Sumerian DNA

[He Who Thinks]

As you can probably tell I'm new to this topic. As far as I know we don't have any actual Sumerian skeletons to examine, but we have modern people to compare with. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

What I'm wondering is do we know what the DNA of the Sumerians were made of? Also, do we have any idea through this where they may have come from?

Thanks for your help.

[Abramelin]

As you can probably tell I'm new to this topic. As far as I know we don't have any actual Sumerian skeletons to examine, but we have modern people to compare with. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

What I'm wondering is do we know what the DNA of the Sumerians were made of? Also, do we have any idea through this where they may have come from?

Thanks for your help.

Google "Magyar" (= Hungarian) and "Sumerian".

Many Hungarians think they were the ancestors - or related to them - of the Sumerians, based on language and thousands of years old inscriptions in Hungary that resemble the most ancient (=> before Sumerian cuneiform script) Sumerian script.

[He Who Thinks]

Google "Magyar" (= Hungarian) and "Sumerian".

Many Hungarians think they were the ancestors - or related to them - of the Sumerians, based on language and thousands of years old inscriptions in Hungary that resemble the most ancient (=> before Sumerian cuneiform script) Sumerian script.

Thank you for the suggestion. That's a long way away to be related, though I suppose they could have come from any direction. I hadn't heard of this belief before. Thanks!

Edit: What if the early people that eventually became the Sumerians, inhabited all of that land. From Iran up through Europe?

Edited July 30, 2011 by He Who Thinks

[cormac mac airt]

What I'm wondering is do we know what the DNA of the Sumerians were made of?

Sumerian pottery and agriculture appears to have originated in Samarra and further points north in the Fertile Crescent, from at least c.5500 BC. Earliest evidence for agricultural farming (einkorn and emmer wheat c.7800 BC and 8800 BC respectively) possibly originating in the area between Nevali Cori and Cayonu, Turkey. Nothing here would suggest an origin outside of the Fertile Crescent. Also, DNA of the area would tend to suggest a Y Chromosome Haplogroup J2 connection.

Einkorn

Emmer

cormac

[Indiogene]

Google "Magyar" (= Hungarian) and "Sumerian".

Many Hungarians think they were the ancestors - or related to them - of the Sumerians, based on language and thousands of years old inscriptions in Hungary that resemble the most ancient (=> before Sumerian cuneiform script) Sumerian script.

Turkic nationalists along with Pan-Turanian organizations promote the racial unification of all Turanian peoples: Hungarians as well Turks and Turkmenis. They felt Sumerians are the ancestral foundation of the Turkic peoples. Included in the Turanian hypothetical family are Finns and Estonians, plus the Sami people and even the Basques or Berbers in North Africa (though they speak a Semitic language). All peoples of Uralic and Altaic linguistic groups are thought to have Turkic descent, may include Siberians, Mongolians, Uygurs, Koreans, and even the Japanese with the indigenous Ainu, some Malayans, and Southeast Asians: Thais, Cambodians and Laotians.

Other theories suggest Sumerians are the ancestors of Semitic peoples such as Arabs, Assyrians and Hebrews (the Jews) before mass migrations outward to the Fertile Crescent region and across the Arabian peninsula. And there's the Indo-European origin hypothesis still promoted in some circles in anthropology: the Sumerians lead to the Persians or Iranians, the "Aryans" later became Indians, and proto-Slavic peoples like Scythians in the Caucasus region, also inhabited by the Hittites and Anatolians, whom forefathered present-day Greeks and Armenians. Perhaps Sumerians are alike the dark-skinned non Indo-European Dravidians of Southern India and Sri Lanka.

[Abramelin]

Thank you for the suggestion. That's a long way away to be related, though I suppose they could have come from any direction. I hadn't heard of this belief before. Thanks!

Edit: What if the early people that eventually became the Sumerians, inhabited all of that land. From Iran up through Europe?

Not saying it is true, but it is an interesting idea.

Here you go:

http://www.magyar-megmaradas.eoldal.hu/cikkek/our-language/ak51.html

http://www.pestiside.hu/20070827/hungarians-invented-the-alphabet-according-to-this-italian/

[minera]

Thank you for the suggestion. That's a long way away to be related, though I suppose they could have come from any direction. I hadn't heard of this belief before. Thanks!

