I have already received some feedback from customers who also happen to be part of my Dodecad Project and who appear to be perplexed by their results. It is unfortunate that my own rules preclude me from discussing the details of these reports. I encourage people who want to discuss their ancestry composition to do so in the comments.
Without going into details, I would first advise that 23andMe make transparent the way in which 23andMe participants were selected as part of their training data. This is explained in their writeup with the following paragraph:
Most of the reference dataset comes from 23andMe members just like you. When someone tells us that they have four grandparents all born in the same country, and the country isn't a colonial nation like the US, Canada or Australia, they become candidates for inclusion in the reference dataset. We filter out all but one of any set of closely-related people, since they can distort the results. And we remove "outliers," people whose genetic ancestry doesn't seem to match up with their survey answers.23andMe takes a "birthplace of grandparents" approach rather than an "ethnic origin" approach. This may be reasonable when the two tend to coincide but not appropriate at all when ethnic groups of different origins co-exist in a given territory. Contrary to the implicit belief expressed in the above paragraph, ethnic complexity is not limited to "colonial nations", and an approach that disregards ethnicity, language, and religion, and limits itself to "birthplace of grandparents" is bound to miss it.
The problem with supervised learning is that the end product is only as good as the labels. If the labels aren't good, or they're ambiguous, then you end up with a mess.
Let's take an example of an individual who reports "4 grandparents from Turkey." This may mean anything ranging from a Mesopotamian Kurd within the boundaries of Turkey, a Central Anatolian Turk, a Cappadocian Greek, a Turkocretan, an Armenian from Cilicia, an ethnic Greek from European Turkey, or a Turkish-speaking Muslim from Skopje or Bulgaria. Some of these may interpret "Turkey" geographically; others ethnically. The label "Turkey" is polysemous, for a variety of reasons: it can be interpreted either geographically or ethnically, and in both these senses it has not been time-invariant.
I don't know how 23andMe built their reference populations, but I am ~100% sure that 4 grandparents from Turkey = "Middle Eastern" in their terminology. I am also fairly sure that their "Balkan" sample consists of individuals as different as Croats and Greeks. So what do these meta-population labels mean? Your guess is as good as mine: a balance of samples of different origins and different interpretations of these origins in whatever training set 23andMe assembled.
In my own project, I never include a priori labels of individuals in the inference of ancestral components. I deal with genotypes and individuals, not self-reported ancestral origins and labelled sets of individuals (populations). Components emerge from unsupervised learning over a set of individual genotypes, and it is only a posteriori that labels are assigned to the inferred components, by observation. Indeed, one could forego the assignment of labels altogether!
My amicable advice to 23andMe is to drop supervised learning altogether. It will only get worse as new customers (aka new test data) join in.
65 comments:
Is there any way that you can make your Dodecad Project analyzer more user friendly, simpler? It accepts Fasta files, doesn't it? I'm using a public computer which requires administration approval (ie passwords unavailable to me) for downloading things like that. On James Lick's mtDNA analyzer (mitohap) for example, it isn't necessary to download his program software.
My father has a Greek from Crete as a Relative, and his ancestry painting shows up as:
99.7% Balkan
0.2% Eastern European
0.1% Nonspecific European
I've sequenced 14 members of my family through 3 generations with the v2/v3 Illumina at 23andme. I also have my exome sequenced and published. We have good genealogical records. This data does not look very accurate to me.
The children are showing small differences in regional classifications that have no derivation from a parent or grandparent.
The amount of non-specific regional data is very high as well.
They did not mention which ethnicities are included in the "Balkan" sample.
Those which are probably used as a reference show like 98-99% Balkan. As I share with a very large number of Balkanians, I can see that Bulgarians, Romanians and Greeks are used as samples. Could not find any ex-Yugoslavia with very high percentage Balkan, don't know if they are included, or just show different. Well, maybe Northern Greeks are close to Macedonians and South Bulgarians and North Bulgarians close to Romanians South of the Carpathian mountains, but no way a Greek from Crete is very close to a Romanian from Transylvania.
The other thing that takes the Balkanians off course is branding Hungarian "East Europeans", while they are maybe in between East, Central and South Europeans. This way a Croat, naturally close to a Hungarian will have big amount of East European, while may be not that close to East European as defined in Dodecad project centered around Belorussia and Lithuania.
Another strange thing is the disappearing of East Asian in many samples and appearing of Sub Saharan not only in the South Balkans, where this could be plausible.
I am obviously used as a reference, too and comparing me and myself I can't be anything but 99% Balkan. This makes me, the other references and those close related to them disadvantaged.
I don't remember who spoke first about the "calculator effect", i.e all should be compared to samples outside of them to have an equal starting point. In this sense the old Global Similarity makes better picture where Balkanians stand compared to each other.
I think they have simply reified the population labels. You label something X, you use it as training data, and you get back 100% X for that training sample.
That is why Turks get 100% Middle Eastern and Russians get 100% East_European. They've been used as training samples, so basically Ancestry Composition spits out the labels it was fed. I've seen examples of real Middle Eastern people get less than 100% Middle Eastern, and you have Turks from the Balkans get 100% Middle Eastern.
It will be _very_ interesting to see how this performs on new customers.
Comparing to what 23andme used to put up as Ancestry Painting, the new Ancestry Composition is certainly better. However, it still has problems. I had myself, my wife and my son all tested on the same platform. There are still ghost fragment popped up in my son's chromasome painting under the normal condition. However, when one switch to the most speculative mode, the allignment of ancestry segments is actually more acurate.
There is a mysterious south asian component popped up in mine and my wife's ancestry composition, which is absence in Dodecad runs.
Here are my results:
"Standard Estaminate" (Default):
95.6% French&German
2.3% Nonspecific Northern European
2.1% NOnspecific European
"Speculative Estaminate":
99.8% French&German
0.2% Nonspecific Northern European
"Conservative Estaminate":
78.9% French&Geman
16.5% Nonspecific Northern European
4.6% NOnspecific European
"French&German" bases on:
262 Germans from 23andMe
169 Dutch from 23andMe
160 French from 23andMe
73 Swiss from 23andMe
64 Belgians from 23andMe
29 French from HDGP
@Fanty
Where are the samples listed?
"They did not mention which ethnicities are included in the "Balkan" sample."
They do.
