# Population Genetics > mtDNA Haplogroups >  The original Indo-European Mitochondrial haplogroup(s)

## razor

Has anyone theorized about this? I see that the main theory is that the IE males had R1a /R1b gen. identities prior to the major expansion. What about their women and mothers? Say, ca. 3,000 BCE? Some dominants, or a more complex mix?

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## zanipolo

would I be correct to assume that if I take the mtdna numbers for Basques and Italy - only the biggest number of each nation ............. that Italy ( 33) had/has a greater varity of immigrants due to its lower number , than what the basques ( 61) had/has due to their high number.

If this be true, then to a degree the ydna should follow suit

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## Goga

> Has anyone theorized about this? I see that the main theory is that the IE males had R1a /R1b gen. identities prior to the major expansion. What about their women and mothers? Say, ca. 3,000 BCE? Some dominants, or a more complex mix?


Something native to this area:

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## Taranis

> Something native to this area:


Not necessarily, no. There's no particular reason to assume that the Indo-Europeans were descended from the original pastoralists. After all, Proto-Indo-European was spoken a few thousand years later - it was a language of the Copper Age.

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## Goga

> Not necessarily, no. There's no particular reason to assume that the Indo-Europeans were descended from the original pastoralists. After all, Proto-Indo-European was spoken a few thousand years later - it was a language of the Copper Age.


"_Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin._"

http://www.mendeley.com/research/lan...ropean-origin/

http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3Ad...s/ATTACHMENT01


"_analysis of a matrix of 87 languages with 2,449 lexical items produced an estimated age range for the initial Indo-European divergence of between 7,800 and 9,800 years BP_"

http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/tu...ayAtkinson.pdf

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## Taranis

> "_Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin._"
> 
> http://www.mendeley.com/research/lan...ropean-origin/
> 
> http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3Ad...s/ATTACHMENT01
> 
> 
> "_analysis of a matrix of 87 languages with 2,449 lexical items produced an estimated age range for the initial Indo-European divergence of between 7,800 and 9,800 years BP_"
> 
> http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/tu...ayAtkinson.pdf


First off, the paper is from 2003, and secondly, the Anatolian hypothesis is rejected by the majority of linguists. The main argument should be obvious: the Proto-Indo-European has common word for horse and for metal-working, by that logic, it cannot be older than the domestication of the horse and the development of metal-working. Third, the method used by Gray and Atkinson to support the Anatolian hypothesis (glottochronology) is also rejected by the majority of linguists because the fundamental assumption (that there's a constant rate of change in language evolution) has been decsively disproven by a number of historically attested counter-examples where language evolution _clearly_ happened at variable rates.

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## Goga

> First off, the paper is from 2003, and secondly, the Anatolian hypothesis is rejected by the majority of linguists. The main argument should be obvious: the Proto-Indo-European has common word for horse and for metal-working, by that logic, it cannot be older than the domestication of the horse and the development of metal-working. Third, the method used by Gray and Atkinson to support the Anatolian hypothesis (glottochronology) is also rejected by the majority of linguists because the fundamental assumption (that there's a constant rate of change in language evolution) has been decsively disproven by a number of historically attested counter-examples where language evolution _clearly_ happened at variable rates.


I don't know about horses, but the origin of metallurgy is from Southeast Anatolia or Southern Caucasus (West Asia) !

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot...php?BiotID=609

http://www.transanatolie.com/english...lurg-Ozbal.pdf

http://www.mta.gov.tr/v2.0/eng/dergi_pdf/87/4.pdf

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## Goga

"_From about 7000 BC a few neolithic communities begin hammering copper into crude knives and sickles, which work as well as their stone equivalents and last far longer. Some of the earliest implements of this kind have been found in eastern Anatolia._"

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/...historyid=ab16

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## Taranis

> I don't know about horses, but metallurgy is from Southeast / West Asia!
> 
> http://www.semp.us/publications/biot...php?BiotID=609


I'm sorry, this still disproves the Anatolian hypothesis, because it explicitly argues for a spread of the Indo-European languages by _Neolithic Farmers_. In any case, another decisive argument against the Anatolian hypothesis that can be made is the presence of the Hurro-Urartian languages in exactly that purported home area of the Indo-Europeans. The idea that the Hurro-Urartians migrated there later can also be ruled out by the fact that there are no PIE loanwords into Hurrian.