Edit: What if the early people that eventually became the Sumerians, inhabited all of that land. From Iran up through Europe?

The Magyars were several tribes who originated from Mesopotamia and some think from the city of UR. Language similarities as well as blood typing are used to trace regions and origins of ancestors.They migrated to the Carpathian basin and united under Arpad.They used the runic alphabet until King Steven united the country as a Catholic nation, but originally the Magyars worshiped the sun and were fierce warriors and horsemen. Even today we speak Magyar and use a phonetic alphabet where each sound has a symbol.

[Indiogene]

The Magyars, like the Sumerians, have an unique ethnological origin to the Asian continent, but contributed to the development of western civilization way into Europe. We came to ponder if the Northern edges of Asia is the origin of mankind, not limited to east Africa or even the most isolated human societies (until two centuries ago) of Australian Aborigines or New Guinea, and the Pacific islands like Micronesia and Melanesia, somehow thought to descended from "Australoid" Indian and Indonesian ancestors migrated there in the last ice age. Asia is where China, the largest and most populous nation on earth is located, and they been around for over 5,000 years and the ancestral peoples in Xinjiang may produced Magyars, but the Xin Uygurs are more connected to Mongols, Kazakhs and other Central Asian peoples than east Asian neighbors like the Han Ren or Mandarin Chinese. The Magyars' cousins may been the Huns of the Roman era, led by their leader Attila, and Huns are thought to be Finno-Ugric despite historians identified them as "Germanic".

[Harte]

As you can probably tell I'm new to this topic. As far as I know we don't have any actual Sumerian skeletons to examine, but we have modern people to compare with. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

What I'm wondering is do we know what the DNA of the Sumerians were made of? Also, do we have any idea through this where they may have come from?

Thanks for your help.

This might help:

Y-chromosome and mtDNA polymorphisms in Iraq,a crossroad of the early human dispersal and of post-Neolithic migrations

N. Al-Zahery,a,b O. Semino,a G. Benuzzi,a C. Magri,a G. Passarino,cA. Torroni,a and A.S. Santachiara-Benerecettia,*

Harte

Edited July 31, 2011 by Harte

[cormac mac airt]

This might help:

Y-chromosome and mtDNA polymorphisms in Iraq,a crossroad of the early human dispersal and of post-Neolithic migrations

Harte

And then take that and compare with the following articles concerning the Magyar's and one can see that there is no correlation whatsoever.

MtDNA and Y chromosome polymorphisms in Hungary: inferences from the palaeolithic, Neolithic and Uralic influences on the modern Hungarian gene pool

Y-Chromosome Analysis of Ancient Hungarian and Two Modern Hungarian Speaking Populations from the Carpathian Basin

cormac

Edited July 31, 2011 by cormac mac airt

[Penemue]

As you can probably tell I'm new to this topic. As far as I know we don't have any actual Sumerian skeletons to examine, but we have modern people to compare with. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

What I'm wondering is do we know what the DNA of the Sumerians were made of? Also, do we have any idea through this where they may have come from?

Thanks for your help.

Thanks for posting this and getting this thread going. I didn't know this was one of the things I was looking into until I followed some of the replies...

[lostinthecrowd]

I for one think its very interesting that we have never found any remains of a Sumerian. Even fossilised. We can find eggs or birds that are millions and billions years old but nothing from this civilisation.

Creeepy

[Abramelin]

I for one think its very interesting that we have never found any remains of a Sumerian. Even fossilised. We can find eggs or birds that are millions and billions years old but nothing from this civilisation.

Creeepy

"Therefore now it may be said with confidence that ancient Sumerian is not a linguistic isolate. It belongs to the australoid/ austric group of languages. They belong to this group because the ancient tribal people of Indian west coast also belonged to the same group of people, and it is from here that they must have migrated to Mesopotamia. Both the Australoid and Austric type are found in India. There are clear reasons to rule out any other location for the Sumerian migration: Western India is geographically close to Southern Mesopotamia as compared to south East Asia and Australia and there are no know instances of civilization east of the Indus valley around five thousand years ago. Such evidence has been found in the Indus valley.

The second study concerns physical examination of Sumerian skulls. Buxton and Rice have found that of 26 Sumerian crania they examined 22 were Australoid or Austrics. Further According to Penniman who studied skulls from other Sumerian sites, the Australoid Eurafrican, Austric and Armenoid were the "racial" types associated with the Sumerians. Here is Penniman's description of the Austric type found at Sumer:

"These people are of medium stature, with complexion and hair like those of the Eurafrican, to which race they are allied with dark eyes, and oval faces, broad noses, rather feeble jaws, and slight sinewy bodies."