"Balkan" bases on:
106 Romanians
102 Greeks
55 Bulgars
"East European" bases on:
181 Poles
169 Russians
68 Hungarians
55 Ukrainians
25 HGDP Russians
"Middle Eastern" bases on:
123 Iranians
96 Turks
47 HGDP Druze
EDIT:
@Dienekes:
One finds the samples by clicking on the INFO Icon behind the Population and then on "details".
"Middle Eastern" bases on:
123 Iranians
96 Turks
47 HGDP Druze
That explains why Assyrians end up part-European and Turks from the Balkans end up 100% Middle Eastern.
A classic case of overfitting to the training data.
I only accept the Speculative results, not because I like the actual ancestry composition better, but the Conservative and Standard results contain a high "unassigned" percentage. I find that unacceptable considering my ancestry is mostly from one small island for 600 years. I understand that my ethnic group is an isolated population and unrepresented in 23andMe's reference populations, but no one should get high unassigned percentages.
Yes, 23andMe have used two Finnish samples in their Northern European category which means that the East Asian ancestry of Finns and other Northern Europeans are converted to European. You can say the same for Southern Europeans that contain ancestry from West Asia, the Near East and Africa being masked in the European for Iberians, Italians and Balkanians. The results are only correct if you accept existing European ethnic group averages as being wholly composed of that ethnic group which of course they are not.
In my own project, I never include a priori labels of individuals in the inference of ancestral components. I deal with genotypes and individuals, not self-reported ancestral origins and labelled sets of individuals (populations). Components emerge from unsupervised learning over a set of individual genotypes, and it is only a posteriori that labels are assigned to the inferred components, by observation. Indeed, one could forego the assignment of labels altogether!
My amicable advice to 23andMe is to drop supervised learning altogether. It will only get worse as new customers (aka new test data) join in.
Couldn't agree more. We should let the data speak for themselves. All other approaches are bound to be faulty one way or another.
"Middle Eastern" bases on:
123 Iranians
96 Turks
47 HGDP Druze
That explains why Assyrians end up part-European and Turks from the Balkans end up 100% Middle Eastern.
A classic case of overfitting to the training data.
How can a very large scale genetic testing company such as 23andMe make such grave mistakes?
I am Romanian, I fit perfectly to myself :) 99% Balkan... Nice "estaminate" :)
I'm DOD021 in the Dodecad Project, with 50% Sicilian and 50% Southern Italian ancestry. Since I filled out the ancestry survey at 23andMe and answered that all 4 of my grandparents were Italian, I think it's probable that I'm included among 23andMe's use of 426 of its customers as an addition to their Italian reference population.
Here are my Ancestry Comparison Standard Estimate results:
99.6% Italian
0.2% Non-specific Southern European
0.2% Non-specific European
0.1% Unassigned
My sister has not filled out the ancestry survey, so probably is not among their customer-based Italian reference sample. Here are her Standard Estimate results:
86.3% Italian
8.6% Non-specific Southern European
0.2% Non-specific Northern European
<0.1% Ashkenazi
4.1% Non-specific European
0.1% Sub-Saharan African
0.6% Unassigned
It looks like, since she's probably not part of the reference sample, her results are a bit more nuanced.
I would assume to be around 25 % in the German-French cluster, but is instead nearly 100 % in the Scandinavian cluster.
I wonder if that is because the test is self-referring to the initial survey answers where I answered that all of my grandparents birthplaces were in Scandinavia?
In the Dodecad runs I frequently look Dutch.
Regarding the use of Balkan customers at 23andMe for their reference sample, I have an estimated 4th cousin (sharing one 20.5 cM segment) in Relative Finder who tells me that all his ancestors that he knows about were Greek, from mainland Greece (including the town of Metamorphosis in southern Greece) and the Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast. I don't think he's used in their Balkan customer reference sample, since he's not in my Ancestry Finder list, meaning he didn't fill out the ancestry survey.
Here are his Ancestry Composition Standard Estimate results:
21.5% Italian
20.5% Balkan
36.8% Non-specific Southern European
0.8% Eastern European
0.7% Finnish
<0.1% Non-specific Northern European
19.0% Non-specific European
0.1% East Asian
0.6% Unassigned.
I had previously thought that our common ancestor might be one of my ancestors from Bari province, on the Adriatic, who was originally Greek. But looking at his 21.5% Italian and the chromosome view that shows the area of our shared segment on chromosome 9 as colored Italian for him, it seems that our common ancestor was an Italian who married into his Greek ancestry. In fact, both of the pair of his #9 chromosomes are almost entirely painted Italian.
Will African Americans still get those single digit false "Asian" percentages?
It looks like, since she's probably not part of the reference sample, her results are a bit more nuanced.
That is actually a very good example. Remember that your sister shares about half of your genome. So, half her genome is covered by you -who belongs to the training set- and makes up for ~50% Italian. So, in the remaining ~50%, she is 36/50 = 72% Italian.
I am fairly sure that new Italian customers will not get 99% Italian like you did, simply because they are not part of the training set, unless 23andMe manages to get ancestry surveys from everyone and retrains their model continuously (unlikely).
I wonder if that is because the test is self-referring to the initial survey answers where I answered that all of my grandparents birthplaces were in Scandinavia?
That is likely the case; the "test" has simply reported your self-reported ancestry because you have been included as a Scandinavian, so the test's definition of "Scandinavian" includes you. If a person had the exact same genotype as you but did NOT fill the ancestry survey, they would not get ~100% Scandinavian.
I had previously thought that our common ancestor might be one of my ancestors from Bari province, on the Adriatic, who was originally Greek. But looking at his 21.5% Italian and the chromosome view that shows the area of our shared segment on chromosome 9 as colored Italian for him, it seems that our common ancestor was an Italian who married into his Greek ancestry. In fact, both of the pair of his #9 chromosomes are almost entirely painted Italian.
I wouldn't bet on that.
To see why, consider that if this guy didn't fill up his ancestry survey, or he filled it with 2 grandparents born in Greece and 2 in Turkey, then his sample would NOT have been used as a reference sample.
So, a common segment shared by you and him is used to train the model, and is identified as "Italian" because _you_ filled the survey and he did not.
