Originally Posted by Ygorcs Originally Posted by

Yes, I also think the influxes of more East Eurasian-shifted populations was not only Turkic, the Iranic influence in Uralic languages points to close contacts, as well as the very "Scythian-like" genetic profile of the Hungarian Conquerors. However, I think the overwhelming Turkification of the "cis-Altai/Tian-Shan" steppes probably beginning around the 5th century B.C. and intensifying in the Common Era must suggest that the bulk of those migrants were either Turkic or adopted Turkic as an inter-ethnic (in multiethnic tribal confederations) lingua franca, eventually their descendants shifting to it as their native language.



Do you know how early is the Northeastern Iranic branch dated? I'd presume at least as early as the LBA, probably before the East Eurasian influence was really significant.



I read in one of these papers about Scytho-Sarmatian aDNA (now I forgot which of them) that the Kazakh steppe became much colder and drier after roughly 1200 B.C. (LBA) and the steppe peoples mostly abandoned the open steppe and migrated to the "fringes" of forest-steppe, river valleys and so on (maybe also southward into South-Central Asia and even South Asia, accounting for the continued increase of steppe ancestry after those Swat Valley samples dated to ~1200 B.C.?). Then in ~800 B.C. the climate improved and the steppes became more humid and productive again, and many territories were re-peopled by those who had retreated. But I notice a large increase in East Eurasian ancestry in the IA samples of the region, so maybe this time it wasn't just a movement of the Pontic-Caspian-derived herders, but also of the "new" and increasingly competitive East Siberian herders (didn't that genetic paper about the first Notheastern Asian herders say something about full pastoralism developing late there only in the LBA or something like that?). That might explain why suddenly the Scythians, Cimmerians and even Sarmatians (much less as a rule, I think so) were much more East Eurasian-shifted. People from the east took lands that were not well occupied before.