This description also closely describes the regal person seen on a famous clay tablet from the Indus Valley. This same tribe in an evolved version undoubtedly established the Indus civilization as well as the Sumerian one after the submergence of their coastal cities. In North-western India they would have encountered Neolithic people of Indo-European origin with which manpower they established the Indus cities. An analysis of skeletal remains from Indus valley confirms this mixture. Both the IndoSumerian-austric language must then have persisted side by side as in Mesopotamia with the official language of the rulers being IndoSumerian-austric. Just as in Mesopotamia, ancient Sumerian was replaced by the language of the majority(Akkadians) in the Indus valley it would have been replaced eventually by an Indo-Aryan language. At what precise moment in history this occurred is not certain but most probably the Sumerian language disappeared from India by 2000 BC. In this latter case there was no question of preserving it for ritual purposes either. This is because the IndoSumerian-Austric language never developed as a fully written language in India to inscribe full texts. In any case, a better Indo-Aryan language with its own full-fledged script soom emerged probably because of Hittite influences in the Indian sub-continent around that time."

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/311587

[Abramelin]

Btw, this topic has been discussed before:

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=188901&st=120

[Abramelin]

The Magyars were several tribes who originated from Mesopotamia and some think from the city of UR. Language similarities as well as blood typing are used to trace regions and origins of ancestors.They migrated to the Carpathian basin and united under Arpad.They used the runic alphabet until King Steven united the country as a Catholic nation, but originally the Magyars worshiped the sun and were fierce warriors and horsemen. Even today we speak Magyar and use a phonetic alphabet where each sound has a symbol.

Hi Minera,

I had a collegue from Hungary, Tibor, who told me all this, and even gave me a book (in English) about the official Hungarian history.

But from what I found here and there on the internet is that there are many Hungarians who claim their ancestors were thousands of years earlier in Europe than officially thought (= your story).

I think there is a lot more to read about that, most is in the Magyar language, but alas, I can't read it.

+++

EDIT:

Dang, NOT your story, lol ! It's all but the Mesopotamian thing...

.

.

Edited July 31, 2011 by Abramelin

[minera]

Hi Minera,

I had a collegue from Hungary, Tibor, who told me all this, and even gave me a book (in English) about the official Hungarian history.

But from what I found here and there on the internet is that there are many Hungarians who claim their ancestors were thousands of years earlier in Europe than officially thought (= your story).

I think there is a lot more to read about that, most is in the Magyar language, but alas, I can't read it.

+++

EDIT:

Dang, NOT your story, lol ! It's all but the Mesopotamian thing...

.

.

I was born in Budapest and do read and write Hungarian as I went to school there for a few years.

[He Who Thinks]

Thanks for posting this and getting this thread going. I didn't know this was one of the things I was looking into until I followed some of the replies...

Of course, glad to help further research.

Btw, this topic has been discussed before:

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=188901&st=120

My apologies. I was posting this on a bunch of forums and thought I'd searched all of them for older threads but I missed here I guess.

Thanks to everyone for posting. All this information is great. I'm especially interested in the view of 'out of india'. Thanks for all these perspectives! (even if they have been discussed before)

Edited July 31, 2011 by He Who Thinks

[Abramelin]

My apologies. I was posting this on a bunch of forums and thought I'd searched all of them for older threads but I missed here I guess.

Heh, I forgot about it too.

But this older thread might give some answers?

[He Who Thinks]

Heh, I forgot about it too.

But this older thread might give some answers?

Definitely I'm reading through it now. Looks great. Thank you!

[cormac mac airt]

Indo-aryans during the age of Sumeria were predominantly nomadic savages which did not know how to speak properly, they invaded India and got their languages from the natives after massacring and raping them.

This is wrong on so many levels that it's just plain sad. There is no evidence, archaeologically or genetically, of there EVER being an Aryan "invasian". As well as the Dravidian language and peoples originated within the sub-continent.