I am not denying the possibility of Italian gene flow into Greece. But, I can't really see at all how a Cretan Greek would turn out 100% Balkan, and the Greek you mentioned would turn out like a mix of so many influences. The difference is that a Cretan Greek would have 4 grandparents from greece -and so he'd be included in the "Balkan" population-, while the other one did not, so his ancestry is broken up every which way that fits.
Dienekes wrote:
"So, a common segment shared by you and him is used to train the model, and is identified as "Italian" because _you_ filled the survey and he did not."
I'm not sure you're correct about that. Looking at the chromosome view for this Greek RF match, besides both pair of #9 being painted almost entirely Italian, both pair of #1 are painted almost entirely Italian, half or more of one of the #2, #3, #8, #14 and #15 chromosomes are painted Italian and about 1/3 of one of the #10 chromsome is painted Italian. That's an awful lot of Italian showing on different chromosomes for there not to be some actual Italian ancestry in his tree.
At the very least, by your explanation, it means that he must be matching with multiple members of the Italian training set. But if he's matching with multiple people with all 4 grandparents born in Italy, that still may indicate that he has actual Italian ancestry in his tree.
Dienekes, this is one of the most important posts you have ever written. You and I don't always agree on various hypotheses, but here, the facts are incontrovertible. If 23andMe has garbage in, it will spew garbage out. If the baseline data is false, it will throw off everything.
How many people that you know have ridiculous family legends? (I know so many.) Like, grandpa was from Tunisia, but we are pretty sure he was Italian.
How many people were conceived out of wedlock?
How many people simply choose to wrongly self identify? Like in your example...
I am very very cautious of labs claiming to predict with this certainty one's ethnic background.
There used to be another lab who did such tests. They told someone I know that he was part Native American. His parents were born in Switzerland and Sardinia, respectively. When pressed, they basically admitted that their test was bogus, and that most people who paid for it were trying to prove Indian ancestry for gaming purposes. Now 23andme is not that way, but since this I have been very wary of these overhyped tests with their way exaggerated claims of accuracy.
Italy is the most genetically diverse European population. Italians have separated into isolated breeding groups for hundreds of years. 23andMe uses its Italian customers as the basis for the Italian reference, and most of those are American of mixed Southern Italian ancestry: Sicilian, Sicilian and various Southern Italian groups and the rest a mix of Southern and Central Italians. Northern Italians are like finding hen's teeth at 23andMe. So the Italian category is not representative of Italians but American Italians. I am not Italian and don't have Italian born ancestry practically to the start of church and official records 500-600 years, yet Italian is my highest ancestry at 23andMe.
This is how the three ancestry estimates breakup for Italian, non specific Southern European and Unassigned. Standard: Italian 56.4%; non specific Southern Euro 14.4%; and unassigned 17.9%. Conservative: Italian 30.8%; n/s S Euro 14.4%; and unassigned 36.7%. Speculative: Italian 73.3%; n/s S Euro 7.5%; and unassigned 1.4%.
Now, those results are rather crude and totally non specific to my ethnic group and true ancestry in the last 500 years. It is useless.
That explains why ... Turks from the Balkans end up 100% Middle Eastern.
It is true that most non-Balkan Turks that I share with on 23andme turn out as almost full Middle Eastern. However, at the Standard Estimate level, one full and two half-Balkan Turks are shown to be 41%, 74% and 95% European, respectively.
I now regret filling out my ancestry questions, it is very obvious I was includes in 23andme's training sample.
I had hints from Dodecad and other projects of genealogically unknown ancestry, but now any hope of finding them out has been destroyed.
The French/German side of my family is absent on 23andme AC. I come in @ 0.7%... Klass, Graulou, La Salle, and Viruet... All French/German surnames, grand parents and great grandparents. I can't imagine all of their DNA adding up to 0.7%... It just doesn't make sense. Absent from my Puerto Rican side are any traces of North African, 0.0%! I was puzzled so I looked at numerous PR AC breakdowns... The average North African seemed to be 0.1%, even though a significant amount of PR ancestry went thru the Canary Islands.
That's an awful lot of Italian showing on different chromosomes for there not to be some actual Italian ancestry in his tree.
What I'm trying to tell you is that this person's segments are a "free-for-all" because he didn't fill in his ancestry survey. If he had put "4 grandparents Greece" in his ancestry survey, the non-Balkan portion of his ancestry would diminish or disappear.
The same thing would happen with you and your sister; 23andMe keeps one sample in a group of relatives, so they kept you (because you filled the survey), so you ended up ~100% Italian and your sister ~86% Italian.
It is true that most non-Balkan Turks that I share with on 23andme turn out as almost full Middle Eastern. However, at the Standard Estimate level, one full and two half-Balkan Turks are shown to be 41%, 74% and 95% European, respectively.
It would be interesting to know what these people filled in their survey.
A good sanity check is with the "Mediterranean" and "West_Asian" components of globe13. I have people (both Greek and Turkish) who have both and fall on the European-Anatolian continuum, and some of them become ~100% European and others ~100% Middle Eastern.
However, at the Standard Estimate level, one full and two half-Balkan Turks are shown to be 41%, 74% and 95% European, respectively.
Is the full Balkan Turkish sample the one 41% "European" in 23andMe's test? Logic says that he/she is the one 95% "European". Anyway, those results may be more related with whether any of those samples or genetically very similar samples were included in the training set rather than the actual genetics of those samples.
I am an adoptee but found my new 23andMe ancestry results when I use the "speculative" setting to be very close to what I was given for information by NY State regarding the ethnic background of my birth parents, and what I have seen for matches that I have with 23andMe, FTDNA and Ancestry.com (I have tested with all three). I think it works better when your parents have different ethnic ancestry regions such as mine (mother Dutch and Irish, father Italian). My results show a relatively even split between Northern and Southern Europe.
I am a Turk from Bulgaria, in my Ancestry Composition my results are shown as 100% European, in the sub-Regional Composion my results are 99,3% Balkan, 0,6% non-specific Europena, < 1% non-specific South-European and < 0,1% Unassigned European. In the speculative mode the results are 100% Balkan. In the old Ancestry Painting my results were 99% European and <1% Asian, of which equally North and South European composition. In the Ancestry Finder I have indicated that my both parents are born in Bulgaria, in fact for the last 4 known generation all my ancestors have been Turks from Bulgaria. I find the results strange as I have "relatvies" in 23andMe from the Balkans (Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and fromer Yugoslavia) but only 2 of my connections (one being another Turk from Bulgaria) are shown as 99% Balkan, the rest are shown as 30 - 60% Balkan. Not sure why the others are with much less Balkan % composition.
