The Hajji Firuz fiasco

The specter of Hajji_Firuz_ChL I2327 still haunts us. Judging by some recent comments that I’ve seen here and elsewhere, it seems that a good number of confused souls haven’t yet given up hope that this ancient sample represents a Near Eastern population ancestral to the Yamnaya people of Early Bronze Age Eastern Europe. But the chances of this are slim to none, because…

– Hajji_Firuz_ChL I2327 is the only (supposedly) pre-Yamnaya individual to date in the now ample West Asian ancient DNA record who belongs to Y-haplogroup R1b-Z2103, R1b-M269, or even R1b, which has got to tell you something about the reliability of his early dating
– overall the genome-wide structure of Hajji_Firuz_ChL I2327 most certainly doesn’t fit the profile of the Near Eastern-related half of the Yamnaya genotype
– in fact, practically every analysis that I’ve run with Hajji_Firuz_ChL I2327 suggests that he harbors Yamnaya or Yamnaya-related genome-wide ancestry, which makes sense considering his Yamnaya-specific Y-haplogroup, don’t you think?

Heck, even if Hajji_Firuz_ChL I2327 is more or less accurately dated, and really was alive during the Chalcolithic period, then considering the points I’ve made above, the only honest explanation for his presence that early in what is now Iran is that there was a migration of an Yamnaya-like people from the steppes to the South Caspian region during the Chalcolithic.
I already wrote a post on this topic back in April, and a lengthy discussion ensued, with most of the commentators agreeing with my stance. But my efforts haven’t had much of an impact outside of this blog. It’s possible that my post was too confusing, so I went back today and rewrote it, also adding new stats and mixture models to help me drive home my point. Here’s the link…

Likely Yamnaya incursion(s) into Northwestern Iran

Of course, no matter how strong my arguments are in regards to this issue, many people will choose to disagree with me nevertheless and believe what they want to believe, because it’s such an emotional topic for them. I don’t want to get into the details about that here, but suffice to say that it’s imperative for many people, particularly those of Near Eastern and Southern European backgrounds, that the origin of Yamnaya is somehow, by hook or by crook, put south of the Caucasus. I’m not kidding. It’s a silly cause though, especially now considering all of the new ancient DNA data from Eastern Europe that make this scenario about as likely as Out-of-India (see here).
See also…
Yamnaya: home-grown
Big deal of 2018: Yamnaya not related to Maykop
Ahead of the pack
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but…

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