"Scythian" (sensu lato) population genetics

Here's a paper that's hot off the press (it came out in Nature Communications yesterday). The tl;dr is that Eurasian steppe nomads were highly mobile in the Iron Age to the point that there was a lot of genetic exchange between East and West.

Literature Review: Gonzales-Ruiz et al., 2012

  I can't believe I've only done one lit review so far... Time to fix that with a discussion of a fun paper (Gonzalez-Ruiz et al., 2012) that was brought to my attention recently on the haplotypes of people buried in Pazyryk graves (The Pazyryk culture is the one that gave us the dozens of golden deer statues I discussed previously. Ethinically, they were "Eastern Scythians", a.k.a. Saka.). The best part is that it's in PLOS ONE, which is a completely open source peer-reviewed journal. No paying $30+ for an article when you don't have a university library to use. :) I won't go into detail since you can read the entire thing for yourself with a click of a button, but here are the main points. If you aren't a geneticist, don't worry about the methods; there's a lot of jargon involved. Try reading the introduction, then skipping to the discussion.

  Haplotypes are particular sequences of DNA which are very useful in biogeographic studies of humans. They evolve at just the right rate to tell us about the worldwide expansion of our species throughout, then out of, Africa when considering particular combinations of haplotypes (haplogroups). The haplotypes used for these type of studies have pervaded the populations they evolved in. Some of them were carried to new regions when a population migrated or when adjacent groups sequentially interbreed, thus transporting the haplotype that way even if the original population didn't move much.

  Central Asia and the adjacent steppes are at a crossroads between "Europe" and "Asia" insofar as the ethnicities living there are concerned (despite the name of the region itself). There are high number of diverse ethnicities living there- some seem more European and some seem more Asian. The purpose of this paper was to add more information to our understanding of the ancient genetic flow in the region.
  The authors extracted DNA from skeletal material in Iron Age Pazyryk burials and compared it to other DNA from both Bronze Age and Iron Age burials in Central Asia. What they found is that during the Bronze Age- after humans had initially expanded into the Far East- the Altai mountains were acting as a barrier. East was east, west was west, and there's no evidence for any genetic flow between them. At some point in the Iron Age, things changed. The haplogroups go from being East Eurasian (i.e. Turkic nomads) on the east side of the mountains and West Eurasian (i.e., Iranian nomads) on the west side of the mountains to about half and half on both sides.
  Today, steppe nomads are Turkic. The few remaining ethnicities in the same larger language group as the Iranian steppe nomads are sedentary now. They were driven off the steppes and diminished in prominence by the westward-expanding Turkic nomads within history. What this study shows is that during prehistory, it was the Iranian nomads who did the expanding (toward the East). They initially stopped at the Altaic mountains, then the groups living in that area started expanding outwards-or rather, their genes did. There were no new West Eurasian haplotypes showing up, just the local ones increasing in geographic range. This study adds another line of evidence for our understanding of the ancient biogeography of steppe nomads (on top of cultural and linguistic data), and give us some hard boundaries (both spatial and temporal).

On rude behavior (and a bit about the Jassic people)

I'm making a brief mid-hiatus appearance to say- I've had a visit from a troll. Which means I'm a real blogger now! Look on the bright side of things, right?

I recently received a comment from someone which I unfortunately felt a need to delete. The gist of the comment was, "I'm Alan and you don't know what you're talking about, so stop." (Which means about as much as if I had said "I'm an academic and you don't know what you're talking about, so stop.", which is not much of anything. It's misleading and leaves too much to be said.) That's it. No correcting any perceived mistakes. And some cursing, which was the sole reason I deleted it. I did not make the settings on this blog "adults only" and have no intention of doing so. Strong cursing will not be tolerated and any comment containing it will be deleted posthaste.
I suspect the commenter is someone who followed a share of one of my posts made by a Hungarian on Facebook. There were comments on some of his other posts by someone who also said he was Alan and the Hungarian doesn't know what he's talking about. The Hungarian had uploaded a video to a song (in Hungarian?) which, based on other comments, must have mentioned the Jassic people of Hungary, who are descended from Sarmatians (likely the Iazyges/Jazyges, considering the name and location). The human genographic project provides an independent line of evidence in the form of haplotypes traceable back to the Sarmatians' homeland showing up in a village in Hungary. Spencer Wells, one of the head researchers for the project, gave a talk at my university last semester and mentioned that briefly. He didn't actually say "Jassic" or "Sarmatian", but I knew exactly what he was talking about and looked it up later to confirm. I may have audibly squeed. It's a really cool project; I highly recommend you browse through their findings. Maybe even contribute your own DNA if you can afford to. :) The research is largely funded by people buying the kits, which is why they're so pricy. In short, there's plenty of evidence for the Jassic people being of Sarmatian descent- DNA, their now-dead language, and our knowledge of their history all point toward it.

But back to the topic at hand- The Commenter's reason for objection had a bit of a racist ring to it. Maybe not quite what you normally think of when you hear the word racist- more like a desperate need to be special and unique, as his people haven't exactly been treated fairly in recent history. He also seemed to think the video implied that the Magyars were of Sarmatian descent (which they aren't and which other commenters said it didn't imply).

So if you're reading this, Commenter, being rude and confrontational will get you nowhere.  There are people interested in Ossetians and Alans who aren't of your ethnicity- that's a compliment and a testament to your rich cultural heritage. I'm not sure why you aren't happy that others recognize that and want to know more. If you know something I don't, please do tell me and tell me where I went wrong. Simply saying "I'm right, you're wrong" is not conducive to learning.