MMaddi - are there any non-Italian segments on your sister's chromosomes among the segments which you share / IBD? On a Jewish mailing list, I heard a story of a person with extensive IBD with a Finnish guy who has this shared segment painted "Finnish" (and who is 99.8% Finnish overall). But the problem is, the Jewish person has the same segment painted "unspec European". ... so I wondered if 23andMe's algorithm uses prior probabilities assigned based on your profile. Like if you have all 4 Italian grandparents, then it might bias every score 4-fold in favor of Italianness, but if you don't specify any ancestry then you get an unbiased comparison of scores?
For some of the more distinct and more homogenous countries, like Finland, where they used external public data, the results tend to be fairly interpretable. Like in my case, my great-grandmother was of Pomor extraction, as I may have mentioned before. It's a somewhat heterogeneous ethnic group from the White Sea shores with strong Finnish cultural influences. The Pomor oral tradition maintains that the Southern Pomors are of ethnic Russian stock, while Northern Pomors are heavily Finnish-admixed. My ancestors were from the South shore. Well, almost my entire N European component is Finnish according to the new 23andMe tool, and it totals 1.5% to 3.2% (conservative to speculative) which is consistent with my great-grandma being just over a quarter Finnish.
But there follows an immediate disappointment: the admixture within the Pomors would have to be fairly old, and therefore highly fractured by recombinations. But my Finnish blocks quite long, even in conservative assignment including one comprising 2/3rds of chromosome 11. So the algorithm may have preference for long blocks, and decisions on small margins even for "conservative" approach? If it isn't just a statistical fluke like if this chromosome 11 was relatively homozygously Finnish in my mggm, and was spared recombinations more recently?
On a different topic, now that we learned that Gypsy genes have been strongly influenced by drift, just as Ashkenazi genes were ... when can we get a Roma component in chromosome painting? And since both Ashkenazi and Roma components won't appear prominently as PC components, but are relatively homogenous, just how one can beat supervised training algorithms to assign AJ / Roma segments? Any better ideas?
I wouldn't say 23andMe's analysis is completely useless or wrong. I think it makes some sense for their US customers or others of mixed origin who'd like to know some rough reference regions. But it is indeed pretty useless for e.g. Europeans. For example, combining France, Belgium and Germany and counting Hungary as Eastern European makes no sense whatsoever from the autosomal analyses published over the years.
Hungary always clusters very closely with Slovenia, Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia, and even with Germany. I'm certain most people from France/Belgium (outside those east of the arc Dunkirk/ Brussels/ Liege/ Luxemburg/ Colmar/ Mulhouse/ Bern) won't cluster with Germans.
I find the results strange as I have "relatvies" in 23andMe from the Balkans (Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and fromer Yugoslavia) but only 2 of my connections (one being another Turk from Bulgaria) are shown as 99% Balkan, the rest are shown as 30 - 60% Balkan. Not sure why the others are with much less Balkan % composition.
Those rest of the "relatives" may all be indeed from the Balkans and shown as less "Balkan" just because they were not included in the training set rather than their genetics.
Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians are getting almost 100% Balkan but Serbs are getting only 20-30% Balkan standard estimate, or 40-50% Balkan speculative estimate.
Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians are getting almost 100% Balkan but Serbs are getting only 20-30% Balkan standard estimate, or 40-50% Balkan speculative estimate.
Serbs are not included as a reference that's why.
I saw a half-Syrian half-Russian with the result of 26% Italian. Makes no sense whatsoever.
MMaddi - are there any non-Italian segments on your sister's chromosomes among the segments which you share / IBD? On a Jewish mailing list, I heard a story of a person with extensive IBD with a Finnish guy who has this shared segment painted "Finnish" (and who is 99.8% Finnish overall). But the problem is, the Jewish person has the same segment painted "unspec European". ... so I wondered if 23andMe's algorithm uses prior probabilities assigned based on your profile. Like if you have all 4 Italian grandparents, then it might bias every score 4-fold in favor of Italianness, but if you don't specify any ancestry then you get an unbiased comparison of scores?
I think you've probably identified how Ancestry Composition works in a sibling case like mine, where one sibling is part of the training set and the other is not. The algorithm doesn't know my sister's ancestry, but knows mine since I'm in the training set. If there is a question about what ancestry a segment represents, it defaults to "Italian" for me. But in the case of my sister, it chooses "Ashkenazi."
My sister is assigned one Ashkenazi segment (<0.1%) near the beginning of chr 2. Comparing chr 2 for each of us on gedmatch, using Dodecad k7b, our admixture there is almost identical. It's mostly Atlantic-Baltic, with some significant Southern and West Asian. But since Ancestry Composition considers me 99.6% Italian, that same segment is labelled Italian for me.
I'm missing something, I am mostly European with some known native and african ancestry within the last 6 generations. Our adopted daughters are mixed race. The eldest has three grandparents of african ancestry, 1 of European. The youngest has 1 grandparent of native ancestry, 1 of African and 2 European.. yet our percentages are a bit strange:
mine is 104% European
eldest is 140% sub-saharan African
youngest is 100% undetermined
Questions: how does one get over 100% of an ancestry?
Why does the chromosome view show more granular ancestry (which looks roughly accurate based on genealogy) than the % which seems.
Apparently there is no Croatians from Dalmaia in their Balkan reference because this is where my grandfather was from and I get zero Balkan (and 10% undetermined Eastern European). The rest I assume might be some undetermined Southern European.
Balkan = Romania, Greece and Bulgaria; all from customers of 23andMe.
Middle Eastern = Iran, Turkey and the Druze from Israel; the Druze are from HGDP and the others are 23andMe customers.
Are those reference groups appropriate or apt for all people from Balkan Europe or the Middle East?
The only people who have benefited from the Ancestry Composition are those who derive from the specific reference groups and the lack of genetic complexity of those reference groups. Northern Europeans lack genetic complexity and what differentiation exists is easy to separate with minor usage of SNPs. The downside is Finns and other Northerners lose their East Asian ancestry and come out 100% European. The same thing happens with Southern Europeans with their minor North African and sub Saharan ancestry provided they are 100% of the reference group used for Southern Europeans.
