Several studies have concluded that the historical and indigenous Anatolian groups are the primary source of the present-day Turkish population. Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Iranians, Jews, Lebanese and other (Eastern and Western) Mediterranean groups seem to share a common ancestry: the older “Mediterranean” substratum.
No sign of the postulated Indo-European (Aryan) invasion (1200 BC.) is detected by our genetic analysis. It is concluded that this invasion, if occurred, had a relatively few invaders in comparison to the already settled populations, i.e. Anatolian Hittite and Hurrian groups (older than 2000 BC.). These may have given rise to present-day Kurdish, Armenian and Turkish populations.
The Armenian people traditionally lived not only on the territory of the modern nation of Armenia but also in eastern Turkey. Their language is part of the great Indo-European family of languages but is written in a script that’s unique to the Armenians.
A project titled “The Genetic Relations between Mediterranean Communities,” prepared by three Spanish scholars from the molecular biology division of Complutense University in Madrid, defines the Turks and Armenians as two branches with the same genetic origin. “Turks and Armenians were the two societies throughout the world that were genetically close to each other. Kurds are also in same genetic pool,” Savak Avagian, director of Armenia’s bone marrow bank, said in an interview with daily Hürriyet.
Genetic analysis has shown that the Kurdish people are closely related to the Azeri, Armenian, Georgian, and Jewish peoples, descending from some common ancestors in the northern Near East region. “In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors.”
In many references, Azerbaijanis are designated as a Turkic people, due to their Turkic language. However, modern-day Azerbaijanis are believed to be primarily the descendants of the Caucasian Albanian and Iranic peoples who lived in the areas of the Caucasus and northern Iran, respectively, prior to Turkification. Historian Vladimir Minorsky writes that largely Iranian and Caucasian populations became Turkish-speaking. Thus, centuries of Turkic migration and turkification of the region helped to formulate the contemporary Azerbaijani ethnic identity.
There is evidence that, despite repeated invasions and migrations, aboriginal Caucasians may have been culturally assimilated, first by Ancient Iranian peoples and later by the Oghuz. Considerable information has been learned about the Caucasian Albanians including their language, history, early conversion to Christianity, and close ties to the Armenians. The Udi language, still spoken in Azerbaijan, may be a remnant of the Albanians’ language.
This Caucasian influence extended further south into Iranian Azerbaijan. During the 1st millennium BC, another Caucasian people, the Mannaeans (Mannai) populated much of Iranian Azerbaijan. Weakened by conflicts with the Assyrians, the Mannaeans are believed to have been conquered and assimilated by the Medes by 590 BC.
Genetic studies demonstrate that northern Azeris are more closely related to other Caucasian people like Georgians and Armenians than they are to Iranians or Turks. Iranian Azeris are genetically more similar to northern Azeris and the neighboring Turkish population than they are to geographically distant Turkmen populations. Iranian-speaking populations from Azerbaijan (the Talysh and Tats) are genetically closer to Azerbaijanis of the Republic than to other Iranian-speaking populations (Persian people and Kurds from Iran, Ossetians, and Tajiks).
Such genetic evidence supports the view that the Azeris originate from a native population long resident in the area who adopted a Turkish language through a process of “elite dominance”, i.e. a limited number of Turkic immigrants had a substantial cultural impact but left only weak patrilineal genetic traces.
MtDNA analysis indicates that Iranians, Anatolians and Caucasians are part of a larger West Eurasian group that is secondary to that of the Caucasus. While genetic analysis of mtDNA indicates that Caucasian populations are genetically closer to Europeans than to Near Easterners, Y-chromosome results indicate closer affinity to Near Eastern groups.
Iranians have a relatively diverse range of Y-chromosome haplotypes. A population from central Iran (Isfahan) shows closer similarity in terms of haplogroup distributions to Caucasians and Azeris than to populations from southern or northern Iran. The range of haplogroups across the region may reflect historical genetic admixture, perhaps as a result of invasive male migrations.
The Azeris are more closely related to neighboring peoples than to Central Asians. They are closely related to Armenians and Kurds, and not very related to other Turkic-speaking peoples. This is because Azeris descend primarily from an indigenous people that adopted the Turkic language later on. They are mostly an Iranian people who adopted a Turkic language. Azeris are a mixture of Caucasians (Laks, Armenians, Georgians, Jews, etc.), Iranians, Near Easterners, Europeans, and Turkmens, in that order of importance.
