page_title: Iranian peoples
section_title: Genetics
hierarchical_section_title: Iranian peoples / Genetics
caption_attribution_description: English: 3 friend Kurdî: Sê heval ji Bismil3e
context_page_description: The Iranian peoples or the Iranic peoples, are a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group.
  The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia in the mid-2nd millennium BC. At their peak of expansion in the mid-1st millennium BC, the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe from the Great Hungarian Plain in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east, to the Iranian Plateau in the south. The Western Iranian empires of the south came to dominate much of the ancient world from the 6th century BC, leaving an important cultural legacy; and the Eastern Iranians of the steppe played a decisive role in the development of Eurasian nomadism and the Silk Road.
  The ancient Iranian peoples who emerged after the 1st millennium BC include the Alans, Bactrians, Dahae, Khwarezmians, Massagetae, Medes, Parthians, Persians, Sagartians, Sakas, Sarmatians, Scythians, Sogdians, and probably Cimmerians, among other Iranian-speaking peoples of Western Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Steppe.
context_section_description: Regueiro et al (2006) and Grugni et al (2012) have performed large-scale sampling of different ethnic groups within Iran. They found that the most common Haplogroups were:
  J1-M267; typical of Semitic-speaking people, was rarely over 10% in Iranian groups.
  J2-M172: is the most common Hg in Iran (~23%); almost exclusively represented by J2a-M410 subclade (93%), the other major sub-clade being J2b-M12. Apart from Iranians, J2 is common in Arabs, Mediterranean and Balkan peoples (Croats, Serbs, Greeks, Bosniaks, Albanians, Italians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Turks), in the Caucasus (Armenians, Georgians, Chechens, Ingush, northeastern Turkey, north/northwestern Iran, Kurds, Persians); whilst its frequency drops suddenly beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India. In Europe, J2a is more common in the southern Greece and southern Italy; whilst J2b (J2-M12) is more common in Thessaly, Macedonia and central – northern Italy. Thus J2a and its subgroups within it have a wide distribution from Italy to India, whilst J2b is mostly confined to the Balkans and Italy, being rare even in Turkey. Whilst closely linked with Anatolia and the Levant; and putative agricultural expansions, the distribution of the various sub-clades of J2 likely represents a number of migrational histories which require further elucidation.
  R1a-M198: is common in Iran, more so in the east and south rather than the west and north; suggesting a migration toward the south to India then a secondary westward spread across Iran. Whilst the Grongi and Regueiro studies did not define exactly which sub-clades Iranian R1a haplogrouops belong to, private genealogy tests suggest that they virtually all belong to "Eurasian" R1a-Z93. Indeed, population studies of neighbouring Indian groups found that they all were in R1a-Z93. This implies that R1a in Iran did not descend from "European" R1a, or vice versa. Rather, both groups are collateral, sister branches which descend from a parental group hypothesized to have initially lived somewhere between central Asia and Eastern Europe.
  R1b – M269: is widespread from Ireland to Iran, and is common in highland West Asian populations such as Armenians, Turks and Iranians – with an average frequency of 8.5%. Iranian R1b belongs to the L-23 subclade, which is an older than the derivative subclade (R1b-M412) which is most common in western Europe.
  Haplogroup G and subclades: most concentrated in the southern Caucasus, it is present in 10% of Iranians.
  Haplogroup E and various subclades are markers of various northern and eastern African populations. They are present in less than 10% of Iranians (see Afro-Iranians).
  Two large – scale papers by Haber (2012) and Di Cristofaro (2013) analyzed populations from Afghanistan, where several Iranian-speaking groups are native. They found that different groups (e.g. Baluch, Hazara, Pashtun) were quite diverse, yet overall:
  R1a (subclade not further analyzed) was the predominant haplogroup, especially amongst Pashtuns, Balochi and Tajiks.
  The presence of "east Eurasian" haplogroup C3, especially in Hazaras (33–40%), in part linked to Mongol expansions into the region.
  The presence of haplogroup J2, like in Iran, of 5–20%.
  A relative paucity of "Indian" haplgroup H (< 10%).
caption: Three Kurdish children from Bismil Province, Turkey
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