northwestern areas where you see most of these western lineages pop up. As far as I know E-V13 is more to be found in Uyghurs and Hui, all who have a strong genetic connection to Southern Central Asia (modern day Uyghurs are of central Asian Karluk origin), with the Hui having West Asian (Iranian, Arab) connections as well. Neither ethnic groups are particularly closely tied to Scythians in terms of genetics. FYI KNT001 is from the 3rd/4th century AD and postdates Alexander's army by many centuries. By the timeframe the area had seen Achaemenid, Seleucid, Graeco-Bactrian, Yuezhi and Kangju rule and the area had been conquered by the Xionites. The Kangju state was actually formed by a nomadic population conquering the Sogdian areas and forming a powerful state after being tributaries to the Kushans for a while.

[Riverman]

Yes that is the sample I was referring to when I said E-V13 was already found in southern Central Asia. As you know, Sogdians were not iron age nomads part of the Scytho-Siberian complex, they were sedentary Iranians with a quite urban culture and spread out through the Silk road. Sogdians were significantly present in Chinese areas and intermarried into Chinese society over time, particularly the northwestern areas where you see most of these western lineages pop up. As far as I know E-V13 is more to be found in Uyghurs and Hui, all who have a strong genetic connection to Southern Central Asia (modern day Uyghurs are of central Asian Karluk origin), with the Hui having West Asian (Iranian, Arab) connections as well. Neither ethnic groups are particularly closely tied to Scythians in terms of genetics. FYI KNT001 is from the 3rd/4th century AD and postdates Alexander's army by many centuries. By the timeframe the area had seen Achaemenid, Seleucid, Graeco-Bactrian, Yuezhi and Kangju rule and the area had been conquered by the Xionites. The Kangju state was actually formed by a nomadic population conquering the Sogdian areas and forming a powerful state after being tributaries to the Kushans for a while.

I mentioned the date myself, but I agree that we simply don't know when it came and which route it took, with the early Scythian disperal looking not particularly likely because of the sampling which we already got. That's no final verdict, but let's say it is not the most likely explanation.
We also know that there were later pick-ups from the Pontic steppe, like for the Tatars, which picked up both E-V13 and core Germanic lineages (I-M253 and R-U106), with a lot of R-Z93, and brough it deep into Russia - together with a founder lineage of J-L283.

However, it doesn't look like that for E-V13 in Central-East Asia, yet we can't say for sure which later movements could have brought it.

Only more testing will make it sure. But the Greek disperal, I agree with Aspar completely on that, looks not very likely. I would even rather go with Kurds-Iranians moving up later, having had it from the Caucasus and steppe before, than the Greeks. Because any kind of Greek impact on those regions is truly miniscule if present at all, and the diversity and branches of these E-V13 carriers, as far as they are known, point to a rather Northern and steppe route - even if they ended up in Eastern Anatolia eventually for example.
Take those Caucasian Himeran E-V13 and R-Z93, we know they lived there for long, probably with the Thraco-Cimmerian connection indeed.