1) Why Sakas arenβt the source of steppe ancestry in Indians as suggested here, a thread.
2) To understand why this is implausible, letβs consider what the ancestry modeling and historical arguments in this post would be implying:
3) Most of India would have been filled with ASI people during the Iron Age - aside from some groups such as Tamil Scheduled Caste with elevated IVC ancestry, even in North India in the regions where the IVC ruled, the IVC ancestry had become heavily diluted by hunter gatherers.
4) Steppe people originating in Iron Age Central Asia (namely 9th century Turkmenistan) and somewhat resembling an extreme end of the ANI cline would have been the source of the steppe ancestry in India.
5) This ancestry would have entered India via subsequent Iranic migrants from Achaemenid and pre-Achaemenid Persia, as well as the historically documented Saka invasions.
6) These Sakas would have contributed a massive amount of ancestry to Indians, especially upper castes - accounting for 35-40% of ancestry in North India Brahmins and Rajputs, and 25-30% in South Indian Brahmins.
7) Though historical reality speaks for itself, many are interested in alternatives to an early steppe migration (associated with speakers of the Indo-Aryan languages) due to sociopolitical implications.
8) In this respect however, when it comes to this Saka migration theory, the sociopolitical implications would be quite dire.
9) Saka migrants and invaders would have inserted themselves as rulers right in the middle of the blossoming of classical Indian society, with their descendants being privileged for thousands of years over the natives who composed the Vedas and founded the Kuru Panchala kingdom.
10) We would be looking at Brahminical Saka rulers holding on to power and imposing Paninian Sanskrit orthodoxy (the first Sanskrit inscriptions were by Kshtrapas after all) on India. And perhaps Buddha would have been Scythian too!
11) Now students of history might be skeptical of these claims, and rightly so. The historical records certainly donβt speak of a massive Saka influence on Indian society.
12) While the Sakas did manage to rule parts of Northwest India for centuries, they did not have the kind of widespread influence on India suggested by this genetic theory.
13) And a dilution of IVC ancestry in Iron Age North India, to the point that North Indian upper castes pre-Saka resembled Dravidian tribals, doesnβt really make sense.
14) A more reasonable alternative is that these specific inhabitants of Iron Age Turkmenistan just happened to get a mixture of ancestry (incoming steppe, local Iranian neolithic, and IAMC) that resembles the extreme end of ANI.
15) Meanwhile, an actual ANI would have formed amongst the upper classes of the Indo-Gangetic valleys, particularly the Kuru-Panchala kingdom. This would have included both pre-existing IVC and Gandharan ancestry, as well as an admixture of steppe migrants.
16) That is, the late-Harappan IVC inhabitants donβt disappear; they simply are incorporated into the ANI population together with incoming steppe migrants. Such a model is more consistent with both history and admixture times of the minor steppe ancestry in Iron Age Swat people.
17) So is there any evidence of this population? Due to widespread cremation, weβll have to get really lucky to find a future genetic sample from the Painted Grey Ware population dating to the height of the Kuru Panchala kingdom.
18) However, weβre somewhat in luck. The Swat culture appears to have buried some migrants with high steppe ancestry.
19) For example, one woman buried in 10th/9th century BCE Swat culture in Loebanr genetically resembles an already steppe-admixed ANI-rich person. And we know sheβs a transplant from India and not from the steppe because her ancestry has some AASI in it.
20) So what do the stats say? We can run the two models against each other to see which is a better source of steppe ancestry. It turns out that the woman in Loebanr is a better fit than Iron Age Turkmenistan for most modern Indian populations. docs.google.com
21) Only on Tamil Brahmins does Turkmenistan outperform, with Loebanr failing slightly. By contrast, the Turkmenistan model fails slightly on Kashmiri Pandits and Haryana Jatts, as well as on myself, while the Loebanr model passes for all three.
22) Both models pass for a few other Indians, but the Loebanr model is a better fit for all of them.
23) To conclude, the evidence makes it clear that the mediating source of steppe ancestry was already in India at this time, and Sakas were not the driver of steppe ancestry in modern Indians.
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