Although considerable cultural impact on social hierarchy and language in South Asia is attributable to the arrival of nomadic Central Asian pastoralists, genetic data (mitochondrial and Y chromosomal) have yielded dramatically conflicting inferences on the genetic origins of tribes and castes of South Asia. We sought to resolve this conflict, using high-resolution data on 69 informative Y-chromosome binary markers and 10 microsatellite markers from a large set of geographically, socially, and linguistically representative ethnic groups of South Asia. We found that the influence of Central Asia on the pre-existing gene pool was minor. The ages of accumulated micro satellite variation in the majority of Indian haplogroups exceed 10,000–15,000 years, which attests to the antiquity of regional differentiation. Therefore, our data do not support models that invoke a pronounced recent genetic input from Central Asia to explain the observed genetic variation in South Asia. R1a1 and R2 haplogroups indicate demographic complexity that is inconsistent with a recent single history. Associated microsatellite analyses of the high-frequency R1a1 haplogroup chromosomes indicate independent recent histories of the Indus Valley and the peninsular Indian region. Our data are also more consistent with a peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the Indus and with significant genetic input resulting from demic diffusion associated with agriculture. Our results underscore the importance of marker ascertainment for distinguishing phylogenetic terminal branches from basal nodes when attributing ancestral composition and temporality to either indigenous or exogenous sources. Our reappraisal indicates that pre-Holocene and Holocene-era—not Indo-European—expansions have shaped the distinctive South Asian Y-chromosome landscape.

Source 1

Understanding the genetic origins and demographic history of Indian populations is important both for questions concerning the early settlement of Eurasia and more recent events, including the appearance of Indo-Aryan languages and settled agriculture in the subcontinent. Although there is general agreement that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India, some studies of the Y-chromosome markers have suggested a recent, substantial incursion from Central or West Eurasia. To investigate the origin of paternal lineages of Indian populations, 936 Y chromosomes, representing 32 tribal and 45 caste groups from all four major linguistic groups of India, were analyzed for 38 single-nucleotide polymorphic markers. Phylogeography of the major Y-chromosomal haplogroups in India, genetic distance, and admixture analyses all indicate that the recent external contribution to Dravidian- and Hindi-speaking caste groups has been low. The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward. The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family. The dyadic Y-chromosome composition of Tibeto-Burman speakers of India, however, can be attributed to a recent demographic process, which appears to have absorbed and overlain populations who previously spoke Austro-Asiatic languages.

Source 2

I am still surprised that J and E(middle easterners) were actuall responsible for Sumeria/Anatolia/Minoan etc...

I'm not, considering the sub-groups involved originated in the Middle East and Northern Africa to begin with.

...sense since they used to worship the mongoloid people.

There's no evidence of that.

Haplogroup J were also predominant in Shandong province China from 500BC...

Interesting, considering that it originated in and around the Arabian Peninsula c.31,700 BP +/- 12,800 BP, as did it's two sub-groups J1 and J2 (c.24,100 +/- 9400 BP and c.18,500 +/- 3500 BP respectively).

I believe India is the origin of all western asian civilization.

You're entitled to believe what you want, but archaeologically and genetically you'd be wrong.

cormac

Edited August 1, 2011 by cormac mac airt

[veledran]

As you can probably tell I'm new to this topic. As far as I know we don't have any actual Sumerian skeletons to examine, but we have modern people to compare with. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

What I'm wondering is do we know what the DNA of the Sumerians were made of? Also, do we have any idea through this where they may have come from?

Thanks for your help.

Take a look at the Royal Tombs of Ur. Plenty of skeletons have been found there.

[SlimJim22]

Concerning the Tower of Babel.

As every living thing, excepting Noah and his three sons, had perished by means of the blows of the Flood; finally from Shem, Ham and Japheth seventy-two families descended: from Shem, twenty-two, from Ham, thirty-three and from Japheth seventeen. And those families, as Josephus says, spoke the Jewish tongue. In the two-hundred and first year after the Flood came Menroth the giant, son of Thana, who with all his brethren, considering the past danger began to build a tower, so that if the Flood were to perhaps come again, they might, by fleeing into the tower, avoid the angry judgement. (Of God..translator). (…)

Nemrot moves to Persia. His sons, Hunor and Mogor are the ancient ancestors (fathers) of the Huns and Magyars.