My 23 new Ancestry composition is pretty close to Doug McDonald's interpretation.
I'm not surprised of my Ancestry composition results, giving that fact I have RF matches from all those populations I have in Ancestry painting.
http://i49.tinypic.com/153ob9s.png
It looks like all the Europeans from the AC reference populations who filled out their ancestry info are screwed. 23andMe will mostly paint their chromosomes whatever they scribbled on the form.
But all those too lazy to fill out the forms are getting pretty good results that line up with a lot of the other local ancestry analyses.
That kind of reminds me of "Physical Anthropologist" who ask for the persons nationality to put their finger to the right phenotype.
This may mean anything ranging from a Mesopotamian Kurd within the boundaries of Turkey.
A question is in my head.
I cant agree with this designation.
How can someone come to the conclusion to label Kurds from Anatolia as "Mesopotamian Kurds withing the boundaries of Turkey" while labeling Greeks, Armenians and Turks which are recorded to be more recent new comers to Anatolia (as if Anatolia is a united landmass to begin with) compared to the Iranic and Hurrian elements (Mitanni, Medes, Scythians, Alans, Cimmerians).
While the proto-Armenian (Phrygian) are relatively new comers from Balkans via Central Anatolia. Eastern Anatolia is and was always naturally connected via different Empires (the Hurrian, Mitanni, Urartaen all of them stretched from Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia to Mesopotamia and Iran).
Also Eastern Anatolia is geographically obviously more connected to Mesopotamia the Caucasus and Iran as to Western Anatolia or the Balkans.
So using the Greeks and Armenians as a proxy for Anatolian genetic make up is in my opinion more than just historically wrong.
My two cents ;-)
My mom's parents were from about 100km of each other in the mountains of southern Poland. My dad's grandpa was from somewhere in Poland, and the rest of his ancestors in North America for over 200 years, of Irish, German and English background.
My 23andMe numbers are:
48.1% Eastern European
11.8% French and German
2.5% British and Irish
0.8% Finnish
0.2% Scandinavian
18.6% Nonspecific Northern European
3.9% Balkan
4.8% Nonspecific Southern European
9.0% Nonspecific European
0.3% Sub-Saharan African
Kurti,
I don't know the situation with Anatolian Greeks (as I have yet to see any full Anatolian Greek genetic sample), but Armenians are surely among the most native Anatolian/Armenian Highlander modern populations. This is clear from their genetic similarity with Anatolian Turks and especially Assyrians. The Assyrian similarity is important here, as Assyrians have very little, if any, known Indo-European or general European potential origin.
@Onur The genetically Armenians are clearly and visibly distinct to Turks. Armenians lack North European influence which you can find in Turks, on the other hand Armenians are higher on Southwest Asian and West Asian components.
The Armenians and Armenian language are relatively new in Eastern Anatolia compared to Caucasian and Iranic languages. Turks are genetically considerable Balkan influenced, many Turks are in fact either from Western-Central Anatolia or the Balkans, with significant Central Asian input. you are a good example. Genetically you have absolutely little to do with Anatolians but in one generation, even though your children might be only half Anatolian, they will clearly identify as fully Anatolian Turks. And as I already clearly mentioned. Anatolia is and never was one one unified territory. Eastern Anatolia throughout history always interacted with Western Iran, Caucasus and Mesopotamia and borders these areas.
Expecting Eastern Anatolians to be genetically the same as Western Anatolians is as smart as expecting Germans being genetically the same as French. Even close neighbors like Greeks and Albanians are gebetically significant different from each other.
And now consider the geographic distance between East and West Anatolia being quintuple.
Assyrians are as long as Iranics and clearly longer present on Southern and Eastern Anatolia than other elements, They are surely native component of Anatolia yet they have also measurable Levant ancestry. The same goes actually also for Armenians who appear distinct to all their Caucasian, Iranic neighbors in having more Mediterranean component.
If you look it that way, though Iranics being geographically closer to Armenians, Georgians appear genetically closer to them. This lets only one possibility open for me. It almost seems like a group from further West has pushed a gab between Iranics and Georgians. And this group logically appears to be the Armenians.
I would place the Armenian language in the Balkans but most of their ancestry somewhere in Central-South Anatolia, around Cilicia.
Kurti,
Turks and Armenians (and also Georgians) have much less ancestry than Kurds from the South Asian element that is typical of Iranic and Iranic-admixed populations in West Asia and Central Asia. Also, Armenians and Assyrians are pretty close genetically so much so that Assyrians are perhaps the genetically closest population to Armenians and vice versa. The Caucasoid portion of the ancestry of Turks, which seems to make up on average something between 90% and 95% of the total ancestry of the Turks according to ADMIXTURE analyses, stands somewhere between Greeks and Armenians, leaning more in the Armenian direction (which is quite understandable when we take into account the fact that most of Greeks are Balkan Greeks while most of Turks are Anatolian Turks). In short, Kurds are genetically more Iranian than Anatolian.
Lastly, I am 50% Anatolian Turk and 50% Balkan Turk in my known ancestry and I define myself neither as an Anatolian Turk nor as a Balkan Turk but as what I am (i.e., half Anatolian-half Balkan Turk). FYI, I have not had my DNA tested yet.
@Onur
I have no idea if you really don't understand the definition of what is native and what isn't. I suspect the reason for this is rather your odium towards Kurds which you haven't hide in several Platform/Forums.
I will try to explain it another time. It doesn't require more than the ability to read, to understand it.
Dienekes has several times proven that Anatolian Turks trace at least 30% of their ancestry to Central Asia, but this doesn't mean that 30% of their ancestry has to be East Asian since Central Asian Turkic groups share at least 50% West Eurasian genes from which most is West Asian.
Western and South-Central Asia was always connected not only by empires and people moved back and forth. This connection is also called Central Asian corridor. The Iranic presents on Anatolia is older as the Armenian, Greek and especially Turkic. If the Iranians brought South Asian component with them this only makes it a native component of Anatolia. Of course it depends on your own definition of ancient. If 2000 bc is not ancient enough for an individual from an ethnicity which arrived 3000 years later, well than I have to "accept" it.
