+Indo-iranian

Steppe

  • “By sometime around 3200-2900 YBP a branch of the Aryans advanced deeply to the east. …This new Indo-Iranian wave mixed with the East Asians in Mongolia… This gene flow was not very extensive in the eastern reaches but it brought the technology of horse+goat+sheep+cow diary pastoralism to the east. This appears to have been transferred without much genetic acquisition of the lactase persistence phenotype.”
  • Population replacement ~50%. R1a1a is quite common among some central Asian populations, reaching levels of up to 60% among the Kyrgyz and the Tajiks. It is possible that the haplogroup expanded through central Asia and into northwestern India shortly before the arrival of agriculture, which arrived in the region shortly after 10,000 years ago. (23andme)

Basically, the eastern Yamnaya ancestry has been sloshing around the steppe for thousands of years. After 2000 BC they were absorbed into Indo-Iranians, but their far eastern outliers, the Afanesievo maintained some cultural continuity in the form of the Tocharian languages.

Replacement

  • Central Asian waves led to close interaction with mongoloid people .:

I think the steppe while home & cradle of the Indo-Europeans was not stable enough to sustain great empires & efflorescence like India or Iran. 1 could compare this with the Mogol& Turk invasions of inner Asia along with stabilization in the new lands they had conquered. In the case of the Islamics – an efflorescence for them but a horror story for India. - MT

Indo Iranian split

References: MT19.

From multiple lines of evidence IA-IR split could have been at least 1900 BCE, and likely earlier:

  • As Damgaard linguistic supplement pointed out the earliest evidence for IA in Syria refers to mariannu in a tablet from Tell Leilān from 18th century BCE. This suggests IA were alreay making presence felt in region by then.
  • The early Aryan names from West Asia are predominantly Indo-Aryan not Iranian suggesting that this branch was not undivided I-IR but already divided IA. So we have to place IA separation after that.
  • Narasimhan et al & Damgaard et al’s data clearly indicates that there is east Asian admixture from 1500 BCE onwards. This type of admixture is seen in Eastern Iranics like kuShANa and shaka but not at all in Indics. This means that the Aryan group which invaded India should have done so before 1500 BCE. Given when the BMAC outliers have steppe admixture and when Harappan civ collapsed, we can say this is medially at 1700 BCE but could be 1900 BCE. This is quite possible given that matches devolution of mature IVC.
  • “There is evidence for gene flow from Harappans to BMAC and also resident Harappan in BMAC, but not from BMAC to line leading to modern Indians. Thus, it appears that while the Indo-Aryan interacted with BMAC on route to India they did not mix with them to bring that ancestry to India. Of course Indo-Aryans who remained behind and later Iranians appear to have go on to mix with that ancestry. Given this it appear that the BMAC language will remain a bit mysterious.”
  • The Lubotsky’s detailed study points out that the loans of Aryan into Finno-Ugric are not merely protoI-Ir or Ir but specifically show dialect developments of IA. There is no evidence for FU close to Indian subcontinent. Hence, I-Ir split should have happened further north even as these groups were operating in the Uralic zone. They were already nearing BMAC by ~2000 BCE; so this split was earlier.

Early IA material was composed in milieu where Iranics were part of the circle.

  • The RV suggests that the term asura is not all negative: in fact more often positive than negative and used in positive sense similar to what later continued in avesta. maNDala 8 of RV and some paippalAda AV sUkta-s show parallels to avestan material.
  • If IA they had already settled in the greater Panjab there is little evidence for Iranics in their proximity.
  • In contrast in yajur brAhmaNa-s we do see strong deva-asura polarity mirrored in avesta. Hence, that split reflects a later period, which is more in line with a time of schism and separation.
  • already there was dialectal divergence in the steppes leading towards IA when earliest layers of RV and AV-P were composed. The linguistic developments in India and compilation merely “updated” this old composition to a new register. This has happened even later: e.g. paippalAda in kAshmIra vs Odisha, and in case of mAdhyandina.