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## Goga

> I'm sorry, this still disproves the Anatolian hypothesis, because it explicitly argues for a spread of the Indo-European languages by _Neolithic Farmers_. In any case, another decisive argument against the Anatolian hypothesis that can be made is the presence of the Hurro-Urartian languages in exactly that purported home area of the Indo-Europeans. The idea that the Hurro-Urartians migrated there later can also be ruled out by the fact that there are no PIE loanwords into Hurrian.


Yes, but the advanced so called 'Neolithic Farmers' left West Asia and migrated into Europe only 6000 years ago.

Migration is exact of the same age as copper objects & items found in the Balkans (for about 4000 BCE).

So the so called 'Neolithic Farmers' introduced the metallurgy into Europe.

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## Goga

Nice paper (by Borislav Jovanovic from the Balkans) on copper metallurgy in the Balkans and the origin of metallurgy in Kurdistan:

http://www.penn.museum/documents/pub.../Jovanovic.pdf

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## Maciamo

I wrote Identifying the original Indo-European mtDNA from isolated settlements nearly two years ago.

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## sparkey

If we take U4 as an example, we see an immediate issue with predicting the mtDNA of the Indo-Europeans. U4 seems obviously to have spread with IE, as it is present all over the Corded Ware areas, and has an obvious correlation with R1a. But at the same time, it has been found in ancient DNA in Mesolithic Portugal, Germany, Sweden, and Lithuania... basically all over Europe. mtDNA haplogroups like U4 are often quite old, and ancient admixture tends to be more heterogeneous than Y-DNA. So it would be useful to narrow down precise subclades (almost never done in studies) and date them all (hard to do with mtDNA).

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## Taranis

> Yes, but the advanced so called 'Neolithic Farmers' left West Asia and migrated into Europe only 6000 years ago.
> 
> Migration is exact of the same age as copper objects & items found in the Balkans (for about 4000 BCE).
> 
> So the so called 'Neolithic Farmers' introduced the metallurgy into Europe.


Sorry, no, you are clearly mixing things up there. The Neolithic Farmers, as the term 'Neo_lithic_' ('New _Stone_ Age') implies, did not know metal-working yet. No offense, but I'm under the impression by now that you somehow have the view that the IE languages _must have_ originated in Anatolia.

There is also another geographic argument against an Anatolian origin: the only branch of IE found in the area in ancient times, the Anatolian languages (best represented by Hittite), are in many ways the most abberrant branch of Indo-European that has numerous loanwords from other non-IE languages surrounding it, including Akkadian and Hurrian. If the IE languages originated in this area, I would expect borrowings from other languages in the area into the PIE core vocabulary. Since we don't see this, the most likeliest explanation is that indeed PIE originated somewhere else.

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## Asturrulumbo

> Sorry, no, you are clearly mixing things up there. The Neolithic Farmers, as the term 'Neo_lithic_' ('New _Stone_ Age') implies, did not know metal-working yet. No offense, but I'm under the impression by now that you somehow have the view that the IE languages _must have_ originated in Anatolia.
> 
> There is also another geographic argument against an Anatolian origin: the only branch of IE found in the area in ancient times, the Anatolian languages (best represented by Hittite), are in many ways the most abberrant branch of Indo-European that has numerous loanwords from other non-IE languages surrounding it, including Akkadian and Hurrian. If the IE languages originated in this area, I would expect borrowings from other languages in the area into the PIE core vocabulary. Since we don't see this, the most likeliest explanation is that indeed PIE originated somewhere else.


Not to mention that there was the non-IE Hattian language in the Hittite lands, which seems to have preceded the arrival of the Anatolian languages.

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## Taranis

> Not to mention that there was the non-IE Hattian language in the Hittite lands, which seems to have preceded the arrival of the Anatolian languages.