There is a fluent connection between the South Asian and West Asian components just like there is one with the Southwest Asian component too, and I don't believe that Southwest Asian is more native to Anatolia as the South Asian, since South_Central Asia was always connected to Anatolia but the same cant be said about the Southern Levant, Arabian Peninsula. Also someone seems to exaggerate the South Asian influence on Western Iranics like Kurds. Most calculators show around ~4% This is only ~3% more than other Anatolian groups own. This is less as the additional Southwest Asian Assyrians or East Eurasian Turks posses which ranges from 6-10%.
I never argued about Georgians being genetically closer to Iranics as to Armenians. What I said is that considering the geography than Armenians should be closer to Iranians as Georgians or Lezgians for example. But this is not the case. And since we both agree on that Georgians and Lezgians are native, this only brings me to the conclusion that Armenians genetically do not belong to where they live today.
Someone can accept or deny it but history confirms my arguments.
Eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and North- and Western Iran was always the geographic area where Caucasian and Iranic groups met and merged.
1.Hurrians and tribes of Hurrian origin (like the Kassites) populated a territory stretching from Eastern Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Western Iran. Later they merged with earlier proto Indo-Iranic tribe and formed the Mitanni kingdom
2. Urartu connected Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Caucasus and Northwestern Iran. And as we know from Assyrian sources and archaelogic findings they merged with Iranic Cimmerians and Alans.
3.Mannaeans, pred. Caucasian people which populated Southern Caucasus and North-Northwest Iran merged with Medes and Scythians.
4. The Carduchoi living in Southeastern Anatolia were a fusion of Hurrians, Scythians, Medes and Gutians.
5. Median empire connected all the way from Central Asia to Central- and Northeast Anatolia, the same goes for the Achaemenid Empire.
There is not a single empire you can list me here which connected earlier exclusively Western Anatolia or the Balkans with Eastern Anatolia. Beside Actually there is no other beside the Byzantine Empire.
Fact is Eastern Anatolia has historic and geographic connection to Western Iran and Mesopotamia. It was always populated by the same people. So there is no sense if someone comes and tells us Central- Western Anatolians or Balkanians should be more representative for native Eastern Anatolians as Mesopotamians or Western Iranians.
Kurti,
I don't write in any forum and I have never written in any anthropology or genetics-related forum (I only write in blogs). Also, no one until this day has noted any negative feeling towards Kurds on my part. On the contrary, I have several times been regarded as a Kurdophile by Kurds and non-Kurds alike (I myself don't claim to be any group X-phile, I am just reporting other people's impressions of me). So I suspect that you are confusing me with someone else.
Dienekes has not proven anything about the extent of the Central Asian ancestry in Anatolian Turks. He several times estimated that Anatolian Turks have on average between 10% and 15% Central Asian ancestry:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/02/how-turkish-are-anatolians.html
http://dodecad.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-turkish-are-anatolians-revisiting.html
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/05/central-asian-element-in-turks-part-3.html
BTW, Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz and the Altai all have less than 50% West Eurasian ancestry according to ADMIXTURE analyses (Uyghurs sometimes show about 50% West Eurasian and sometimes less West Eurasian ancestry in ADMIXTURE analyses). Also the Caucasoid part of the ancestry of the Central Asian Turkic groups is not uniform, being more stereotypically Iranic-like (not non-Iranic West Asian-like) in the south and Europeanizing towards the north (probably northern Scytho-Sakas were genetically something between Europeans and stereotypic Iranics plus some Mongoloid admixture that increases towards the east).
As for the East Eurasian or Mongoloid ancestry in Turks, it ranges from 0% to about 10% according to ADMIXTURE analyses, the average being somewhere in the middle.
Kurds and Iranic peoples in general seem to have arrived the lands that would later be the traditional lands of the western Iranic languages (e.g., Kurdish, Median, Persian) only during the Iron Age, during the course of the early 1st millennium BCE, and this is the same time as the commonly accepted time of the arrival of Armenians to their present location (the Urartian Highland, which would later be called the Armenian Highland). More importantly, northwestern Iranic peoples (including Kurds/Proto-Kurds) lived predominantly within the borders of the Iranian Plateau during most of their history in West Asia and arrived more western lands of West Asia in more recent times.
The South Asian genetic element in Kurds is too much for Anatolian, the Armenian Highlander, Transcaucasian and Mesopotamian standards and Kurds usually group with Iranians in detailed West Asian genetic analyses. You can ask Palisto, the owner of the KurdishDNA blog, if you don't believe me.
Lastly, Armenians show very little, if any, genetic influence from the Balkans. They are genetically typical northwestern West Asians.
@Onur sure that you aren't the same Onur which is active on several Forums and has similar views as you?
If so, than I am sorry. It seems I have confused you for a long time with a racist person who traces his ancestry also to Balkans (Bulgaria) and his nickname is Onur too.
I will answer you later, when I got more time.
Kurds and Iranic peoples in general seem to have arrived the lands that would later be the traditional lands of the western Iranic languages (e.g., Kurdish, Median, Persian) only during the Iron Age, during the course of the early 1st millennium BCE
By "Kurds" I meant Proto-Kurds here, as Kurds probably did not exist as a distinct group that early.
@Onur
Dienekes has not proven anything about the extent of the Central Asian ancestry in Anatolian Turks. He several times estimated that Anatolian Turks have on average between 10% and 15% Central Asian ancestry:.
Thats still 7-12 % more foreign element as among Kurds (if you consider the South Asian as foreign which I don't and have detailed explained why read my former posts). One of the reasons why most Turkish samples end up in Central and West Anatolia is exactly this East Eurasian influence which pushes them more towards East. If it wasn't for this most Turks would end up somewhere between West Anatolia and the Balkans.
BTW, Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz and the Altai all have less than 50% West Eurasian ancestry according to ADMIXTURE analyses (Uyghurs sometimes show about 50% West Eurasian and sometimes less West Eurasian ancestry in ADMIXTURE analyses).
I couldn't find any Kazakh samples but the Uzbek ones seem to be around 40-50% West Eurasian. This is very close to my estimated 50%. And while moving westward its very obvious that they took more West Eurasian genes.
As for the East Eurasian or Mongoloid ancestry in Turks, it ranges from 0% to about 10% according to ADMIXTURE analyses, the average being somewhere in the middle.
I haven't come across a Turkish individual who scores less than 5% East Eurasian, but of course what haven't can happen. When I look at the Turkish results in Dodecad I see the average East Eurasian around ~6% (Turks and Turkish_D) and ~13% (Turkish_Aydin).