Avoiding therefore the events, which gave colour to the beginning of our subject, we must return to Menroth the giant, who after the beginning of the Confusion of Tongues went to the land of Evilath, which in these days is called the territory of Persia, and there, from his wife Eneth he begat two sons, as it should be known, Hunor and Mogor, from whom the Huns or Magyars are descended. (…) And as Hunor and Mogor were firstborn sons, they, separating from their father, went to live in separate tents. It happened, as they went hunting on one occasion, they came suddenly upon a deer-hind, which, as it ran before them, they chased into the marshes of the Meotis. And as it disappeared quite completely before their eyes in that place, they sought it long, but by no means were they able to find it. Finally, they traversed the mentioned marshes, they viewed that land to be useful for animal husbandry.

http://www.atarn.org/magyar/magyar_1.htm

In the Table of Nation it Canaan who is identified as the father of the Mongoloid peoples. I have read how the Hittites originally had Mongolian features also but they were slowly pushed out by Semitic and Indo-European peoples.

For me Sumer is not about ethnicity at all due to its location in between so many other cultures and bordering on different climatic zones. Sumer traded in all directions and would have attracted migrants from all over to make a true metropolitan society, at least for that period of time.

The story of Nimrod and the Tower, despite it not necessarily being true does seem to reveal some important things going on at the time i.e. languages became confused and society started to break down.

Another name I have not seen mentioned is the Jiroft who some argue are a civilization closely related to Sumer.

http://www.avairan.com/usa-jiroft.htm

A case can be made for Sumer being influenced from Anatolia and the north but equally there is a case that land now sunk in the Persian Gulf was Dilmun or Dwarka, the cities showing that the influence was coming from the south and the east of Sumer as much as from the north. There is just so much you could speculate on with it, I do wonder if genetic will ever give us something firm to grasp on to.

[cormac mac airt]

It did not deny that there was recent an input from the west&central Asia, minor is all what that matters. How much input can be considered genetically minor but culturally major?

Genetically minor would mean not enough of a genetic difference to make a significant impact on an already well established culture. Especially if one is of the "they came in and conquered us" mentality. No, they didn't.

From the first quote:

Our data are also more consistent with a peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the Indus and with significant genetic input resulting from demic diffusion associated with agriculture.

You conveniently overlooked the fact that Dravidians, who many attempt to use as evidence of an Indo-Aryan "invasion", actually have been shown to originate in India.

...but the article also wrongfully associating indo-aryan with Indus Valley in contrast to the penisula indians, culturally speaking, Indus Valley civilization has nothing to do with indo-aryans...

Nope, YOU'RE wrongly associating what you want to believe, with actual fact. R1a having originated in the Eurasian Steppe or the Indus Valley c.<18,500 BP and dispersing from there. And R1-M17 from c.16,000 BP, western/northwestern India. Neither of which is recent or relevant to a non-existant 'invasion'. Of the known Y Chromosome haplogroups associated with India notably F, H, L, C* and C5, none of these have been shown to originate from, or to have been replaced by, groups from outside the country.

Source

I had already suggested that southern dravidians y-HGs were derived from a peaceful, pre-aryan western migration...

No they weren't, as was shown in the first quote:

Our data are also more consistent with a peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the Indus and with significant genetic input resulting from demic diffusion associated with agriculture.

cormac

[cormac mac airt]

A case can be made for Sumer being influenced from Anatolia and the north but equally there is a case that land now sunk in the Persian Gulf was Dilmun or Dwarka, the cities showing that the influence was coming from the south and the east of Sumer as much as from the north.

Except that, based on early Sumerian pottery types (that can be linked to Samarra) and agricultural practices, by the end of the Dry Persian Gulf c.14,000 BC - 5500 BC the Sumerians had already arrived from the north.

cormac

[cormac mac airt]

Dravidians were never evidence of aryan invasion in my argument, they are pre-aryan western immigrants...

No they're not, which has been pointed out a couple of times now. Genetics has shown that they're not. YOU haven't shown that they are.

Given the perspective of aryan invasion as the creation of hinduism, dravidian culture is clearly older and seems to be originating from the penisula. But do not forget about the time frame of 6000 years of slow migration untill aryans invaded. This is about backward migration not the true origin.

You're mixing language families with genetics, the two ARE NOT the same. Regardless of how much you'd like to believe otherwise. Language is not dependent on genetics, nor is genetics dependent on language. It doesn't work that way. The genetics of the situation makes your 6000 BP date therefore meaningless.

cormac