You are correct, I forgot Hattian. There are Hattian loanwords in Hittite as well.

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## Maciamo

> If we take U4 as an example, we see an immediate issue with predicting the mtDNA of the Indo-Europeans. U4 seems obviously to have spread with IE, as it is present all over the Corded Ware areas, and has an obvious correlation with R1a. But at the same time, it has been found in ancient DNA in Mesolithic Portugal, Germany, Sweden, and Lithuania... basically all over Europe. mtDNA haplogroups like U4 are often quite old, and ancient admixture tends to be more heterogeneous than Y-DNA. So it would be useful to narrow down precise subclades (almost never done in studies) and date them all (hard to do with mtDNA).


It' not because it was part of the Indo-European mt-haplogroups that it couldn't have been present elsewhere too. Maternal lineages, much more than paternal ones, are diffused more quickly around all neighbouring populations with no invasion or large-scale migration required, because women were traditionally exchanged between tribes to secure alliances, trade (against goods or animals, which still happens in some African, Middle Eastern or South Asian countries) or for other reasons. If nomadic hunter-gatherers followed this practice, even occasionally, it could have redistributed mitochondrial lineages all over Europe during the Mesolithic. 

So the Indo-Europeans surely had a lot of U4 and U5 lineages, but they weren't the only ones, far from it. Likewise, lineages like K, T, W or X2 were found among Neolithic farmers too. The opposite would be surprising since G2a farmers came to Europe via Anatolia, which is also the presumed region of origin of R1b1b. Besides, some G2a lineages _are_ Indo-European (probably just G2a3b1 and its subclades).

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## Goga

> I wrote Identifying the original Indo-European mtDNA from isolated settlements nearly two years ago.


With all due respect you do underestimated the influence of J2a folks. According to you there were two types of the Indo-Europeans, R1b-type and R1a-type. But that doesn't make any sense.

In the beginning there was just 1 proto-Indo-European group. And those folks belonged predominately to G2a & J2a!

According to me, if you want to know the mtDNA of the proto-Indo-Europeans the key to all your questions is the Kurdish DNA, because Kurds are the only true Indo-Europeans in the world we're all sure about that they're actually Indo-European. But as a Kurd I'm very very much Kurdic-centric person.

Kurds (from Iran) have very much HV* (30%) and U (35%, especially 'Iranic' U7 ! ) and some W (10%), K (10%), J1 (10%), hg. mtDNA 'I' (5-10 %).

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## Goga

> Sorry, no, you are clearly mixing things up there.


Ok, but why sorry? We just don't agree with each other. You have got your vision and I've got my own vision. Your vision does make sense and can be the right one by the way!

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## Knovas

Maciamo (or someone else), ¿what dou you think about K linages in that issue? In Europe there are so many different clades and, for example, to find different K1b's and K2b's, it's quite usual. No need to mention the diversity of K1a's too.

I personally was surprised to discover that my mother, being fully Catalan, belonged to the haplogroup listed in my profile. I did not expect it, and I can't determine if it's normal or not to find in Iberia. All cases I know at 23andme are Northern European descent, and I remember, time ago while checking family tree, there was one in Galicia and Northern Italy. That's all.

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## zanipolo

> Maciamo (or someone else), ¿what dou you think about K linages in that issue? In Europe there are so many different clades and, for example, to find different K1b's and K2b's, it's quite usual. No need to mention the diversity of K1a's too.
> 
> I personally was surprised to discover that my mother, being fully Catalan, belonged to the haplogroup listed in my profile. I did not expect it, and I can't determine if it's normal or not to find in Iberia. All cases I know at 23andme are Northern European descent, and I remember, time ago while checking family tree, there was one in Galicia and Northern Italy. That's all.



well , this book from link says K is from Venice 17000 years ago

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...na%20k&f=false


this says 10000 years
http://www.ramsdale.org/dna10.htm

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## Knovas

Thanks zanipolo. I must say 17.000 years seems very unlikely, 10.000 it's possible (doesn't matter where). But, focussing on K, my question was in the direction, if there are clades (and wich ones), more closely related to indo-europeans than others.

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