Kurds and Iranic peoples in general seem to have arrived the lands that would later be the traditional lands of the western Iranic languages (e.g., Kurdish, Median, Persian) only during the Iron Age, during the course of the early 1st millennium BCE, and this is the same time as the commonly accepted time of the arrival of Armenians to their present location (the Urartian Highland, which would later be called the Armenian Highland). More importantly, northwestern Iranic peoples (including Kurds/Proto-Kurds) lived predominantly within the borders of the Iranian Plateau during most of their history in West Asia and arrived more western lands of West Asia in more recent times.
This is not true, the Armenian element appeared for the first time 600 BC not earlier. Of course it depends on if you consider Urartu and Mitanni as Armenian though both had linguistically (Caucasian and Iranic languages present) nothing in common with them.
And we werent talking about the Western Iranian element per se or when the ancestors of the Kurds arrived on Anatolia. This is not very important in this case since we were discussing about which element (the Iranic or Armenian and Greek) was earlier present on Anatolia. In this is obviously the Iranic one. About the ancestors of Kurds. linguistically they might be a West Iranic group, but ethnically Northeast Iranic and Hurrian elements are also documented, like the Alan tribal confederation among Kurds or the ergativity in Kurdish dialects which is of Caucasian (Hurrian?) origin and differs it from Persian that lacks it.
.....
The South Asian genetic element in Kurds is too much for Anatolian, the Armenian Highlander, Transcaucasian and Mesopotamian standards and Kurds usually group with Iranians in detailed West Asian genetic analyses. You can ask Palisto, the owner of the KurdishDNA blog, if you don't believe me.
Kurds are closest to Iranians but they cluster westward from them.
"Grouping" with Iranians which is just located East, geographically closer and borders to Anatolia, does not say much.
Your answer does not refute my arguments in any way. Let me quote my earlier post to make clear why.
Eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and North- and Western Iran was always the geographic area where Caucasian and Iranic groups met and merged.
What is native Anatolian and what isn't is not defined by Armenians, Greeks or Turks since these components are relatively new arrivals compared to the Iranic element. if anything than the lack of South Asian component would make them less Anatolian.
Also I clearly illustrated why the "South Asian genes" argument does not work. If we start to determine the Anatolianess of an ethnicity by the lack or addition of specific components, than Assyrians are not Anatolian because they have considerable higher Southwest Asian or Armenians because of their lower North European, higher Southwest Asian or Turks because of their higher East Eurasian and North European components. this is a very self destructive argument.
And if we consider that the South Asian among Kurds (~4%) is only ~3% more than among other Anatolian groups, while Assyrians have considerably more Southwest Asian (~7%) and less North European(0%!), Turks East Eurasian (~8%), Armenians less North European (~5% less) and more Southwest Asian, than the argument of the "more South Asian genes" is not an argument at all and I consider it more as a joke or trollish (do not take it personal).
I am not denying any other group their Anatolian nativeness, I just feel sometimes that I have to defend the Kurdish nativeness on the lands which is somehow ironic and not questionable.
There is no doubt that Kurds are a native people to Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Western Iran.
Kurti,
As I explained above, I am not that Onur (whoever he is) or any other forumer and I am half Balkan Turk (and not only from Bulgaria in that, half of it being from Greece).
As for the Turkish Mongoloid ancestry range according to ADMIXTURE analyses, see the population portraits of the Turkish samples used in Dienekes' ADMIXTURE runs (Dienekes posted the population portaits of his ADMIXTURE runs in several occasions). You will see that some of them have no or almost no Mongoloid component. BTW, the Dodecad and Eurogenes participant Turkish samples are more representative of the Turkish genetic variation than the Turkish samples of the academic studies, as the latter are from pretty resticted regions (often single provinces) of Turkey while the former are from all over the ethnic Turkish parts of Turkey and the other former Ottoman lands inhabited by ethnic Turks.
BTW, which genetic maps are you referring to specifically?
I have seen ADMIXTURE/STRUCTURE results of all the Central Asian Turkic ethnic groups. Most of them have less than 50% West Eurasian ancestry according to those analyses. Uzbeks and especially Turkmens have very significant recent (the last 1000 years) southern Iranic admixture, so they are not representative of the Central Asian Turkics of 1000 years ago, who were then restricted to more sparsely populated northern regions of Central Asia and overall had less Iranic admixture thus less Caucasoid ancestry than today.
The Mitanni (or more correctly the Mitanni ruling class) seem to be Indo-Aryan rather than Iranic based on their personal and deity names and horse terminology. In any case, they were probably nothing more than a small ruling elite in a land with a Hurrian majority.
Anatolia proper consists of the land west of the Euphrates, so the regions that are today called Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia (obviously for political reasons) consist of mostly the Armenian Highland and northern Mesopotamia respectively rather than Anatolia. Kurds/Proto-Kurds or any other Iranic group surely did not inhabit Anatolia in ancient times (in fact, not until the Ottoman times). They may have inhabited parts of the Armenian Highland and Mesopotamia beginning from the Iron Age at the earliest but were at most in the minority in those regions.
Armenians with that name first appear around 600 BCE as a political entity (in the Armenian Highland). But that does not mean that they had not already existed in the Armenian Highland as a people during the preceding several centuries. Most historians today date the beginning of the Armenian existence in the Armenian Highland to several centuries before the 6th century BCE. Some even date it to the Bronze Age, as the Armenian self-designation Hay resembles the name of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Hayasa.
The South Asian element of Kurds is lower than that of Persians, obviously because Kurds are geographically more western and have more non-Iranic admixture, but still, Kurds' South Asian element is too high compared to all of their western neighbors (Turks, Armenians, Assyrians, Georgians and Arabs) and sharply genetically distinguishes Kurds from them and Kurds are genetically closest to the other Iranic groups from Iran except Balochis. So Kurds' levels of the South Asian element are surely too high for Anatolia, the Armenian Highland, the Transcaucasus and Mesopotamia.
Lastly, can you see anything frivolous or trollish in what I write? I am making a serious discussion here. I don't take what you say about me as personal but as name-calling (unfortunately many people resort to name-calling when they are hard pressed in discussions).