Genetic studies conducted by Cavalli-Sforza have revealed that Iranians have weak correlation with Near Eastern groups, and are closer to surrounding Indo-Europeans speaking populations. This study is partially supported by another one, based on Y-Chromosome haplogroups.
The findings of this study reveal many common genetic markers found among the Iranian people from the Tigris river of Iraq to the Indus of Pakistan. This correlates with the Iranian languages spoken from the Caucasus to Kurdish areas in the Zagros region and eastwards to western Pakistan and Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan in Central Asia. The extensive gene flow is perhaps an indication of the spread of Iranian-speaking people, whose languages are now spoken mainly on the Iranian plateau and adjacent regions.
Another recent study of the genetic landscape of Iran was done by a team of Cambridge geneticists led by Dr. Maziar Ashrafian Bonab (an Iranian Azarbaijani). Bonab remarked that his group had done extensive DNA testing on different language groups, including Indo-European and non Indo-European speakers, in Iran. The study found that the Azerbaijanis of Iran do not have a similar FSt and other genetic markers found in Anatolian and European Turks. However, the genetic Fst and other genetic traits like MRca and mtDNA of Iranian Azeris were identical to Persians in Iran. Azaris of Iran also show very close genetic ties to Kurds.
Anthropologist Carleton S. Coon is quoted as saying The Iraqi population is without doubt much the same today as it was in Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian times. The Iraqi people are a Caucasian people. It has been found that Y-DNA Haplogroup J2 originated in the Armenian Highland.
Iraqi mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup distribution is similar to that of Iran, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Georgia, and Armenia, whereas it substantially differs from that observed in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. Iraqi Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) haplogroup distribution is similar to that of Lebanon, Turkey, and Syria. No significant differences in Y-DNA variation were observed among Iraqi Arabs, Assyrians, or Mandeans.
For both mtDNA and Y-DNA variation, the large majority of the haplogroups observed in the Iraqi population (H, J, T, and U for the mtDNA, J2 and J1 for the Y-DNA) are those considered to have originated in Western Asia and to have later spread mainly in Western Eurasia. The Eurasian haplogroups R1b and R1a represent the second most frequent component of the Iraqi Y-chromosome gene pool, the latter suggests that the population movements from Central Asia/Eastern Europe into modern Iran also influenced Iraq to some degree.
Many historians and anthropologists provide strong circumstantial evidence to posit that Iraq’s Maʻdān people share very strong links to the ancient Sumerians – the most ancient inhabitants of southern Iraq, and that Iraq’s Mandaeans and Assyrians share the strongest ethnic links to the Sumerians and Babylonians. In a 2011 study focusing on the genetics of Marsh Arabs of Iraq, researchers identified Y chromosome haplotypes shared by Marsh Arabs, Iraqis, and Assyrians, “supporting a common local background.”
The relatively close genetic link with the indigenous Pre Arab Mesopotamian Assyrians and Mandeans indicates that many Iraqis who today speak Arabic are also to a great extent originally of Mesopotamian roots,as opposed to being ethnic Arabs.
In a 2011 study focusing on the genetics of the Maʻdān people of Iraq, researchers identified Y chromosome haplotypes shared by Marsh Arabs, Arabic speaking Iraqis, Assyrians and Mandeans “supporting a common indigenous local background.”
Studies have reported that most Irish and Britons are descendants of farmers who left modern day Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago. Genetic researchers say they have found compelling evidence that four out of five (80% of) white Europeans can trace their roots to the Ancient Near East. In another study, scientists analysed DNA from the 8,000 year-old remains of early farmers found at an ancient graveyard in Germany. They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today’s South Eastern Turkey and Iraq.
Are Turks acculturated Armenians?
Turks, Armenians share similar genes, say scientists
Genetic history of the Turkish people
Kurdish Genetics: Abstracts and Summaries
Genetics of Jewish (Israelite) People
The Genetic Bonds Between Kurds and Jews
Genetics of Azeri (Azerbaijani) People
Archaeogenetics of the Near East
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