BTW, of course there will be geographically-related genetic difference between Anatolian Turks, Armenians and Assyrians, as there is not much overlap between their historical territories: Anatolian Turks are mainly from Anatolia, Armenians are mainly from the Armenian Highland and Assyrians are mainly from Mesopotamia.
@Onur
The Mitanni (or more correctly the Mitanni ruling class) seem to be Indo-Aryan rather than Iranic based on their personal and deity names and horse terminology. In any case, they were probably nothing more than a small ruling elite in a land with a Hurrian majority.
Its not clear if the Mitanni were Indo_Aryan or Iranic. Most scientist agree to call them simply Indo-Iranic since their language has characteristics of the non spliten Indo-Iranian. And it actually doesn't matter either. Both Indo-Aryan and Iranic have a relatively recent common root.
And the Mitanni are not the only, or first Indo-Iranic group in this area.
Hubushkia was a kingdom in present day Hakkari which has archeologic connections to Proto-Iranic tribes (Kurgan stelae).
Anatolia proper consists of the land west of the Euphrates,
Possible, but today if someone mentions Anatolia all people automatically think of Eastern Anatolia too.
so the regions that are today called Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia (obviously for political reasons) consist of mostly the Armenian Highland and northern Mesopotamia respectively rather than Anatolia.
"Armenian Highlands" is a term introduced by Armenian guides to Europeans who traveled across Asia minor. Historically this area all the way up to Ararat was called by Assyrians "Beth Qardu". Ask some Arameans they will confirm this.
Kurds/Proto-Kurds or any other Iranic group surely did not inhabit Anatolia in ancient times (in fact, not until the Ottoman times). They may have inhabited parts of the Armenian Highland and Mesopotamia beginning from the Iron Age at the earliest but were at most in the minority in those regions.
No you are wrong, see above. Iranic elemets are also recorded during the Urartaen period.
That Kurds came after Ottomans is the general urban believe among Turks, which is not right at all.
Badinian a Kurdish principality in todays Northern Iraq was found by a Kurd who settled 1300 CE from Hakkari. Saladin who was born 1137 in Tigrit, originated from a tribe which comes from present day Armenian (Dwin) which borders Ararat.
In fact Eastern Anatolia was for a long times settled by Parthian people, which after a inner conflict split into a Western and Eastern Parthian empire. The large part of the Western Parthians in fact converted to Christianity and become Armenians. This is very well documented and the main reason for the huge Parthian vocabulary among modern Armenians.
Also as I noted earlier, there is a huge Alan tribal confederation among Kurds. And many of them live in modern day Van and Hakkari area. The arrival of Alans exactly into the same area is historically recorded too.
Armenians with that name first appear around 600 BCE as a political entity (in the Armenian Highland). But that does not mean that they had not already existed in the Armenian Highland as a people during the preceding several centuries.
Let me get that straight, you speculate of a possible presence of Armenians in Eastern Anatolia before 600 BCE even though there is no historical evidence, while at the same time you deny any Kurdish presence before Ottomans because you don't see (doesn't mean there isn't) any evidences for their presence on Anatolia?
Doesn't sound very fair, almost hypocritical.
Most historians today date the beginning of the Armenian existence in the Armenian Highland to several centuries before the 6th century BCE. Some even date it to the Bronze Age, as the Armenian self-designation Hay resembles the name of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Hayasa.
Just unimportant hypothesis based on similarities of the two names nothing more. I know many historians who connect the term Karda, used during Sumerian period to describe a mountain people living in Eastern Anatolia, with the modern term Kurds which are also often connected with the mountains.
The South Asian element of Kurds is lower than that of Persians, obviously because Kurds are geographically more western and have more non-Iranic admixture, but still, Kurds' South Asian element is too high compared to all of their western neighbors (Turks, Armenians, Assyrians, Georgians and Arabs) and sharply genetically distinguishes Kurds from them and Kurds are genetically closest to the other Iranic groups from Iran except Balochis. So Kurds' levels of the South Asian element are surely too high for Anatolia, the Armenian Highland, the Transcaucasus and Mesopotamia.
I have already answered this.
Sorry, I am not trying to be rude or too direct but I can't keep a conversation with you if you permanently ignore my arguments just to repeat the same over and over again.
This is why I will quote my earlier post.
And if we consider that the South Asian among Kurds (~4%) is only ~3% more than among other Anatolian groups, while Assyrians have considerably more Southwest Asian (~7%) and less North European(0%!), Turks East Eurasian (~8%), Armenians less North European (~5% less) and more Southwest Asian, than the argument of the "more South Asian genes" is not an argument at all and I consider it more as a joke or trollish (do not take it personal).
the "foreign" elements among Kurds is smaller than the "foreign" elements among Turks, Armenians, Assyrians.
Lastly, can you see anything frivolous or trollish in what I write? I am making a serious discussion here. I don't take what you say about me as personal but as name-calling (unfortunately many people resort to name-calling when they are hard pressed in discussions).
I wished you would more often take up my arguments instead of ignoring them often, since they often are the answer to the question/statements you do thereupon
Kurti,
We are using two very different and incompatible definitions of Anatolia (Asia Minor, to be more correct). It should have been clear by now that I do not regard the regions east of the Euphates as parts of Anatolia (so read what I wrote carefully before calling me unfair and hypocrite). That is a Kemalist/Turkish nationalist invention; territories of Turkey east of the Euphates were incorporated into Anatolia by Kemalists/Turkish nationalists during the early decades of the Turkish Republic. Thus by calling those territories as parts of Anatolia you are using Kemalist/Turkish nationalist terminology.
The rest of what you write on history is mostly speculation based on poor historical data.
I should point out that I do not put much stock in the Hayasa-Armenian theory. But Armenian presence in the Armenian Highland during the early Iron Age is certainly not a stretch. For instance, Hittites and Luwians, too, are thought to have arrived in their historical locations centuries before their first appearance in the historical records as a political entity.
Armenia is an at least 2500-year-old historical region. Armenia (as a region name) and the Armenian Highland are almost synonymous terms. Beth Qardu (=Corduene) was not even in the Armenian Highland, it was in northern Mesopotamia. Corduene may have been populated by Proto-Kurds/Kurds, even if not exclusively, already during the Antiquity.
As for your indigenous vs. foreign elements argument, I have already more than adequately replied to it, so won't waste my time on it further.
Euphates would be Euphrates. Sorry for the typo, which is due to fast writing on my part.
Post a Comment